Fighting Game Camps: The King of Fighters: Part 2

Continued from part 1.

Music

No other fighting game franchise I will ever cover in these camps has music that comes close to what The King of Fighters has.  Through the fusion of a wide variety of music styles and powerful, fast-paced rhythms, The King of Fighters games have churned out masterpiece after masterpiece of musical glory.  Each one delivers epic riffs that last at least a minute and a half and always remain dynamic, perfect for the high-octane fights that take place no matter what style or instruments are used.  I would pay good money to see a live performance of any of these instrumental songs.

Let me put it this way: Street Fighter music you tap your foot to.  Guilty Gear music you bang your head to.  Tekken music you freestyle to.  The King of Fighters music you flashily fight to.

Fighting Game Camps: The King of Fighters: Part 1

There are a lot of analogies one can make to compare SNK’s supergiant The King of Fighters to Capcom’s supergiant Street Fighter.  “If Street Fighter is Chess, King of Fighters is sumo.”  “If Street Fighter is Marvel, King of Fighters is DC.”  The analogy I think is most accurate is “If Street Fighter is Fist of the North Star, King of Fighters is Dragonball Z.”  I may have already gone over the main King of Fighters games and why you should absolutely do whatever it takes to play (most of) them, but for those who want the cliffnotes version, I have this post.

Because of the length of this article, it will have to be split into two parts, starting with King of Fighters’ story and characters.  Believe it or not, this one part is around the same length as the entirety of the Street Fighter camp post.  That just goes to show you how much more story King of Fighters has to it.

Fighting Game Camps: Street Fighter

Just as Super Mario Brothers kicked off the platforming genre, Capcom’s Street Fighter 2 kicked off fighting games as we know them today.  You cannot discuss fighting games as a genre and leave out Street Fighter.

It’s arguably the most popular fighting game franchise out there, with just about every possible piece of merchandise you can think of, from a TV show to figures to Street Fighter Monopoly.  To see what gives this fighting game juggernaut such a large and dedicated camp, it’s best to look at each component that makes it what it is.

There was a Street Fighter before Street Fighter 2, but no one cares.

Story

Street Fighter’s story spreads across several games in a rather anachronic order.  Canonically, it starts with the first Street Fighter (though most of its plot is retconned by the others), followed by the three Street Fighter Alpha games, 2, 4, and finally Street Fighter 3 (and its sequel, Third Strike).

With the exception of the Street Fighter Alpha games, the plot of each game revolves around the Street Fighter martial arts tournament (expect to see a lot of those in these camps).

In Street Fighter Alpha, characters run around and fight each other while establishing some character.

After the first game, each of the Street Fighter tournaments have some kind of evil intent behind them, which I will get into when discussing the villains.

Since the people running the tournaments aren’t morally sound, rules on using supernatural abilities get the curb and everyone breaks out the flaming kicks and sonic booms.  After the characters are done kicking everyone else’s ass, they do the same to the villain.

Unfortunately, very little of the important plot points aren't explained in any of the games.  The Alpha games help a good deal for some characters, but for many, backstories are instead explained in supplementary material.  Who exactly is the ultimate victor of each tournament is also vague unless you read supplementary material.  Even Street Fighter 4, the one with the heaviest story elements, has a long, drawn-out anime movie that sets up its story just so you know what the hell's going on.

Street Fighter is a game franchise that does better at characterization than it does plot.

The Heroes

From the Street Fighter Alpha games to 4 (timeline-wise), there are essentially two main packs of heroes, who work with each other from time to time.

The first is the iconic duo of Ryu and Ken.  The two are good friends and rivals, having both trained under the same master.  Both are disciplined and love fighting, but while Ryu is often very strict and wanders the earth to find opponents and get stronger, Ken is much more laid back and likes to spend time with his girlfriend/wife.  Ken enters the Street Fighter tournaments for fun.  Even though they have their differences, they love sparring with each other, and both use identical moves that have become infamous in gaming.

Much of Ryu's wandering is so that he can train himself to control the Dark Hadou within him (it's officially called the Satsui no Hadou, but that's too much of a mouthful for me).  The Dark Hadou is kind of like the dark side.  It's powerful, but destructive and can kill people if not kept under control.  It's never stated outright, but it also seems to be a rare power only one other character, Akuma, seems to have.  Ryu lost control of it once in a retcon that says he became Evil Ryu and struck the villain Sagat out of hatred, leaving the man his huge scar.  Even though he only appeared once in canon, Evil Ryu has been playable in quite a few games.

Aiding in the fight against evil are two Interpol agents: kick-centric fighting girl Chun Li and the army man Guile.  Both are righteous crime fighters out for vengeance and justice.  Big-time villain M. Bison killed Chun Li’s father and is most likely responsible for the disappearance of Guile’s friend Charlie (at the end of the Alpha games, in which he was playable).  Chun Li and Guile work well together as foils.  While Chun Li is dedicated to her cause, she still shows that she has fun fighting.  Guile, on the other hand, is almost always stone-faced and serious.  He’s depicted as a pleasant person if you’re on his side (he has a wife and kids), just don’t expect to see him laugh.

Although there are returning heroes in Street Fighter 3, like Ryu and Ken, the main character of 3 is a new generation hero named Alex, a hot-headed war vet seeking revenge on the man running the tournament for injuring his friend.  Sadly, he’s only in one Street Fighter game so far, leaving him with very little character to speak of, even with his appearance in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.

The heroes are somewhat archetypal and make for a fun story, but the real driving forces of the stories told are...

The Villains

Source

Up until 3 (chronologically), the main villain of Street Fighter has been the criminal organization Shadaloo, led by the evil dictator M. Bison.  Just as the heroes are archetypes, Bison is the archetypal evil villain.  He’s an egomaniacal, cruel, abusive maniac who does whatever he needs to do to get his way, and he knows it.  His famously cheesy portrayal in the Live Action Street Fighter movie is not far off.

Bison uses what is referred to as “psycho power.”  It is essentially Bison’s physical manipulation of the evil side of his soul, giving him the ability to corrupt the minds of others, levitate himself through the air, increase his strength, and even live without a body, transferring his soul into compatible new bodies, which is good, because psycho power has degenerative effects on them.  He purged the good part of his soul, called "soul power", to use it and transferred that into the Italian fortune teller Rose.  In a sense, he utilizes pure evil.

In the first two Street Fighter Alpha games, Bison was essentially just another criminal smuggling drugs, but in Street Fighter Alpha 3 he becomes the de facto villain, having his personal assassins and himself attack other characters in order to use their power to act as a fuel source a doomsday weapon called the Psycho Drive, which ultimately fails when his base is destroyed, along with himself.

He comes back in Street Fighter 2 to prove that he's the best, but then he's killed by Akuma, another villain.  Naturally, he just gets another body in Street Fighter 4.

One of Bison’s associates is the villain of Street Fighter 4, Seth.  Seth is the leader of Shadaloo’s weapons division, S.I.N., and in the events of Street Fighter 4, he took over while his boss was away, prompting Bison to come after him.

Using a special device he has in place of a belly called the Tandem Engine, Seth can copy moves from other fighters using their combat data.  The moves he copies in-game are all from the original 8 Street Fighter 2 characters, such as the yoga master Dhalsim’s stretchy limbs, Guile’s sonic boom, and Russian wrestler Zangief’s atomic buster.

Seth's ultimate goal is a little less simple than simply wanting to become all-powerful.  He organizes the Street Fighter 4 tournament in order to bring out Ryu's dormant Dark Hadou, as that is the last missing piece of power he needs to complete his project known as BLECE.  BLECE (Boiling Liquid Energy Cell Explosion) is a special implant that uses a person's ki in order to make all their cells (and thus, their whole body) violently explode.  Such a weapon would allow suicide bombers to go undetected through security and could spell chaos if it were ever completed and distributed.  Before focusing on Ryu, S.I.N. captured a number of martial artists, presumably in an attempt to learn to manipulate ki.

Working under Seth is the franchise’s only villainess (not counting Bison's brainwashed female bodyguards): Juri, a hedonistic, psychopathic, masochistic tae kwon do master who was given what seems like a miniature Tandem Engine called the Feng Shui Engine in her left eye.  Though it can’t copy moves like the Tandem Engine, the Feng Shui can absorb ki from her surroundings to substantially increase her physical performance, as shown in her ultra combos.

Siding with Bison is Shadaloo’s fearsome trio of their strongest fighters: Vega, a narcissistic and acrobatic Spaniard who wears a mask to protect his beautiful face, Balrog, a brutish boxing thug only in it for the money, and Thailand muy thai bruiser Sagat.

Sagat is more of an anti-villain compared to the psychos Vega and Balrog.  Ever since Ryu (or rather, Evil Ryu) defeated and scarred him in the first tournament, Sagat has sworn to defeat him with the help of Shadaloo.  He’s not obsessed with beating Ryu like so many similar villains are with their arch nemesis, but needless to say, if he sees Ryu, Sagat won’t let him walk away.  Eventually though he learns that revenge is not the way to go, leaves Shadaloo, and quits being evil, unlike his fellow chums.

Unaffiliated with any other villain is the rogue warrior Akuma.  Akuma is not unlike Darth Vader to Ryu’s Luke Skywalker, except Akuma isn’t Ryu’s father.  Akuma embraced the dark side of the Dark Hadou, making him stronger, but also ruthless.  Throughout Street Fighter’s story, Akuma seeks worthy opponents to beat into a pulp, usually with his signature move the Shun Goku Satsu (Wrath of the Raging Demon).  When using it, the screen turns black (or white, depending on the game) and the enemy is horribly mangled.  What exactly happens at that time depends on the source, but it’s known for being a dangerous, forbidden technique.  Akuma used the Shun Goku Satsu to (almost) kill his brother Gouken, Ryu and Ken’s master, So he's primarily the enemy of the series' main duo.  Like Ryu, Akuma travels the earth, and thus crosses paths with the other fighters.

The villain of Street Fighter 3 is slightly less of an obvious villain than M. Bison or Akuma, but only slightly.  Gill is the modern-day leader of the Illuminati, an organization has existed for thousands of years.  The Illuminati have manipulated events over the course of history to follow a prophecy that predicts the apocalypse, and have genetically experimented with people to make supreme beings.  Gill is their most successful supreme being, and the Illuminati believe him to be the reincarnation of their former emperor.
Gill holds the tournament in Street Fighter 3 in order to find the best humans to repopulate the world with after the apocalypse by taking them to a special area of the world that will be safe when Armageddon comes.

In simpler terms: Gill and the Illuminati believe that the apocalypse is going to happen anyway according to their prophecy, so he might as well go with it and make the most of the end of the world by preparing to rebuild it as best he can.  Unlike Bison, Gill believes what he does is for the benefit of mankind.

If his appearance doesn’t tip you off, Gill’s genetic enhancements (somehow) allow him to use fire and ice, and his faux holy backstory also gives him some divine power, most notably his seraphic wing and resurrection moves.  Seraphic wing does a shitload of damage if you’re not guarding (similarly to a move from King of Fighter’s Orochi), and resurrection allows him to completely refill his health after being killed!  Resurrection is probably camp Street Fighter’s most despised super move.

"Ded."

The Other Guys

The handful of main characters don't do justice to the sheer volume of characters.  Street Fighter has a vast collection of quirky fighters that are minor in the grand scheme of things, each with their own reasons for fighting, be it fame, the prize money or revenge.  To name a few: Dee Jay, a Jamaican dancing part machine, Cammy, a British special forces unit who was previously one of Bison's assassins, and Dan, a jokingly pathetic fighter trying to promote his dojo.

Dan Hibiki is a playable mockery Capcom made to insult SNK, specifically the Art of Fighting games, now most known for its characters being in The King of Fighters.  His "saikyo" (awesome) fighting style is a lot like the Art of Fighting's Kyokugen style... Only shit.  His appearance is also one big composite, having Robert's face, a pink version of Ryo's gi, and some of Yuri's girly mannerisms, plus his dead dad's face looks like Takuma's Mr. Karate mask (though that was changed in the comics).
Dan was essentially conceived as a form of humiliation.  You could prove how superior you are to someone else by using Dan as a handicap.

But come Street Fighter 4, the joke's on Capcom.  Dan rules!

Almost as if by fate, Dan has been in the crossover games Capcom vs. SNK 2 and SNK vs. Capcom: SVC Chaos with Ryo.

There's also Rufus, who is simply awesome.

With all the muscular, serious, and prettyboy and muscular characters in Street Fighter (and most fighting games, for that matter), Rufus stands out from the crowd by being fat, talkative, and silly.  He rambles on, mistakes other people for his archenemy Ken Masters (who doesn’t even know who Rufus is), and at the same time is able to kick copious amounts of ass, practically ignoring his weight.  It helps that his voice actor is Christopher Corey Smith, one of my favorite actors in gaming, who does a fantastic job giving Rufus a bumbling and semi-gruff voice to match his biker persona as well as pulling off a funny Brooklyn accent.

He’s got a great leitmotif too.

Rufus is also example of what makes Street Fighter characters so memorable: they’re exaggerated.  Whether it’s an exaggerated stereotype like T. Hawk or El Fuerte, or an exaggerated character trait like Bison’s villainy or Vega’s vanity, Street Fighter characters each have one trait that Capcom plays up.  While several of the characters are established beyond that, they still reinforce their most noteworthy trait with virtually everything they say and do on the battlefield, cementing their quirks into the heads of players.

That exaggeration carries over into many characters’ visual design.  The constantly smiling Dee Jay has a perfectly square jaw, the American fighter Guile wears an army uniform with the American flag tattooed on his shoulder, Turkish oil wrestler Hakan has red skin and metallic hair, and Akuma has a very malformed, demon-like face.  Several Street Fighter characters are relatively normal-looking (by stylized anime standards), but for every 2 humans Street Fighter has, it has one weirdo that symbolizes his or her big character trait.  That’s a good thing though, because exaggerated characters are fun to watch and distinguish Street Fighter from the other fighting game franchises.

Music

Complementing the characters are catchy soundtracks.  How the music is handled in Street Fighter varies, but generally they have catchy beats you can tap your foot to and never distract from the fighting.  They’re traditional game background music fitting with the stage or characters that, in a way, make you want to keep your groove.

Street Fighter also has what I consider to be the best character select music in gaming.  In how many games do you notice that?

I’ll admit that SNK doesn’t have character select themes nearly as awesome as these.

But as much as music, characters, and story are important to a game’s identity, it’s the gameplay that defines it.  Street Fighter (2) is practically the progenitor of modern fighting games with its controls.

Combat

Players are given 6 buttons: weak, medium, and heavy punches and kicks.  Every punch and kick has its own range, attack speed, damage output, and recovery time, some of which vary depending on the character and direction of the control stick when thrown.  By using their moves in quick succession, players can skillfully execute combos by not giving opponents the chance to block (done by moving backwards).  With two ways to block (standing and ducking) and the ability to jump or bypass blocking with a grab (how to grab depends on the game), there are a variety of ways for players to keep their opponents guessing.

The big divider that differentiates the combatants are their special moves.  By quickly inputting varying movement and/or button commands (often circular motions and then pressing the corresponding attack button type), characters execute more specialized and fantastical moves that define the characters, such as Ryu's infamous Hadouken, Russian wrestler Zangief's Atomic Buster grab move, or the acrobatic Vega's Flying Barcelona.
Adding to the combat’s depth, the strength of the buttons used for the command usually determines the move’s strength, speed, and/or range.  For example, using the weak button for most special moves may not do as much damage or have less range, but it’s faster and leaves you less open if it doesn’t connect.

It's complicated at first, but get the half circles down and it's not that hard.

The combat rules beyond the core mechanics vary with each installment in small ways.  Eventually Street Fighter adapted more powerful super special moves that could be used after filling a gauge in varying ways.  These super special moves are used through slightly more complex commands, such as two quarter circles forward and a punch.  There are also EX moves in Street Fighter 3 & 4, done by pressing two of the required button type at once, which use up part of the meter in order to enhance a special attack.

Street Fighter 4 also introduced the even more powerful ultra combo moves, the meter for which can only be filled by taking damage and at most can only be used twice per match for each player (unless a near-impossible scenario occurs involving "white health").  Additionally, SF4 added focus attacks that take a moment to charge, but can break through an opponent’s guard at full power and shrugs off one attack during the charge.

Regardless of the Street Fighter you play, they are games of pacing, method, and reaction.  You have to judge and adjust the distance between you and your opponent, think of what your opponent might do to lower their guard, consider how long you’re left open after certain attacks, react to them, and mix up moves so that your opponent can’t predict them.  This is especially emphasized in Street Fighter 3.  In that game, tapping toward your opponent right before a hit strikes leaves you invincible for a split second to allow for a counterattack, putting an even stronger emphasis on pacing.  Street Fighter is less for the hot-blooded button mashers and leans more toward the cool, collected, strategizing types.  The hot-blooded players are too busy playing The King of Fighters, which I will get into in the next post.

This video embodies what makes Street Fighter’s combat so fun and shows off camp Street Fighter’s most epic moment ever.  Notice how often the players shifted left and right or just struck the air in front of them.

Personal fighter of choice: Vega.

Vega is a beautiful, flawless badass, and he knows it.  Wearing a mask to preserve his beauty, Vega works to get rid of everyone he finds inferior or ugly.  He knows he’s awesome and vies to prove it time and time again using his flashy and smooth moves, not unlike how I try to look great when I play a game.

In battle, Vega is very acrobatic and has impressive range thanks to his clawed glove’s punches and special attacks.  Vega has strong special and super moves that go straight across the field, making it difficult for him to miss, provided you use good timing, and his scarlet terror attack is a good way to knock an opponent back at close range.  In the right hands, he can be a seriously slippery opponent.

His style of fighting is more in line with the faster screen rakers seen in The King of Fighters, which made him much easier to adjust to for me.  In fact, he’s the first character I beat Super Street Fighter 4 with on hard mode.

I don’t like being obvious with character choices by choosing ones that are popular, but Vega’s fast play, eccentric personality, and showmanship make him my character of choice in any Street Fighter game he’s in.

As for Street Fighter 3, where Shadaloo is completely absent, I go with Remy in Third Strike, because he is an actual King of Fighters character.  He has Robert Garcia's projectiles from KOF 2003 as well as his dive kick, Ash Crimson's updraft kick and Iori Yagami's fashion sense (with Omega Rugal's insignia; that or a shirt once worn by Mick Jagger).  Hell, one of his super attacks is practically the exact same as Ash's minus the green flames.  I'd say they made him just for me, and there's clearly some inspiration from SNK visually, but Ash was actually made after Remy.  Whatever was behind him though, Remy is my go-to Third Strike character.

The best of the bunch

If there’s any single Street Fighter game I recommend, it’s Super Street Fighter 4.  Whether it’s the first Super Street Fighter 4 or any of its updated re-releases, it stands above every Street Fighter game before it.  While the Street Fighter Alpha titles are strong on backstory and Street Fighter 3 has unique visuals and characters, Street Fighter 4 has the strongest character count and content.  Every character is fully voiced in English, endings are fully animated, there are actual prologues and the stylized 3D is the perfect transition from the 2D titles before it.

I particularly recommend the 3D edition on the 3DS, which has every DLC outfit for every character unlocked from the start, optional touch screen taps to use moves, an impressive 3D effect with a special camera mode to show it off and the entire thing is portable.  The trade-off is that none of the stages are animated.  Only the characters.

Why Capcom didn’t release Street Fighter 4 on the Wii, a much stronger system, perplexes me.

I also enjoy the spin-off game Super Gem Fighter: Mini Mix, a much more lighthearted, simplified and cutesy Street Fighter game (with a few non-SF characters) in which most of the fighters change into different outfits for their combos and use the most delightfully absurd special attacks.  You can get the original release on the PS1 or on the Street Fighter Alpha Anthology for the PS2.  Yes, I have a disc with 3 of the biggest Street Fighter games and my favorite out of them all is Gem Fighter.  Of course, it wouldn't be nearly as funny without knowing the source material.

"Oyaji biim!"

Other Media

As stated in the third paragraph, Street Fighter has a lot of merch outside of the games.  Some are promotional tie-ins, such as two OVAs for Street Fighter 4, and adaptations that tell their own stories.  There’s the semi-famous live-action movie starring Jean Claude Van Damme as Guile, as well as a 26-episode animated TV show slightly based off of it.  Both the movie and show paint Guile as the main hero, who fights the evil forces of M. Bison with other Street Fighters from the games.  As you can tell from the premise alone, they deviate from the games in many many areas.  Some people like to watch the live-action movie for its cheesiness and Raul Julia’s acting in his final role, but the animated series…

Just sucks.  The characters are bland and derailed, fight scenes have no weight or finesse, the voice acting is poorly directed, and not to mention the animation is painfully inconsistent.

I’ve heard some people like to watch it just to laugh at it, but I doubt anyone has willingly suffered through the entire run and enjoyed it.

There’s another live-action movie based off of Street Fighter called Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li, but it’s pretty much one big insult to Street Fighter fans, possibly even moreso than the first live-action movie. You can see exactly why in Matthew Buck’s detailed review.

The Street Fighter movie you want to see is the animated movie based off of Street Fighter 2.  It’s not great, and it certainly suffers from some of the shortcomings 90s anime usually did, but the animation is solid, the characters are accurate, and there’s a lot of (good) street fighting that goes down.  I guarantee the animated Street Fighter 2 movie will give you more enjoyment than 5 episodes of that awful TV show.

As sort of a follow-up, the animation studio behind the Street Fighter 2 animated movie also made a short series called Street Fighter 2V.  Unlike the movie, 2V reinterprets the characters of the game in their younger years before the Alpha games came out, so knowing the characters well by this point makes it a bit of a pain to watch, honestly.

There were animated movies based off of the Street Fighter Alpha games too, but trust me when I tell you that they are forgettable.

There are also Street Fighter comics.  At first there was a comic adaptation by Malibu Comics, which was just about as bad as the TV show for many of the same reasons, but since then there have been more faithful manga adaptations, including a spin-off manga called Sakura Ganbaru, which centers on the daily life of Street Fighter Alpha 2’s Sakura Kasugano.  It’s amusing, but not especially notable.

The best comics are the ones by UDON Entertainment, which I swear the Street Fighter camp immortalize on museum pedestals in vacuum-sealed diamond cases in a sacred booby-trapped temple.  If they do, it’s for good reasons, because the UDON Street Fighter comic may be one of the best comics based on a game I have ever seen.  It expands on the story and has strong, flashy fight scenes courtesy of UDON’s nearly flawless artwork, in which they have great experience with drawing for Capcom games (the endings in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom and all the graphics for Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix, for example).  Every panel in the Street Fighter comics are rich, colorful, and full of texture and detail.  To see a nice showcase of some of their work, browse UDON's official DeviantArt page.

Like I said though, "nearly flawless."  On occasion characters can look off-model.

Apparently using the Tiger Shot too much shrinks your head.

Street Fighter is truly the fighting game of fighting games, like the Fist of the North Star to shonen.  Once it kicked off the fighting game genre, we got the varied fighting game camps we have today.
If you think this wimpy franchise is badass and action-packed, you’d best be ready for the next post, in which I’ll objectively and completely without bias detail Street Fighter’s rival and SNK’s massive, superior fighting game flagship (because I haven’t gone into detail on it enough already)!

Fighting Game Camps: Introduction

You’ve seen it before: that point in your favorite action game where it’s just you and your enemy.  Your party is gone, there are no monsters around to fight, and you and the villain are on equal ground.  The resulting clash is nothing short of epic as both characters block, parry, dodge, and duel each other to the death in an awesome display of finesse and spectacle.

Now imagine if they made a game solely out of that.  Fighting games are built around those moments, having a variety of colorful characters fight evil and each other in mano-a-mano bouts of spectacular physics-shattering awesomeness.

Every major fighting game franchise has the same game objectives and even similar mechanics to each other, but the finer details in the way the games are played and presented all combine to form very distinctive styles that appeal to very specific kinds of gamers.  They all have their own heroes, villains, stories, art style, and game flow each one builds their games around.  And when so many of these games vary, the fans they pick up are some of the most dedicated you will ever meet.

Those gamers make up what I like to call the fighting game camps.  Every fighting game franchise has one: a community of dedicated fans that have played every game in the franchise to death, memorized every special move, can recite the entire decade-long story by memory, mimic characters in synch with them on the screen, and will probably roar in your face when you challenge them to their game of choice (except for the Mortal Kombat fans, who instead scream “MORTAAAL KOMBAAAT!”).  They’ll play other fighting games and enjoy them, sure, but they have their one franchise that they play three times more than any other.  They are the reason crossover fighting games are made: because that lets fans prove that theirs is better in the most surefire way they can think of.

You can probably single out some members of these camps.  Noah Antweiler is in the Tekken Camp, where nobody lets their opponent hit the ground.  Craig Skitsmas is in the Street Fighter camp, where everyone paces each other, make sure they strike at the right time and think ahead.  Patrick “Debaser” Breeden is in the Mortal Kombat kamp, where hospital trips are frequent, and I myself am in the King of Fighters camp, where everyone thrusts into each other and regularly combust.

They even have their own theme songs.

For this series of articles, join me as I explore each of these duel-centric camps by analyzing each franchise’s aspects and the appeal that comes with them: The story, heroes, villains, visual style, and gameplay, among other things.  For those of you who would like to get involved with one of these franchises, I will also point out which titles in each one I deem to be the best.  Finally, I will point out my characters of choice, as it’s always them that keep the story and play interesting as well as emotionally investing.  I never specialize in a character just because I play well with them; when I play, my opponent should be fighting ME on the screen.

Like looking into a mirror.

Keep in mind that while much of it will serve as a factual introduction to each franchise, Opinions as well as personal observations will be expressed.  I like all these fighting game franchises (they have their camps for a reason), but there are some I favor over others.  Do not let that deter you from loving the ones you do.

There’s a lot to cover, so to start out I’ll be looking at the granddaddy of all fighting game camps: Street Fighter.

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny Review

[Note: this review was originally written in 2011.  Some things stated may be dated by this point in time, but much of it remains true.]

With gaming in one of the lowest states it has ever been in, finding a good Wii game to look forward to has been excruciatingly difficult.  These days, all we get is half-assed, unambitious attempts at making an ordinary game and shovelware made for the blatant purpose of ripping people off.  Gasping for the genuine greatness we used to have in the year 2009, I, yet again, reached out and grabbed a copy of Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny, another recent title to a long-running game franchise that I never played before because game sequels are almost always better.

The Rune Factory series has been described as Harvest Moon with JRPG elements and a fantasy setting.  In fact, the full title of the first Rune Factory was Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, so I can see where that description may have come from.  As for my experience with the Harvest Moon games, I’d read about them in Nintendo Power years ago, but never actually played any because frankly they sounded… well… boring.  A game about running a farm isn’t exactly the kind of thing you’d try to advertize to a man who believes Viewtiul Joe to be the greatest game and anime series ever made, so it seems Natsume opted to take the Sengoku Basara route and added fantasy and action to make something that should be a total bore significantly less boring and more compelling.  With that, we got the Rune Factory games.

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny starts with a boy and girl traveling to the top of an ancient structure.  The boy and girl’s names are Azel and Sonja by default, but I gave the boy my own name (I probably would have given Sonja the name of my girlfriend if I ever had one).  After a brief run-in with some monsters, the girl sings to an altar and the two are transported to Fenith Island; one apparently parallel to a Fenith island they are from.  But unlike their world, which has several arch dragons all over the place, this Fenith Island has only one that the people worship.

But something interesting happened on the way there: Sonja’s soul is inside of Azel’s body.  From there, a journey begins to find out just what the hell happened and to get Sonja’s body back while the two get adjusted to their new home on the new island.  The premise may have tipped you off that anyone who said you can choose to play as a boy or a girl is partially lying.  You can only choose to play as Sonja after you finish the main story and get her body back, so you’re stuck with the boy for the long run.  This wasn’t a problem for me, of course, but the female gamers wanting to give the game a try might be disappointed.

Tides of Destiny’s gameplay essentially consists of 2 halves.  The first is on Fenith Island, the hub the main characters are living on.  It is on Fenith Island where the Harvest Moon-style life simulation takes place.  There, you talk to all the different residents, buy equipment and food for your travels, participate in festivals, and craft/cook various dishes, weapons, and accessories for use on your travels or to give as gifts.

Most of what you do on both Fenith Island and in your travels use up your rune points, and once you’re out of rune points, you instead start using up large chunks of your health until you pass out.  It’s usually not a problem though, as rune points can be replenished with some food or rest, and more often than not your health will run out long before your rune points do in battle, so most of the time it’s a somewhat trivial mechanic.

Fenith Island is somewhat small, but not small enough to be particularly boring, and though you’ll hear characters speak the same lines of dialogue to you each day (like “Good morning.”), you hear enough new dialogue to really get a feel for them, and they’re all likable in some way.  Fenith Island is home to a lot of peaceful, but very well developed characters that you’ll learn to like, provided you aren’t extremely cynical.  They’re happy to help, altruistic, and good-natured.  It’s like what the world would be like if every smoker on the face of the planet burst into flames in unison.

While they’re all generally good people, they have flaws that distinguish them.  Everyone has their own story to tell that you will learn more of the more you talk to them, which will also raise your relationship values.  When you’ve talked to someone enough, you’ll level up their relationship value, they will invite you to do something with them, and accepting their offer will trigger a scripted event in which you learn something about the character, and your relationship reaches the next level (see also: Persona 3).  These events are fun to watch and do a lot for each character’s development, but don’t happen very often.  You need to talk to the people a lot and every in-game day before the relationship events come up, but giving characters things they like (identified through conversation) as gifts or giving gifts for their birthday (also identified through talking) can speed things up a little, as well as just make you feel good about yourself.

It’s the little things that bring each character to life.  The voice acting, for instance, is surprisingly solid considering most of the actors are unknowns.  After Arc Rise Fantasia, I was suspicious of actors who aren’t A-list, but the acting in Tides of Destiny felt genuine and convincing rather than like an actor that was trying too hard.  The voice director must’ve done their job well, as there are only a couple performances I could consider on the borderline of bad, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them people in more roles in the future.

That’s not to say they didn’t get the usual A-listers.  Patrick Seitz voices the main villain and does an incredible job giving him an imposing voice akin to Kingdom Hearts’ Xemnas.

Almost as effective as the voice acting is each character’s expressions.  When talking, large character models of the speakers take up the screen and go through the motions when expressing themselves, with different sound clips and effects (like tears or a sweat drop).  It’s very much like Animal Crossing.  Their expressions are subtle and cute, and there is so much variety in them, with each character having their own set, that I never grew tired of them in the dozens of hours I played of the game.  It’s no L.A. Noire, but it works just about as well.

Quests and holidays in the game only further let you get to know the residents better.  Each one is a nice break from what is otherwise a routine of simply talking to people around the island while you’ve got nothing better to do and killing monsters in the main quest (more on that later).  Festivals include a lantern festival, in which the islanders float lanterns into the sea, a snow festival where everyone helps make a large dragon sculpture out of snow, and even a beauty pageant, where you vote on who the prettiest girl on the island is.  Most of them have some kind of bonus to it that make them worth attending, such as winning a prize or raising a relationship value, which motivates players to participate even more than them already being fun and diverse.  The only thing disappointing about the events is that they never deviate from the core mechanics of the game.  I’d have liked each one to have its own minigame or shift the game’s genre briefly, but everything you do in the festivals is something you do normally, just with a certain set of rules.  I feel there’s more that could have been done.

Fenith Island as a whole feels like a lovely home to chill out in while you’re not at your day job in the other part of the game.  Unfortunately, it is there where Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny falls apart.

The other half of the game after Fenith Island is traversing the open seas with the giant stone golem you get early in the game, fighting monsters on the different locales you visit, and taming them to work for you.  The default name of the golem is Ymir, but I named my golem Mithos, after the legendary hero of Sylvarant.

While at sea, your golem is able to walk around and explore, flip over rocks, and pull islands out of the sea, provided someone gave you the location of one for a quest first.  Moving around the large ocean is slow at first, but early on you’re able to fast forward to a specific destination on an overhead view, which makes traveling long distances far easier and less tedious.  Once you get that option, you’ll likely never go back to the other view, which causes the open sea to lose a sense of its size, but I’ll take any conveniences I can get.  I wish The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker had that option, to be honest.

Your golem is also able to fight.  Sometimes when flipping something over or just by chance, it can run into some sort of giant sea monster, like a giant squid, a giant jellyfish, or Godzilla.  At that point combat becomes a simple game of blocking and punching.  Punch the enemy when there’s an opening, block when they’re about to strike, or see if you can beat them to the punch.  The impact effects for each of your golem’s punches certainly have some “oomph” to them, but you will probably only want to engage in these battles if you have to, and there are only a handful that are required throughout the entire game, so don’t get too used to doing it.  Even if these fights do level up your golem, I was able to beat the final golem fight without too much trouble even after getting through the game and rarely fighting anything with Mithos, which is good because the last thing I need is more grinding, and even with different opponents, every fight feels the same.

When not on the golem, your character engages in ground combat, where he is able to use a variety of weapons; specifically, spears, axes, hammers, staffs, dual-wielding swords, katanas, and one-handed swords.  As you swat down monsters with each one, you level up your ability to use them, making them deal more damage and making you learn moves to use with them.

It’s with the fighting we come to the first major problem with Tides of Destiny: the combat is absolutely awful.  If you want anything dead, you simply mash the A button as your character jerks around with each weapon doing the same canned, awkward animations over and over again until the enemy or you is dead.  There are rune abilities and special attacks to use, but the majority of them are impractical, doing about as much damage as a normal attack and often leaving you open to take a hit.  You’ll only use them in specific situations, usually when you’re surrounded by monsters and you know it will hit more than one of them.

The simplicity of it all might have been forgivable if the game at least put on a good show.  I’ve played button mashers in the past that have been only a bit more complex than this game in terms of combat, like Kingdom Hearts and Sengoku Basara, but in those games, hitting enemies with your different weapons have smooth animations, gratifying physics, firework-like particle effects, and wider varieties of moves (even if some ARE impractical).  In Tides of Destiny, there is no such merit.  The animations are weak and aren’t visually enticing, the only particle and sound effects are wimpy little white slash and impact effects with the same sound effects for each one, and there are no physics or sense of satisfaction.

The combat could’ve been better had there been more variety in the enemy or level design, but the game can’t even pull that off.  You would think that a game focusing heavily of taming monsters would have a strong number of different kinds to keep the player interested.  That’s why Pokemon and Monster Hunter are so popular.  In Rune Factory, there are only a handful of monsters and their color-changed cousins with no difference except for their name, their stats, and occasionally their projectile attack.  That is absolutely pathetic.

What monsters there are can be tamed instead of killed by constantly brushing them with a magic taming brush.  To tame a monster, you simply go up to them and constantly brush them, taking longer and longer to do so as the game goes on.  Once tamed, the monsters can produce something for you in your golem’s barn, like milk or eggs.  They can also farm for you on the four seasonal islands you get as you progress in the story (after you reanimate them with spirits you find on the field) to grow things to sell or use, and have them follow you into battle to fight alongside you.

There's variety, just not enough.

Brushing monsters to tame them isn’t much of a problem at first, but as it takes longer, it becomes frustrating, and not just because it takes far longer than it should.  It’s possible for the monster you’re trying to tame to be killed by your own monsters, which you can’t control directly (All you can do is teleport them to your location), making all the minutes you spent brushing the monster a complete waste of time.  Even more annoying is that since enemies are copy/pasted so often in this game, and there are monster gates everywhere that infinitely spawn them unless destroyed, it’s very easy to lose track of the specific monster you were taming when there are crowds of lookalikes all over the place and you get blindsided while your target runs off.  I like the idea of this simplistic, yet challenging monster taming method, but it’s the little things in the overall design that keep it from being fun.  Eventually it becomes a chore.

In fact, practically the entire game becomes a chore eventually.  The worst offense Tides of Destiny commits is some of the most ungodly padding I have ever had to slog through.  The game took me around 65 hours to get to the last boss (where I promptly rage-quitted for reasons I will get to), but I’d estimate about 40 or more of those hours were spent fighting through the long, tedious, repetitive, monster-filled, multifloored elemental shrines you have to fight your way through (in which the story gives you no indication to do so), with nothing but the same respawning monsters to get in your way through the recycled corridors and environments.  And you can’t just breeze through them either.  The difficulty curve is more of a difficulty stairwell.  Every time you go up a floor, the monsters spike in their strength, requiring you to once again grind your ass off so that you don’t die in 3 hits.  That means every single floor in all 4 of these shrines are far longer than they should be, and with a poorly implemented combat system, you’ll only want to continue on if you promised to do a review of the damn game!

But it’s with the bosses where the BS piles up.  Just like the enemy levels, the bosses in Tides of Destiny are far too strong.  All of them can kill you in 3 or 4 hits easily, even if you’re at a decent level, and that’s almost a guarantee because they often hit consecutively, and you stagger every time.  The only way I found to beat the bosses was to fight them over and over, memorize their patterns, and then create a hit and run tactic that shaved their obscenely long health bars a little bit at a time.  It is no exaggeration when I say that it took me at least 30 minutes to an hour to beat each of these bosses after bringing along dozens of health potions, plenty of food, and my strongest monsters, leaving with almost nothing left.  And that’s not even counting the dozens and dozens of times I had to start over after the bosses landed a lucky shot!  These are some of the most broken bosses I have ever fought and they are far more of a chore than fun, which is just wrong, because bosses are usually the highlight of any game I play!

Not to mention there's something unoriginal about their designs.

It got so bad, I couldn't even beat the game.  At a certain point of the final boss fight, the hit and run tactics are ultimately useless, and no matter how much I ate, no matter how much I leveled up, it was unbeatable.  I'm not going to make myself suffer just because a game has crappy combat.

All of that combined with the graphics and music suggests that Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny didn’t have nearly enough time, money, and effort to make a good game.  The graphics are decent aesthetically, but technically it looks little better than a PS2 game.  Like I said, the animations are jerky, pixilation can be easy to spot, and the environments painfully lack variety.  The soundtrack is also extremely limited, with maybe barely a dozen or so tracks in the entire game, none of which are very memorable (though admittedly, even after all those hours, the music never got on my nerves).

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny is comparable to the critically panned Alpha Protocol.  One half of the game is really well done, with great characters, a variety of activities, and fun gameplay mechanics, but the core of the game is so half-assed, badly done, and thoroughly unpolished, that most players will not want to suffer through it.  Maybe fans of the Rune Factory series are used to this and will be able to suffer through it, but I don’t think it’s worth it, especially at 40 dollars.  It has far more low points than high points.  It’s not an awful game, but it’s not up to our current generation standards.  Had this game been on the 3DS, it may have been at least passable as an on-the-go time waster, but on the Wii, we expect better than this and have better games to play.  I give Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny a 5.5 out of 10.