Engrossing experience

Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers
Nintendo Switch

TIME TRAVEL is a tricky concept to incorporate, whether in the gameplay or in the story of any given videogame. It requires from the developer a not insignificant attention to detail, lest the vagaries encountered in its implementation be lost in translation and its net result wind up being much less than the value of its parts. Thankfully, Nippon Ichi Software has it down pat in Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers. In fact, it’s the engine that drives the Japanese role-playing game as nine-year-old Sherry, her friend Pegreo, and a robot named Isaac designed by her father to protect her strive to uncover the mysteries behind the literal loss of time in the town of Clocknee.

The plot of Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers may sound simple, but NIS takes pains to unfold it via a lengthy exposition at the outset. Which is all well and good, as the narrative proves rich enough to keep gamers engaged despite the absence of any voice acting and its consequent reliance on text. And it certainly establishes the premises that compel Sherry and Company to find out why the turn of the millennium has stopped time, why only a few aren’t affected, and why machines have apparently risen in revolt.

Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers takes its sweet time to get going, no doubt in keeping with its desire to pull in the younger set. Indeed, its design and programming choices all point to a preferential option for gamers just starting out in a genre normally predisposed to entertain — and embrace — complexity. A lot of handholding and explaining is done even for the interface, so much so that when the action finally gets going, everything becomes easy and practically second nature. Meanwhile, events unfold quickly and progress in a linear manner; there are plenty of areas to explore and non-playable characters to interact with, but at no instance does it convey the feeling of directionless movement familiar to JRPG habitues.

Creditably, Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers has no pretensions. To the contrary, its intentions are quite clear; from its choice of protagonists to its pleasing visuals to its simple mechanics to its relatively low degree of difficulty, it aims to attract gamers with neither the patience nor the desire to stay engaged any longer than necessary. Even preparations for enemy engagements are presented sans any hassle; for instance, upgrading Isaac — a requisite for success given its capacity to perform multiple functions in combat and in light of its death being the only way for the game to end abruptly — is a breeze.

The turn-based battles in Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers are straightforward, with three choice members of the party able to use whatever physical and magical skills they have to overcome the opposition. By default, Isaac in its multiple forms will carry the day, but the presence of Sherry, Pegreo, Truth, and Altana (after visits to the past and future, respectively) does provide variety and keep interest from waning. And if there’s any negative in this regard, it’s that supposedly random encounters occur far too often for comfort.

Certainly, Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers benefits from NIS veteran Toshihiko Toda’s taut direction to present its veritable ode to JRPGs in the 1990s. In striving to appeal to its target demographics, it also purposely avoids the distinctive style that marks the publisher’s vast library of titles; instead, art director Yu Inaba makes use of a limited color palette to highlight its high-contrast anime aesthetic in a three-dimensional milieu. Moreover, it relies on the confident compositions of The Longest Five Minutes’ Yukinari Irumagawa to set the mood. And it delivers from a technical standpoint outside of occasional skips during cutscenes; while it shows superior graphics and sounds with the Nintendo Switch docked, it does run at a steady 30 frames per second on the go.

In sum, Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers does exactly what it has set out to accomplish: provide an engrossing experience that serves as a viable introduction to JRPGs. Newcomers could do much, much worse than the 20-odd hours of stress-free gaming it offers.

THE GOOD:

• Pleasing visuals and sounds

• Well-explained storyline

• Easy-to-digest interface and mechanics

THE BAD:

• Too many random battles

• No voice acting

• Relatively short and easy

• Targets gamers new to JRPGs

RATING: 7.5/10

POSTSCRIPT: As hard as it may be for gamers to wrap their heads around, Ubisoft’s Far Cry New Dawn is a direct sequel to the eminently enjoyable Far Cry 5. Never mind that it strays from most of the serious themes the previous installment’s dramatic narrative tackled. Sporting a more colorful look and design, it boasts of a far wackier feel — so much so that it comes across, and wrongly, as a spin-off. It doesn’t barrage players with a nitty-gritty storyline; instead, it doubles down on what made the series fun in the first place — its ridiculous tone and the vibrant world it presents and represents. And whether or not it takes a step back depends on the perspective of those who lost themselves in the plot of its predecessor, never mind its reliance on a familiar formula lurking just beneath its fresh coat of paint.

Far Cry New Dawn is an open-world adventure shooter that takes place 17 years after the events of Far Cry 5. While set in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Hope County, Montana, it lets gamers loose not in a broken world similar to that in, say, the Fallout franchise, but, rather, in one holding the promise of recovery. Animals and plant life are starting to return, with pockets of human life banding together to survive the nuclear fallout. The objective is simple enough: find and tap resources — including human resources — to take the measure of The Highwaymen, bandits organized and led by twin sisters Mickey and Lou. Needless to say, the endeavor involves no small measure of exploration on foot or through the use of vehicles, and features much of the same old, same old to which fans of the series have long become familiar: doing specific missions, shooting bad guys, crafting weapons, and so on and so forth.

That said, Far Cry New Dawn dares to inject its uniqueness. Compared to Far Cry 5, there’s a definite shift in its tone and scenery; it eschews the shades of gray and black that characterized its older sibling, and in their place introduces a far more energetic color palette to its environments. Its version of Hope County is thick with trees and foliage, and while not all parts of the map are accessible, those that can be traversed sport a richness of energy. Which is to say it conveys its theme of rebuilding quite well; it shows the living — and the acts of living — amidst a harsh world, struggling and yet resolute in the belief that better is out there and achievable. And none portray the optimism better than the very surroundings gamers are compelled to conquer: jungles rich and lush with life, with broken down vehicles and buildings overgrown with vegetation. In other words, the story may be relatively sparse, but the storytelling is supreme.

Still, Far Cry New Dawn isn’t carried by the design or story. Rather, it’s defined by the gunplay, which, sadly isn’t as polished as expected. In trying to distinguish itself from Far Cry 5, it employs leveling mechanics akin to role-playing games. Upgrades to equipment have been made necessary, and gamers are thusly tasked to make their gear, at the very least, adequate for the job. Weaker opponents are felled even by the weakest of guns, but tougher, elite enemies require stronger, buffed-up weapons to neutralize. Concomitantly, scouring the map for parts to craft bigger and better ordnance becomes a requisite. The intent is clear; it forces constant movement for supplies and emphasizes the importance of tactics in both foraging and combat. In practice, though, it engenders grinding more than anything else.

This is Far Cry New Dawn’s biggest flaw, and, by extension, its most divisive feature. Its mechanics force gamers to engage it not at their own pace, but on its terms. It requires flitting from mission to mission — and rinsing and repeating the effort — in order to get weapons to keep up with the competition, as the alternative courts death. And, no, higher-level enemies do not become smarter or more appropriately challenging to fight; they simply exhibit greater resistance to damage, making them literal bullet sponges against under-equipped gear. While it can be satisfying to subsequently bring down tougher opponents, the very act of grinding en route effectively kills the anticipation.

Far Cry New Dawn isn’t a bad first-person actioner by any means. To the contrary, it offers more than its fair share of points of interest to keep gamers engaged. Nonetheless, it shows its rough patches after some time. Even by the usual Ubisoft standards, it possesses farming requisites that add tedium to the provision of what amounts to basic tools for its completion. In this regard, it winds up actively eroding its best aspects: exploring the world and engaging in the formation of the future. Instead, it puts forth sidequest after sidequest in the path to progress. And because it concentrates on the journey at the expense of its destination, it winds up as a mixed bag that leaves a lot of What Ifs and Could Have Beens in its wake. (7/10)

THE LAST WORD: Azur Lane: Crosswave is in line to hit Western audiences in early 2020 on the personal computer via Steam and on the Sony PlayStation 4. Physical copies for the console will be available on pre-order through Limited Run Games starting today. The version of the side-scrolling shooter for the platform will use the Unreal Engine and recreate character designs in the original release using cel-shaded 3D graphics. The intellectual property first made its way to China in May 2017 for the iOS and Android platforms, and, in four months, earned critical and commercial acclaim. A subsequent rollout in Japan later that year likewise met with success.