Being Saleh: A Space For The Undaunted Future and Things To Come and Why oh Why I don't Blog Often? (A Space For The Unbound review)

There seemed to be a lot riding on A Space For The unbound (ASFTU), a narrative driven game seven years in the making from Indonesian Studio Mojiken, the wave started about three/two years ago when they're announcing "a game with a Indonesian 90s setting" (or more precise: A game with Indonesian 90s high school scenes, which means no greatest sin of mankind a.k.a cellphone yet) they had a demo on Steam so I played it, one year later after two days of playing the full game I sat and write this post because I deemed that game is worth enough reviving this blog (and changed the font).

Dun dun dun dun

I'm not familiar with Indonesian indie games scene, as a matter of fact the announced ASFTU is the one thing intriguing me enough to search around about them (growing in 90s and stuffs) and bumped me with Coffee Talk (another slice of life retro graphic game set on a fantasy futuristic town) published by Toge Productions who has been around since some eleven years ago which means I've been under the rock enough for not noticing them... Anyway so after playing Coffee Talk enough to see the 'weird' creativity of this game I put ASTFU on my wishlist because being an Indonesian but spent so much time playing MMORPGs with people of the world make me a little... homesick, mind you I retired from the local's MMORPGs scene because of it's notorious toxicity (No I'm not talking about Genshin Impact, I'm talking way way further back when I grind those 1909145732896543 Ketra orc's heads), Coffee talk: a little game that only span 6 hours or so is weirdly powerful on writing and narrating, it's basically a compilation of short stories, a GOOD compilation of short stories.

Anyway back to ASFTU this game is a visual novel at heart but with some side scrolling adventure game type and some mild puzzle-solving, there's also elements of Quick Time Event (QTE), For me these elements can be a hindrace sometimes, I know they're trying to spice things up (and testing some engine) and most of the puzzle are easily solved but trying to get a door combination in later game with little hints and lots of numbers can be a little frustrating because sometimes it broke the immersion of the narrative, if there's a paid DLC button to skip all the puzzles I'll gladly bought it. The game design was breathtakingly nostalgic, with some of the house and generic 90s school visual design, soothing music followed by familiar environmental sound, and the NPCs are just as bizzare and quirky as I expected too, in short the whole visual and sound design is a warm welcome for my soul, almost like a sweet, smooth therapy session (uh no, I'm not talking about weeds)

The story: Atma and Raya is a childhood sweetheart couple, fall in love in high school, unsure of their future, planned to ran away together, creating a list of what to do before they finish high school and so and so but plot twist: they both have superpowers, Atma can dive into other people's heart (dubbed spacedive, later crossdive) while Raya can manipulate reality to some extent (and require some price), in their last days of high school there's a crisis looming in the horizon and they both are in the center of it. WARNING: If you could read the fine print at the game description you might realized that the story dealt with mostly negative emotion, Raya and Atma's power are tied to their psyche and the story unfolded as their powers and hearts grow, you'll mostly control Atma so the story was presented in his point of view to reserve some of the clever twist of it, not to spoil anything: This is a sad game, and some scene can make you a tad bit uncomfortable, some of the expected seriousness is one of the fine point of why I bought the game, it's brave and Mojiken presenting such a story without gerrymandering it is an achievement to itself. Psych disorder is not something to be taking lightly of, and sometimes it requires professional help. I Also  played the game with Bahasa as language and I can see some of the English statements, jokes, curses and proverb are somewhat translated as is which is a bit... weird? Indonesian don't told others to go hide on their mother's skirt, they told them to shut up and die while swinging things (HALAH BACOT), they got better at the end where the narrative is heavy and pack some great impact.

Although The pace of the game is uneven (sometimes it's like a speeding truck crashing every wall and in some chapters slowed down to a crawl) but Mojiken also did well blending it to the game design, the visual novel take make a really compelling case of secrets and hidden objects hide and seek minigame, it's fun and well placed, there's a side quests where you must collect bubble gum wrappers with the letters which ultimately form the words "YOMAN" which is a reference to a 90s local bubble gum promotion where my brothers and I hunted the word S of YOSAN bubble gum (we never found it, and we suspect it was never even made hahaha) plot twist: THEY'RE STILL EXISTED!!! anyway as promised the world of ASFTU is jam-packed with 80s and 90s nostalgia, furthermore: even some of Mojiken's previous game character is act as a secret puzzle. Pet all the cats, the dogs, the... other animals... just go wild with those interaction bubbles. The game also loaded with references to other pop culture such as the "Cobra Kai"show and "Kung-Fu Boy a.k.a Tekken Chinmi" comic book which is a huge hit here in their 90s day, and you want to know the price of one bowl of noodle in the 90s? yes, it's also (slightly) accurate, on story side: you can see the influence of other 'existential' video game, movies, and anime in ASFTU, from "Nier Automata" to "Neon Genesis Evangelion" it's not just the show, the music of ASFTU also show slight references to it, I also think this entire game's music deserved a separate recognition of their own (the penultimate song was A++). I'm not a musician but I know a good tune when I heard it, especially one of these weeks FFXIV and Tales Of Arise music's was the only thing I heard every day.

yes atma, Woah indeed

 

Also it's probably one of the free-bug game i was ever played, if there's any it was never triggered or occured, anyway technical thing aside: Mojiken Studio as developers and Toge Production as publisher is probably a big time winner in a little corner of this country's emerging (or stagnating? Or even declining? Told you I'm not familiar with this scene) game storytelling and marketing scene and deserved every praise because of it, ASFTU ticks all the right thing, brought a full course meal to a small community while still hold a bigger and finer standard, although the theme was dark and dealing with delicate social issues this game succesfully navigating those issue with care and gentle handling, (down to their New year Poster which score a high points from me). But I'm not a point guy, I'm just an old player, I had my share of suspicious glance, self-destructing, and a bunch of unanswered phone, text, and emails. I enjoyed ASFTU wholly, even with their frustrating door combination puzzle (Thank God there's no mandatory jumping puzzle or I might throw out this game immediately) I believe this game can be something more, but it was also up to their devs (and publisher), and other devs and publisher, and also other people involved in this industry, when you finished this game and tried to contemplating the relatable elements of it you'll met with the fact that this one game took seven years to make, that alone can be a consideration for anyone involved (or anyone who wants to be involved), I'm expecting great things from this scene but for some illogical... reason even great things can be a mere dust in the wind when it failed to capture hearts, but I also believe great things also come from little things. Anyway as Atma's said (as cheesy as he can be) the perfect world is the imperfect one (which is obvious) I really don't dig him but I like it.

Spoiler: This is what you got after petting all the cats in the game!!

Being Saleh: No More Corpse Run

When I logged on yesterday there's one thing that surprise me, apparently in the latest patch Anet decided that Corpse Run (rezzing in the waypoint when defeated in a dungeon) was not working as intended so they changed it so that all of your party must be out of combat (or wiped) before you can ress yourselves on the waypoints

Later on my surprise become a thought as I stared at my character lay defeated on the dungeon floor, just lying there waiting someone in my party which kiting subject alpha all around, rezzing someone on Subject Alpha is 89% suicide, because of all the dragon tooth and ice stuffs, no place is safe when encountering Subject Alpha, previously I can rezz on the waypoint and get back quickly to rejoin the fight, but now? I'm just staring at my screen, feeling useless, defeated has become a punishment

I'm not a dungeon crawler although I love them dungeons, since the beta I have seen how dungeon works: you're defeated, nothing is lost, just rezz on the nearest waypoint, "go back and rejoin the fray", a line I used to tell dungeon newcomers to encourage them that defeated is not a punishment, it's just costly, and the journey back is it's own challenge. But now it seems like Anet has changed the basic rules, and I didn't see the benefit of it, now I don't know how many PUG starters got scolded because half of the party has to stop their DPS and ress them in risk to get defeated themselves.

"It's okay to die" rule has become "don't die" rule, and I expect nothing good will came of it, unless dungeon is now intended to the elites and not casuals

The End Of Guild Wars 2...

No it's not a doomsday post, and yes I haven't been writing for like 3 months because I was grinding learning dungeons with my guildmates, and I haven't been much online this month because of works, and why the hell I used such a provocative title? I really have no idea, I like subject alpha though :D

Break Yourself Upon my BODYYYYYY!!!

 I have to redact my last post, dungeons on guild wars 2 CAN be learned (Sorrow Embrace was a gamebreaking bug) but even when you learned all the tricks there will be surprises, some months earlier Anet added new dynamic events such as the troll events on Ascalonian Catacombs that will fight with some dungeon bosses, cut out our work for us, and now you'll get some amount of token, gems, gold, or karmas from every bosses, makes the journey from the first to the last bosses is worth a while, it also makes story mode is rewarding, so every time you guide some of the newcomer there, you'll get your own reward and it won't be an entirely carrying.

Guild Wars 2 has been a great journey, ArenaNet hosted two major event and a 'love it or hate it' otherwise forgettable Karka Event (including a forgettable new area, and the it's-raining-free-precursors one time event) in two months, Halloween and Wintersday Event are huge festivities, I even enjoyed some of the jumping puzzle. I also enjoyed the vertical challenge of Fractals of the Mists, a new tiered dungeon system.

January is probably a bug fixing month from Anet, they fixed some gamebreaking huge bugs, some dungeon exploits, and even they announced to fix Fractal disconnect doom party pooper....

R.I.P: Titan's Grip, bug fixed

My guild has been on the roll, but even some of them aren't immune to the six-month-blues where there aren't enough content to whet their appetite, the World vs World vs World will started anew since now free server transfer is no more available and guesting will be live in several days (finally). There are talks that they'll add guild missions (more finally)

There's still a lot to come from Guild Wars 2, I really hope they won't be made some grievous error on Karka Event though, good idea, bad implementation, at least it was a honeymoon for some Legendary chaser though :))

Being Saleh: Dungeoneering, Part 2

Dungeons never got into my nerve, never, even Heroic on full blown WOW Cataclysm before nerf never once got me into the heat, this was before Explorable Mode Dungeon Guild Wars 2 came.

Sorrow's Embrace

I never ever lose my temper during the death on dungeon, even at a full wipe on a bad PUG groups, but Sorrow's Embrace Explorable mode is a death trap, an impossibly fast button mashing that can turn your fingers into jelly and irritate your eyes (at last that what happens to me when I ran it).

I first taste the explorable mode with guildies on a beautiful saturday afternoon, It was eventful but not too bad of an experience, so we're coming back with a different path on last night (Explorable Mode Dungeon has at least three different path to follow) and boy, what a surprise

The first path is bugged, but even without the bug the mobs are impossibly hardened that it caused us to run back and forth (means dead and teleported thorugh the waypoint for like thirty five times), the trash mobs are like tanks, and they hit with unblockable AOE attacks, it takes us like ten minutes just to clear one heap of them (which only five mobs, yep FIVE little runts), after one hour: exhausted and finally recognized the bugs we took another path, the one I'm slightly familiar with it

Surprise: They've been buffed, sure the trash mobs are still like butters but the bosses are extremely aggresive now since the last time. Their attacks are somewhat the same but they're more often now, and combined the fact that they have tons of HP wasn't really any help.

I lost my temper, really, I literally swear repeatedly on Raidcall, I can spend two hours with 35 gold repair bill on WoW Un-nerfed Cata Heroics (even Troll Heroics, yep Jin'do the PUGbreaker) but I still wonder why I quickly lost interest on Guild Wars 2 Explorable modes (even with my own guildies) and it didn't help my interest to make a complete set of a dungeon set, what do you mean people ran this over and over again? Are they borderline masochist? I WAS a borderline masochist for staying through a two hours failed PUG run on one of the hardest dungeon ever created on WoW and I feel fine but this... this... explorable mode thing is... almost a mental devastation for me and it's extremely exhausting, unenjoyable experience.

Maybe I'm not really there yet, maybe I'm just lack of madz skillz, still have to go through the 'learn ur class noobz', maybe I'm still just an ordinary b*tching casual who didn't deserve my Sorrow Embrace Pauldrons, but here's the thing: Guild Wars 2 have every element I love, even the PVP, and crafting, but I personally like dungeons from my past MMOs, and it's just a huge turn off to see that the dungeons are every single bit an.... utter disappointment

Yes, I'm basically saying Explorable Mode Dungeons (especially Sorrow's Embrace) are too hard, nerf it Anet or maybe you can modified it in some sort that it can be at least slightly enjoyable

PS: I do want to try another dungeon paths to see if it is the same, but as the rumor I heard that Sorrow's Embrace is the easiest of them all, I'm not really optimistic about the other

Being Saleh: Dungeoneering, Part 1

I've sharpened my swords, readying my scepter, polishing my staff, but to be honest I think nothing can prepare you on the first run on Guild Wars 2 dungeons, below I put on some words of my (cursing) time with them :D

The Hell and Heaven Runs on Story Mode

Welcome to Ascalonian Catacombs, where every Ascalonian dead elite fighters are still thinking that they're alive and everything that walks in two legs are charrs, AC is the lvl 30 dungeon located in Plain of Ashford, Charr's starting area, this is my first dungeon, tried the story mode a week after Guild Wars 2 release (still a cute lvl 27 at that time) but it's apparently bugged so we tried again on the next week.

The mobs are all ghosts, and they're nasty, when you have a party on minimal level prepare to die a lot, but as I told you before: dying is a requirement for Guild Wars 2. So we have nasty mesmers that confuses us, elementalists that rain down destruction from above, and some nasty archers that trapped and one shotted us. After several hours tried to clear the story mode we realized something else: our repair bills exhausted our pocket, we cleared it though.

A week later we tried the level 40 dungeons, the Caudecus Manor, located in Queensdale, humans are the denizens on this dungeon, regular bandits and regular difficulty, I was kinda surprised how CM is completed in only 20 mins rather than AC (which took us two whole hours), I've heard they fixed the diificulty (buffed it through the roof) on the latest patch, I haven't tried it again.

Since I was at max level now (I didn't even pay attention when I leveled up) so I've been running some more dungeon, Twilight Arbor is a nasty place with a lot of poisonous mobs, Sorrow Embrace is an exhausting place since it's a big dwarf city, Citadel of Flames are... well... fiery, and at Honor of The Waves the difficulty are plunging down again, in fact SE and COF final bosses doesn't require you to have some madz skillz, it's more like “stay away from the fire” kind of fight combined with using environments so the boss will somewhat hurt themselves (or taking a heavy damage from a tool) while we laugh in a safe distance, pretty easy, but the journey to that easiness is effectively hellish.

And yes, this is on story mode only, means you run it not for the rewards but simply an optional story, no loot table on bosses but they do awards you with some nice hat according to your class first time you complete it, which in my case: go straightforwad into the mystic forge just because I don't like the shape of it on my head when I wear it (most of the full-cap light armors hide charr horns, making me look like a superdeformed dolphin with fangs)

After The Runs

I sometimes think that the devs are experimenting with dungeons, there's a couple of interesting fight in there with mobs that have special abilities, but it's usually hard, and lots of dodging are required, on the other hand we have some boring standing generic bosses which are easier. The Dynamic Events (yes there are events in dungeon) are somewhat catchy but it requires awareness that you don't drag mobs from the events into another pack, the “pull it apart” strategy are common, it's more like crowd controlling but in a shorter time, one regular dungeon monster is enough to wipe you and they mostly did it.

There are lots of... 'unbalanced'.... difficulty on bosses, for example the first boss on COF is the most sadistic of all from my experience, try fighting a hard hitting whirlwind-ing boss while face a sentient invulnerable weapon of his (which also creates a whirlwind of fire), while the last boss of COF can even be faced naked, yes, naked, with no penalty since everything is coming down to you hitting him with a boulder he rolled at you and burn everything on him when he's stunned, after that it's just rinse, and repeat, also: you can't die on him since there's an invulnerability bubble erected from an NPC, so one of your party member can chill out while everyone tried to hit the boss's face, and the waypoint is right outside the room, so when you died and return you can still continue where you left off because one of your friends is bubbling and the boss will never reset while he's still there

I can't even suggest the devs to add/fix something from the dungeon, because it have so much extreme ups and downs on difficulties, but overall until this day I still think along the lines of “dungeons 'r hard”. For me Guild Wars 2 dungeons seems of a sort of punishment for me because of my usual facerolling on WOW Twilight Dungeons

I liked story dungeons, I do, but I probably won't repeat it unless I'm helping someone runs it, the story mode is not even the true dungeon, the real one is the Explorable mode when you face harder enemies and acquiring phat lootz. If the easy mode is not... well easy (for me and some guildmates of course) I think I need more time to try the Explorable Modes (like next month). I do want the Twilight Arbor's Greatsword =))

UPDATE: I finally managed ran two Sorrow's Embrace explorable mode on the last three days, next post is just up there