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Spectrobes: Origins
Wii
Monster Battle: Devolved
2/5 stars
“Spectrobes Origins” is the third entry in the Disney-published ‘Spectrobes’ series that started on the DS and is the only entry in that series to appear outside of that handheld. Going into “Spectrobes Origins,” I knew nothing of the series and only decided to pick up the Wii game based on recommendations by random people on the Internet who said it was a solid RPG. Since I love RPGs and have had a difficult time finding any in the 7th Generation (and having an even more difficult time finding any that are good), I decided to take these recommendations at face value. That was a mistake, and I should have remembered the lesson I learned waaay back in 1996 with “Persona” on the PS1: Just because something says ‘RPG’ on the box doesn’t mean it will be good.
Presentation
“Spectrobes Origins” gives every indication of being based on a cheesy shonen anime series, featuring big-eyed teenagers with spiky and/or pastel-colored hair and cat-like pupils. It also gives every indication of being a knock-off of “Pokemon,” giving the player the opportunity to collect a variety of creatures that start out ‘cute’ but can be evolved into fearsome monstrosities. As such, the character designs are very anime-esque and the titular spectrobe creatures could be easily mistaken for Pokemon, Digimon, Duel Monsters, etc.
The graphics engine in “Spectrobes Origins” is fully polygonal, but not implemented particularly well for the Wii’s limited resources. There are a lot of visible jaggies despite the fact that the environments are small, bland, and simplistic.
The soundtrack in “Spectrobes Origins” doesn’t help to redeem the game in any way, as it features mostly a variety of unmelodic hard rock noise when it’s not receding completely into the background. The voiceacting is the high point in the game’s presentation due to the fact that it features recognizable anime voice actors, including Wendee Lee (who has been in every anime ever made… that is only a slight exaggeration).
Story
Our heroes, Rallen – an overly-energetic teenage boy of dubious intelligence (who loves to yell his untranslated catch-phrase, iku ze, in an apparent attempt to appeal to weeaboos) – and Jeena – a naggy teenage girl with a large amount of technological genius – are junior members of the Nanairo Planetary Patrol, which protects the Nanairo solar system from an alien menace known as the Krawl, which are manipulated by a shadowy figure known only as Krux. The Krawl are terrifying, amorphous creatures that can assimilate non-living material to take on its qualities and increase their own power. The only counter (apparently) to the Krawl are collectable pet monsters called spectrobes, which can be found preserved as fossils all over the universe. Only a Spectrobe Master (which Rallen and Jeena conveniently are) can revive a fossilized spectrobe and lead it into battle.
On a routine patrol, Rallen and Jeena find themselves dragged through a wormhole to an uncharted solar system where none of their existing spectrobe-related technology functions. After responding to a distress signal, the duo lands their ship on the nearby planet, Wyterra, where they meet an old man who explains that this solar system last had a Spectrobe Master 30 years ago, who conveniently left behind all of his stuff… scattered across 6 planets.
As they chase the old Spectrobe Master’s tail, Rallen and Jeena soon stumble upon a strangely-glowing fossil of a giant spectrobe, which turns out to be one of 5 shards of the Ultimate Form Spectrobe that defeated the Krawl in ancient legends. The fact that the shards of the Ultimate Form are glowing apparently means it is ready to awaken once again, thus Rallen and Jeena are set to the task of collecting the 5 shards, since they’re traveling from planet-to-planet anyway.
Despite the fact that “Spectrobes Origins” has the word ‘origins’ in the title, the game is not a prequel, but actually takes place in direct sequence after the two DS games. Thus the game seems to expect a lot of carry-over knowledge of the ‘Spectrobes’ universe, as the character development and amount of provided background information are incredibly thin. The ‘origins’ in the title refers instead to the origins of the Krawl menace, which apparently started in the uncharted system in which the game takes place. It also refers to the origins of the villainous Krux, which is the only detailed portion of the game’s narrative. And the game’s narrative isn’t particularly original or interesting, but instead formulaic and predictable. In fact, the only unpredictable plot twist in the game comes thanks to a non-sequitur that would require detailed knowledge of the previous ‘Spectrobes’ games to even fathom.
And it’s not just the game’s narrative that is poor, but the game’s attempts at world-building fall into the same trap as so many other sci-fi RPGs that take place across a variety of planets: The planets feel tiny. Instead of traversing huge, open areas with large numbers of interesting things to see and secrets to discover, each planet in “Spectrobes Origins” consists of between 2 and 6 screens worth of stuff, mostly packed into narrow paths. While 5 of the 6 planets also contain ‘Zelda’-like dungeons to explore, these are linear and do little to add a feeling of expansiveness to the planets. This kind of small-scale design makes space exploration seem really boring. Does each alien world only feature ONE worthwhile place to land a ship and look around?
Gameplay
While none of the other aspects of “Spectrobes Origins” are exactly stellar, the gameplay – the most important aspect – is the worst.
It’s not entirely bad, though, as spectrobe fossil excavation plays-out via a well-designed mini-game that makes great use of the Wii’s motion controls. Using the Wiimote + Nunchuck (the only supported control scheme), the player can use an X-ray machine, laser, drill, compressed air, explosives, and a hammer to chip-away at a block of stone (called a ‘pod’) containing a fossil. The results of this mini-game are determined by speed of excavation and the amount of damage dealt to the fossil contained in the pod, providing increased levels for spectrobes that are excavated with a high degree of skill. The only real problem with this mini-game is that there are also random minerals that can be found in pods, and there’s no way to tell if a pod contains an undiscovered spectrobe type (pods containing previously-excavated spectrobe types are named appropriately) or a mineral. Considering that minerals are practically useless and there’s no way to exit the excavation mini-game once it has started, there are a lot of opportunities for tedium to creep-in, as a single excavation rarely takes less than 45 seconds. With an inventory full of ‘Mystery Pods,’ it can take upwards of a half-hour of real time just to excavate all of them, which is a complete waste of time if they all contain minerals!
The battle system is where “Spectrobes Origins” completely falls apart. While the back of the game’s box describes the gameplay as ‘monster battle, evolved,’ this statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Unlike other monster battle games, “Spectrobes Origins” is an action RPG with real time combat. Also unlike other monster battle games, Rallen or Jeena must fight alongside their team of 6 spectrobes. One spectrobe can be active at a time and is mostly controlled by AI, which frequently causes the spectrobe to act ineffectually and do stupid things, like walk right into devastating boss attacks. The player’s chosen character can give basic commands to the active spectrobe by waving the Wiimote: A vertical wave tells the spectrobe to ‘go’ and attack the current target, while a horizontal wave tells the spectrobe to ‘come back’ and stand by the player’s character. Each spectrobe has one regular attack that it performs normally and one strong attack that it performs against a target that has been knocked down. As they gain levels, spectrobes also gain access to a special attack that can be executed with the B button as long as the special attack meter is full, and a passive ability that has some effect on the spectrobe’s and character’s stats. Holding Z and pressing sideways on the d-pad allows the player to switch the active spectrobe, which can be crucial due to the circle of elemental weaknesses/strengths that allows fire to dominate plant to dominate ground to dominate sky to dominate water to dominate fire. If all of the spectrobes are defeated, the game doesn’t end, but Rallen and Jeena take double the damage.
Rallen and Jeena are controlled directly with the analog stick, with the A button performing different attacks depending in the character’s equipped weapon. Out of the weapon types, swords are great, lances are too slow to be useful, axes are slow but can’t be interrupted mid-swing and pierce armor, gloves are weak and have short range, and guns barely deal any damage. About 1/3 of the way through the game, the characters gain access to shields, which can be used to block attacks by holding the Wiimote and Nunchuck vertically, but aren’t particularly responsive or useful, since it is usually the spectrobes taking a beating and not the characters.
“Spectrobes Origins” supports 2-player local co-op, with player 1 controlling the chosen character and player 2 controlling the active spectrobe. Since the spectrobe AI is so dumb and giving them commands is so imprecise, I have a sneaking suspicion that the game was designed with the idea that 2 players are a requirement more than an option.
Since enemy encounters just pop-up out of the ground with no battle transition, the same camera controls apply to both exploration and battle, with the left and right directions on the d-pad controlling side-to-side motion and the down direction recentering the camera behind the character. Up on the d-pad allows the character and spectrobe to lock-onto a target, which is of limited use against normal enemies, and frustrating to use against bosses (but necessary) due to the fact that they all have multiple lock-on points that flicker constantly as the boss moves around. Holding the C button on the Nunchuck and pointing the Wiimote at the screen allows the player to manually target an area for the spectrobe to attack, but this only creates a soft-lock, allowing the spectrobe to perform a single attack before the player must lock-on again… but this feature is so finicky and difficult to use that I completely ignored it.
While Rallen and Jeena can eat rice balls in battle (by pressing 1 on the Wiimote) to restore their health, the only way to restore spectrobes’ health (outside of save points) is to collect little blue orbs that occasionally drop from enemies. These blue orbs barely restore any health and may as well not even exist. The rice balls for the characters must be found in exploration mode, since “Spectrobes Origins” shockingly doesn’t feature any kind of monetary system. There is no way to save up credits, or some such, to buy items, but instead all items must be found by unevolved ‘child form’ spectrobes that follow Rallen and Jeena around outside of battle. By using the same Wiimote commands as in battle, the characters can tell child spectrobes to ‘go’ search a sparkly patch of dirt to uncover an item, be it a rice ball, mineral, or pod. Having to search for items can be extremely tedious, especially because most of the items found (minerals) can only be used to give tiny amounts of experience to spectrobes outside of battle.
In fact, level balance is one of the worst flaws in “Spectrobes Origins.” Since Rallen and Jeena share experience and one of them is always active in battle, they get credit for every enemy slain. The spectrobes, on the other hand, only get credit for enemies slain while they are active. Thus the characters can easily fly ahead of their spectrobes by 10, 20, 30+ levels if the player doesn’t stop to grind. Minerals don’t provide nearly enough experience to keep spectrobes on-par with the characters, and battling is so tedious that it’s often more sensible to just re-excavate and re-evolve the same team of spectrobes from scratch, since Rallen’s/Jeena’s level affects the level of excavated fossils. This leveling discrepancy becomes especially apparent near the end of the game where a massive difficulty spike makes it impossible to progress without completely rebuilding the team or grinding for 30 hours (which is unacceptable in what would otherwise be a 25 hour game!).
Overall
“Spectrobes Origins” is thoroughly unimpressive in every way. While the story and character designs might appeal to gamers in the 10-15 age group, the flaky battle system and tedious item-gathering only serve to shrink the audience that might find the game engaging. Rabid fans of the two DS ‘Spectrobes’ games may find “Spectrobes Origins” to be a worthwhile experience, but everyone else should avoid it.
Presentation: 3/5
Story: 2/5
Gameplay: 1.5/5
Overall (not an average): 2/5
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