Review
Ash II: Shadows
By Jayson Young - February 10th, 2012
As a gaming platform, Apple’s iOS has really blossomed and matured nicely over the past couple of years. Thanks to the (generally) low price-point of the games and the ingenuity and creativity of the developers creating in this space, iOS has increasingly become an exciting and forward-thinking place for gamers to explore new ideas and play mechanics.
Taking all that into consideration, then, the recently-released Ash II: Shadows – from SRRN Games and published by Konami – is a sad, weird little anachronism with a heart of gold. Here is a game which tasks players with challenging their own inner notions of just how much they really still love antiquated JRPG mechanics, while at the same time completely flouting any of the iPod’s strength as a platform.
Drew Millard – over at the generally-awesome Kill Screen – just did a lovely job summarizing precisely the connundrum that JRPGs find themselves in these days with his review of Squeenix’s multimillion dollar mess, Final Fantasy XIII-2. To put it plainly, the genre is perhaps unique in today’s videogame landscape in its sheer outmodedness. In an era of heretofore unseen levels of immersion and openness in gaming worlds, JRPGs continue to lumber along, unable to stay relevant without sacrificing the very defining characteristics of the genre.
When the captions write themselves, I don’t know what to do with myself.
That said, I’m sure there is still an audience for JRPGs somewhere. I know this because I live in Japan, and those things continue to sell pretty well over there (from what I can tell). And anywhere in the world where “hardcore gamers” roam, there will always be nostalgia-soaked adoration for your Chrono Triggers and your Dragon Quests (whether the Final Fantasy series is still teflon -after all of its bullshit detours and missteps- remains to be seen).
Now, along comes Ash II; an erstwhile JRPG developed in Virginia, USA. That’s fine – loving tributes can come from anywhere in this wide world of ours; and a loving tribute Ash II is, indeed. Clearly inspired by the Super Famicom/SNES JRPGs that run rampant in the imaginations of 20-to-30-something year-old nerds everywhere (yours truly included), Ash II will feel instantly recognizable to anyone who’s ever hummed the FF battle victory theme in real life when finding a five dollar bill on the sidewalk.
The problem, however, is that Ash II may be a tad over-nostalgic. Try as I might, I can’t really think of anything new that this game brings to the table, save for a very lamentable control scheme. Certainly, the graphics are delightful – imagine, if you will, an aforementioned SNES JRPG, but redrawn (maybe even by hand – who knows!) with loving manga-like flourishes, a la that Street Fighter II HD thing that Capcom did recently with the fellows at Udon. And, the writing is far better than the questionable translations non-Japanese gamers were accustomed to receiving in the ’90s.
This looks like your typical JRPG dance routine. Machinima!
So what we have here is a fresh, new, antiquated, lovingly-crafted yet instantly-dated throwback. The story is something about some people questing around in a Dungeons & Dragons-style setting – I don’t know. I lost interest almost immediately, despite this ridiculous, but very promising opening:
I include this introductory salvo unedited in this “review” because I wish to highlight a point: when I began playing Ash II, it was mere days after being hit by a car in Mississauga (a life-altering accident which happened to sideline me literally hours before I had planned to fly back to Japan). In Japan, my girlfriend – a massage therapist by trade – is waiting for me; and, as a result of the accident and the surgery it necessitated, I was suffering from insomnia. So there you have it! Go back and read those italicized lines once more and see for yourself how deeply they must have spoken to me in my dark hour. Those sentences, as they floated onto my iPod Touch’s screen accompanied by swelling and majestic music, were absolutely primed to immerse me utterly. I was 100% on board from the get-go, stricken with a feeling of destiny being realized by my playing this game.
And then, I began to play the game.
I am thinking of two words that rhyme with “blunder helming”.
I smirked at some of the dialog, and thought, “hey, this is a very pretty-looking SNES game right here on my iPod. How about that?” Shortly, I came to realize that the game-play mechanics were lifted straight from 1992. Except in 1994, we used controllers and gazed slack-jawed at television screens. Konami, on its iTunes store page for Ash II: Shadows, claims that the game has “innovative touch-based controls”. Do you know what that means? It means you have the option of either simulating a D-pad on your touchscreen (like any console-aping nostalgia-fest on the iTunes store), or -and get yourself ready for some real innovation now- you can press your finger to a point on the screen where you want your character to walk, and your character will walk all the way to that point! So it’s like the whole screen is one big D-pad! Oh also, both of those solutions are terrible and feel gross to play. It’s like trying to play chess except all of the pieces have spherical bottoms and the board is flat and made of glass. Put differently, it’s like playing Tiny Wings or Jetpack Joyride using a CRT monitor and a third-party six-button Sega Genesis controller.
That other staple of JRPGs – separate screens for battling and menu navigation – is present and accounted for, and then some. You’ll be doing endless amounts of both in this game. But each time either one loads up, expect to wait a full two seconds. This may not sound like much, but seconds add up. And when I’m gaming “on the go”, I expect snappy, if not instant and constant, gratification. If I wanted loading times and blank screens, I’d play a PSOne classic on my PSP (lol).
Finally, while the average (and frequently awesome) iOS game is a buck, or no bucks, the Gold (ie – full) version of Ash II: Gold will cost you $4.99. This is probably a case of Konami looking over at Squeenix, seeing the latter charging $15 or some outrageous thing for some old Final Fantasy whatsit, and thinking five bucks is a real steal of a deal.
What I’m saying is: iOS has a few well-defined, honest-to-goodness unique strengths as a platform. Ash II: Shadows is a game that ignores all of those strengths, and is content to coast on your happy memories.
