Sea Slugs! Anime Blog

First things first - I can’t believe the numbnuts at NIS America decided to ditch the ethereal cover art of the JP version and go with a much more cartoony NA cover. What a waste. Maybe it was an American ‘Nice Boat’ effect, what with the piles of dead bodies and all.

Soul Nomad (aka Soul Cradle in Japan) is the newest Strategy RPG from Nippon Ichi, the creative force behind Disgaea, La Pucelle, Phantom Brave, etc. The plot is a bit grander than NIS’s previous games, and draws on the game world’s expansive history to provide the impetus for your quest. You play as either a male or female orphan (gender affects the type of endings you can get) raised in a secret village, and on your coming-of-age day, the mysterious village leader Layna merges the soul of an evil god named Gig into your body.

Gig is a real bastard, having ravaged the continent in a previous age with his 3 biomechanical World-Eater colossi (until he was defeated and sealed by Layna), and now he shares your thoughts, feelings, and dreams. His voice is disembodied though, so he can freely insult everyone around you and pitch in his opinion when it’s not desired. Your initial directive from Layna is to find a way to destroy the Gig’s World Eaters, who are supposedly dormant now, but are somehow causing the land to become unstable. Thus you depart the village with your childhood friend Danette (A cow-girl hybrid, similar to a catgirl… is this the start of a new craze? Somehow, I doubt it.), to figure out how to stop these massive behemoths. Gig happens to know them all inside-out, as he used to be their master, but he doesn’t want to help you out. In fact, he’d rather take over your body and kick your soul out, so he is constantly tempting you to trade in your soul for immense power. This is more of a story element rather than a gameplay element, although there ARE a couple branching points where you can choose to give in to Gig, and thus get a very different ending. The character-specific ending you get is based on who you talked to the most during branch points, or who you combo’d with the most often.

Like any good hero, you crisscross the land, encountering new friends and enemies, and become entangled in a whole buttload of subplots and minor arcs while steadily making progress towards destroying the World Eaters. However, there’s a bit more to this quest than initially anticipated. For starters, both you and Gig start having some strange dreams about childhood that neither of you can recognize. Then there’s the whole cover-up about what actually happened in the past few hundred years of history, when one human became powerful enough to challenge the gods. In addition, on your second run through the game, it’s possible to tell Layna to piss off right at the beginning, and embark on a totally different “demon-side” campaign. An overview of the game mechanics is given down at the bottom, but first a few comments and impressions!

Notable quirks, features, and pet peeves:

• Since you keep all your stats, decors, edicts, and units each time you start over, it becomes possible to beat some of the bosses that you’re “supposed” to lose to (similar to Chrono Trigger), and your immense power enables you to branch away from the normal storyline and engage in some very difficult alternative battles. For example, if you’re sufficiently powerful, you can encounter the psychotic Lujei Piche (from Grim Grimoire), the wannabe-main character Asagi (bonus character from Makai Kingdom and Disgaea 2), or travel back in time to get revenge on Lord Median. Note that Lujei’s solo special attack summons the giant dragon unit from Grim Grimoire, complete with the egg-hatching sequence!
• I enjoyed the large cast of characters very much, regardless of the fact that many are cast from stereotypical anime molds. I didn’t find Danette all that annoying, and there’s actually an explanation for her slow-wittedness later in the story. The super siscon/GAR character Levin was actually more irritating. Gig is the most entertaining character, as his devil-may-care attitude and outright rudeness puts those annoying goody-two-shoes hero-types in their place. Though he runs out of steam towards the late game stages, he still saves a few choice zingers for the various endings. Speaking of which, some of the endings have some pretty offbeat humor, especially the “good” Gig ending with a male hero. That’s a very unheroic way to close the game!
• Whenever you try to bully or merge with an elderly or helpless townsperson, H-man (which stands for HeroMan or HentaiMan depending on who you ask in the game) usually flies out of the sky in his superhero getup, and fights you in their stead. He’s a freaking Gideon (the most powerful unit type) who becomes more powerful (maybe +10 levels or so) each time you somehow manage to beat him, so you might want to hold back on beating up grannies. The exchanges between him and Gig during each encounter are quite humorous.
• I like how the NPC dialogue frequently updates to reflect the most recent events, and the residents of the towns are constantly changing; most major RPG’s tend to make only minor dialogue changes in the ‘old areas’ and focus mostly on the new areas, due to the largely linear design of those games. Of course, Soul Nomad presents all of this in text-based menus, so it’s much easier to program and not nearly as immersive, but small details like this are nice to see. For instance, in the beginning of the game, the xenophobic Nereid kingdom is isolated from the rest of the world, but by the end of the game (due to various circumstances) you’ll see Nereids popping up in faraway towns, exploring other cultures and integrating into society. This makes it worthwhile to travel back to all the various cities to see what people are saying after each plot segment.
• The low tech nature of the game is extremely evident in some story segments, where all we get is a static background scene, and a bunch of sound effects mixed with dialogue, so you have to guess at what is happening based on context clues. Reminds me of those Code Geass extra stages, or an audio drama sequence.
• The plot, while grand and far-reaching, is very fragmented and has many rough edges. There were some inexplicable plot twists and major story elements that weren’t explained very well, but I suppose some of that may be clarified upon further playthroughs, since I wasn’t able to see every single plot sequence option. At each choice point, you can only choose one action out of a few selections, such as consoling your childhood friend Danette or interrogating Gig about his memories. I still feel that there was a lot of unused potential in the story, as the circumstances could have allowed for some truly convoluted paths.
• A common complaint is that the battle scenes are way too long, and that you actually spend more time watching the fights than playing the game, like a bad case of Final Fantasy Summon-itis. There’s an option to turn off the cinematics, but it’s a shame since the battles are pretty neat and well-animated, with some really entertaining special attacks and combos (of which there are a TON, if you can figure out what unit combinations are needed to enable the combo). I think NIS should have made them faster or more interactive, like the Super Mario RPG’s or perhaps the Tales series.
• The randomness of the room types and unit space pattern contained within it is somewhat frustrating. Oftentimes, you get a room with a bad pattern or a good pattern on a crappy room, and end up having to spend a lot of time pushing the randomizer button to get something you want. In addition, a lot of the room types are just not that useful; one of the first room types you can get, the Gladiatorium (+5% ATK for each space you travel before you attack), ends up being one of the best. The Generalization room (+20% stats if the enemy outnumbers you) is also great, but after that, most of the rooms are very situation-specific, until late game when you hit Hade’s Despair, Cat’s Cradle, and the various advanced spell rooms.
• The same could be said about all the unit types. There’s a lot of choices, but there’s not much motivation to recruit and level up the advanced unit types (which start at level 1) when your old ones are already high level and can get the job done just as well. Some of the units just totally stink, like the Saboteur or Bard (who are both moe but have crappy stats and abilities), and some are just a case of too little, too late (Gryphos Rider, Phynx Knight).
• Comparisons with Ogre Battle are limited to the squad system, because the nature of the games are vastly different. Ogre Battle was a fairly hardcore strategy game, featuring real-time maps, complex unit progression, capturable cities, moral alignment stats, reputation factors, day-night cycles, and vast landscapes. Soul Nomad leans more towards the RPG genre, with more personable characters, a strong plot, small battle maps, lots of customization options, and a lot of optional elements.
• I found that it’s almost impossible to steal stuff successfully from the townspeople, and the penalties for failure can be REALLY stiff. What’s the trick? Saving and reloading is not a valid answer.
• Due to the complexity of the game, the user interface is pretty cumbersome. There’s a lot of menus you have to dig through in order to get to what you want. The edict bag space limitation is SUPER annoying, as you use the same 20-slot bag for messing with the townspeople and for battle. The edicts that you use in town are typically not the ones you use in battle, so I have to empty out my bag and refill it with the appropriate items from my warehouse whenever I chose to go into towns or go into battle. The designers should have just allowed you to draw directly from your warehouse when you’re in town.
• Here is a handy table of the various room types and effects.
• Note that the shop vendors get new supplies after every battle, whether it’s a room inspection fight or a story fight. I always seem to run out of combining edicts since there’s no penalty for trying to combine with every NPC to get stat boosts, so I always stock up on them whenever I get the chance.
• Money is way too easy to come by. I bullied an old geezer once during the early stages of the game and took over a million GP from him.
• Some room types are just fun to play with, regardless of their effectiveness or efficiency. The Clowns Abound room has the Exhibitionism decor, which forces enemies in a large radius to only attack the room’s unit. I like to stack the room with 6 Nereids (which have the most balanced + defense and + resistance per level aside from Gideons) and 3 clerics in the back, and make a cleric the leader so you get 3x DEF/RES boost skills. With multiple clerics, there also seems to be a good chance that two of them will cast a free + RES boost at the start of a battle. This unit can be great for drawing away enemy units so your hero can make a beeline for the room tyrant during inspection battles, or soaking up all the enemy attacks, allowing your other squads to avoid being targeted.
• I recommended Soul Nomad to Jeff back when he was looking for a new game, but I am not so sure that the NIS style of SRPG would really be his thing. Maybe Persona 3 would have been a better fit after all?

Gameplay Mechanics (aka Boring details that you might want to skip)

NIS diverges from its iconic unit-based battle system in this game, and instead takes a page right out of Quest’s classic SNES game Ogre Battle (which happens to be one of my all-time favorites). The new system groups units into squads of up to nine characters arranged on a 3×3 grid. The units’ placement on the grid (front line, mid line, back line) determines what kind of attacks are used. For instance, melee characters are usually on the front lines, as they have the best physical defense, but then they can only hit the front line units of the opposing squad. If you place them on in the mid line, they will switch to their ranged style attacks like energy blasts or molotovs. These attacks are able to hit mid and back line characters, and the high physical defense will come in handy against ranged arrow attacks. However, with a few exceptions, most melee characters don’t have any attacks if placed in the back of the squad.

Each squad is based in a room, and there are a huge variety of room types, each with different intrinsic effects. In addition, and each room can be equipped with one-time usage “decorations” which add a variety a different effects to the squad, such as infinite skill usage for 3 turns, or higher counterattack damage. Initially, there are only a small selection of room types to choose from, but more are unlocked as you progress through the game. The number of rooms you have is also increased based on your progress. The room types are randomly generated, as is the number of unit spots available in each room (up to a max of 9 spots arranged in a 3×3). You can hit a randomizer button to keep trying for better combinations, and if you see one you like you can utilize a room lock on it so that it doesn’t get changed when you randomize. You have a limited number of room locks though, so use them wisely.

There are a multitude of other gameplay aspects, like powering up each room via Room Inspections, beating up the decoration and Gig Edicts merchants to make them sell better stuff, stealing/merging/bullying/recruiting the townspeople, cultivating Bad Vibes intruders to yield long term rewards, etc. Like many other NIS games, the many layers of complexity can be overwhelming at first, but thankfully most of the features are optional and exist to reward ambitious players.

Battles take place on flat maps that feature a very misty hand-painted look, in sharp contrast to the the 3-D dungeons of every other NIS game. Naturally, terrain bonuses and movement grids are in effect. Enemy encounters switch to a side-view cinematic much like La Pucelle, and feature some really spectacular effects reminiscent of the Super Robot Wars games.

Production Values

As usual, this new NIS game features retro character graphics that hearken back to the PS1 era, though the battles are well-animated and are suitably over-the-top. The static background and character closeups are nice of course, but aren’t anything a Sega Saturn couldn’t have handled. The decision to go with 2-D painted maps was interesting, and can be chalked up to artistic license I suppose. It’s a bit drab though, due to the constant usage of earthen tones. I liked the soundtrack - although it wasn’t utterly astounding or as catchy as Disgaea 2’s, it was still fairly diverse and moved away from the funky eclectic groove featured in the other NIS games towards a more symphonic style. There’s still traces of the trademark NIS quirkiness though, as evident in the snazzy jazz/big band theme used for the Decor/Edict merchants. I particularly like the airy vocals used in the World Eater battle music. NIS provided both English and Japanese language tracks in this game, which is always a good thing. The English dub does feature some incredibly hokey character voices, but overall it is fairly decent- especially Gig’s VA, who has more fluid and natural dialogue than the typical stilted/awkward RPG lines that everyone else gets. The English Gig VA aims for an amusing rude-asshole attitude compared to the much more subdued and arrogant Gig portrayed by the JP seiyuu, but both are quite effective and appropriate.

Pros:

• Interesting combat system
• Rich world and history
• Fun characters
• Tons of endings, optional content, and secrets
• Good voicework and soundtrack
• Difficulty level is just about right

Cons:

• Dated graphics
• Long non-interactive combat cinematics
• Plethora of unit/room choices, but not many of them are very useful
• Cumbersome interface

Conclusion: This game hits an 8.1/10 on the Slug Meter.

Soul Nomad is a flawed but entertaining romp that managed to keep me glued to the PS2, even with Bioshock beckoning from the corner. The addictive gameplay, instant gratification, and expansive plot will motivate you into playing through several cycles to plumb all the secrets and side-stories out of the game. Though Disgaea 2 might be a more refined SRPG game, Soul Nomad manages to hold its own on the basis of its unique combat system and more involving storyline. On the down side, the outdated sprites have always been an unsightly blemish on NIS’s track record, and for once I’d like them to make an SRPG with next-gen graphics.