roadrunnertwice | Didread: Query, Big Questions, 4000 Weeks, Ys 3

Hello, it's yet another mixed post of things I read and/or played.

Zilla Novikov — Query

July 24, 2023

A short and surreal experimental novel about work, isolation, making friends as an adult, the ongoing collapse of our habitat, and the meaning and value of fiction.

B and Chase recommended this, and I think it's like three or four bucks on the author's itch.io page. I quite liked it.

Anders Nilsen — Big Questions (comics)

April 9, 2024

I’d read some of this before, and saw the collected edition on my sister’s shelf when we visited her this spring.

My previous experience of this story was with its fragmentary form, ominous and apocalyptic minicomics recommended by the guy down at the shop and read twice through in the same afternoon. The art is spare and clear, knife-thin architect lines lit by a merciless, omnipresent sun. Small birds do philosophy, have fights, worry and suffer. A bomb falls from the sky. A man falls from the sky.

Anyway, the menacing vibes are still pretty unparalleled. Does it hold together as a story? Wrong question.

Oliver Burkeman — 4000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

Aug. 21, 2023

This is more interesting for its provocations than its conclusions. I don't know that I would recommend it per se, but I did get some things out of it.

Bonus Level — Ys: The Oath in Felghana

Aug. 28, 2023

Continuing to investigate the Ys series. This is apparently the currently-canonical version of Ys III; it's the 2005 (?) reboot that does the same story as the 1989 sidescrolling RPG, but with a very of-its-time sprites-on-polygons top-down style apparently based on the Ys VI tech. (And, possibly the sprites were derived from 3D renders, in the style of Donkey Kong Country? I couldn't tell for sure, but they have that vibe.)

The story is forgettable, the love interest of the week is forgettable, and I have in fact mostly forgotten both. The gameplay is somewhat interesting! (I'm playing these old games in the first place because they're just enough off the main line of action RPG evolution to offer provocative ideas, and they're high enough quality to make meaningful arguments in favor of their choices.)

Like with Ys I and II, I think the key watchword here is "momentum." Bump combat is gone from the mix; instead you've got an attack button with an auto-combo, a very bouncy jump that mixes up your auto-combo options and puts you toe-to-toe with flying mooks, and about four ranged and melee magic attacks (which double as your traversal tools, a design trick I'm always down for). You're basically mashing for all you're worth, and using the jump like it's a dodge button. So any given encounter is pretty stupid! IMO the interesting part comes from the pickups and the streaks they enable. Enemies are piñatas and drop a party mix of treats that enhance your attack, defense, speed, magic power, magic recovery rate, etc.; the enhancements stack, but they're on a timer and run out unless you can top back up in time. Also, you mostly don't get to carry on-demand healing items, so you have to restore your HP from enemy drops as well. So, much like in the bump combat games, you're trying to move really fast and take out waves of enemies really efficiently without fucking up and dropping your streak (or getting greedy and taking too many hits), and field combat becomes more like a flow-state routing and optimizing practice than like a contest against challenging opponents.

Also in the tradition of Ys I and II, many of the bosses were just astoundingly bullshit.

I think the upshot is about the same as it was last time: I recommend this conditionally, if you're someone who's really interested in how action RPGs work (and how they might have worked instead, if things had gone differently). It's an old, weird, imperfect game, and you shouldn't hesitate to use a faq. I enjoyed it, tho.