Exist Archive shares a lot with Valkyrie Profile: the battle system, the side-view dungeons, and the cadre of deceased spirits granted second chances. Even the menu-confirmation beeps are the same, and Motoi Sakuraba's surging overtures would slip flawlessly around a Valkyrie Profile game. It's as though Exist Archive actually was another Valkyrie Profile before Square Enix pulled the license to make a mobile game instead.
Exist Archive The Other Side Of The Sky PS VITA...
Aksys Games' sales and marketing manager Danny Miscevich announced the news on the PlayStation Blog, in which he detailed the game's premise. You're killed by an explosion, later awakening in a surreal world with "evil god powers." The story is described as "robust," but it also features side quests like any other JRPG.
Each of the dozen characters that gradually join the party have a different class and behave differently in battle, and mixing up the classes is where the strategy comes into play. Some are useful for crowd control and others are better at dealing massive damage to a single enemy. Figuring out which order the characters should act and which target they should go for in order to achieve maximum impact is actually a fun process, and can make some challenging battles end quickly. The battle system is one of the better variations that has been recently done with the tried and true turn based formula, but this is another area where the UI is strange. Items can be used in battle if the Options button is hit but only one item can be used per turn, so choosing who needs to be healed or deciding if low hit points are a better concern than poison are all things to consider. Certain bosses can be battled later in an optional time trial mode which offers rewards for best time. Be warned these bosses are much stronger in this mode than when they were first encountered.
Valkyrie Profile was a great game among other reasons because the platforming was interesting and each dungeon felt unique. There were caves, climbing a huge tower, crossing water; it all felt thought out and pulled the player in. In this game, the first dungeon is literally repeated in minor variations for hours. It is actually a bit confusing at first, until this fact becomes apparent that it is actually the same recycled rooms, only the player is coming in from different sides.
In practice, though, Switch is a radically different system. The Wii U's Gamepad was designed as a second screen that would complement on-screen play; the ability to play (some) games on the Gamepad without using the TV at all was a nice extra but not the raison d'être of the system. Switch, on the other hand, simply won't let you use the device as a second screen. When it's plugged into the TV, the screen is hidden inside the docking station. Wii U was a dual screen system; Switch is a single screen system that simply has the ability to switch between a TV and a handheld screen. In a sense, the only piece of the Wii U's philosophy that has survived into the Switch is the most simple of all; the device in your hands has to have a screen.
There are a few unknowns in this. For one thing, we don't know whether Switch is actually fully functional without a TV to connect it to. If you can treat the dock purely as a charging stand and the Switch as a gaming tablet that plays full-strength console AAA titles, then that potentially opens up a market that would otherwise be closed to home consoles. It also makes clear the USP of Switch compared to existing tablets and smartphones; as a high-end gaming tablet that's targeting the niche of people who want console-strength experiences that are not, or cannot be, offered on iOS or Android devices. It will also be interesting to see whether Switch's dock is tied to a single console or if it's simply a dumb dock you can slip any Switch into, which might make the console more interesting to people living in share houses or dormitories with one TV shared between a number of people.
Of course, Nintendo isn't solely targeting the TV-less market - for Switch to be successful, especially outside Japan, it has to satisfy the legions of core gamers whose living rooms do still revolve around a big-screen TV, as well as proving the worth of its central gimmick of portability. The jury's still out on that one, and honestly, until such time as we see whether the launch window software justifies the console's innovations, any hot take predicting success or failure is little more than personal preference wearing analysis drag. However, consider for a moment the possibility that Japan isn't an outlier in terms of young people dropping TVs from their living arrangements. Consider that, as in so many other social technology trends, Japan is actually just out in front; that the same underlying factors in terms of smartphones making TVs increasingly less important or relevant to a whole generation of consumers apply equally to other developed countries.
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