Avalon Code - DS

Picked this up from work tonight. Will post back my reaction in a (few?) days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon_Code

The front looks nice. Is that how the game looks?

It's not stylized like the cover, but it still looks nice in scenes. As nice as a DS game can look.

Ah. How is it so far?

XXXBurningStarIV wrote:Ah. How is it so far?

Amazingly unique and incredibly original.

Even though that's kind of redundant, I don't care. It's awesome so far.

Sounds cool.
I need to get more games.
But no money.

I'll try it out.

Some minor complaints with the mechanics of the game, but overall it's an incredibly addicting and fuckwin experience:

The basis of the game is that the world is ending and you are tasked with going around to see what objects, what people, etc. are worthy of being replicated in the new world. That's the story, but the actual gameplay is where it gets interesting.

Your main source of everything in the game is the "Book of Prophecy." It's your character menu, bestiary, item list, map, save/load screen, everything. Enemies, and by and large people, can be "scanned" by the book, which in turn reveals to you a small square grid with different attributes listed. These are known as codes (hence the title). Everyone, every enemy, every weapon, every piece of armor, and many specific objects in the game have a code that can be scanned. The awesome part is, once you scan them, you basically play the role of God - you can remove their code (i.e. remove the attributes), give them new ones, or whatever you want. The purpose of this is mainly to strengthen your own battle capabilities, because all weapons you can use consist of codes, and every combination of codes will alter the strength of the weapon.

So, to use an example I did today:

I had a basic sword, nothing special, empty of codes. So it was as plain as it could be. I placed two copper codes onto the weapon, turning the material of the blade into Orichalcum. I then added a Forest code to give it an elemental attribute. I essentially raised the sword's attack power from the low 20s to the mid 90s by adding and combining those codes.

Now that's only ONE possible set up. There's thousands of possible combinations of various types of codes.

Another example, this time a storyline-related one; someone had been attacked and was near-death, and in order to progress, I needed this person to be alive. Scaning them revealed a "Wounded" code that could not be removed by normal means. So, I was told (by the accompanying Fire Spirit you get from the very beginning) that I needed to make a Vitality code to remove the Wound, and I needed to combine "Light" and "Hope." Putting those two codes together created Vitality and removed the Wound, thereby reviving the injured person. Voila, I played God.

This concept could have gone so far, and it still has the chance if Matrix Software decides to make a sequel of this - which they should, on a larger platform.

The only things that hold me back from furiously man-loving this game fall under Organization:

1) Swapping codes can sometimes be a hassle, because you only have 4 slots to hold codes in your basic inventory, and there is no method of quick swap (i.e. if you have all 4 slots in your inventory filled, and all slots on a weapon filled, you cannot do a 1-for-1 exchange between two codes. You need to empty out one of your inventory slots, then drop a code from the weapon in there). This is at least somewhat alleviated in the fact that you can access any previously-scanned entity from the book, anywhere, anytime; what this means is that you can have limitless pack mules all over the world holding and storing codes you have no room for.

2) MP consumption plays little use in actual combat (aside from summoning the spirits). What it's mainly used for is code swapping. Any time you move a code from one location to another, it consumes 1 MP. This might seem trivial (keep in mind you have a total of 100 MP at start - whether this gets higher or not, I can't confirm yet), but the whole concept of combining the codes is trial and error, finding the best possible setup. You don't know the outcome of a setup unless you actually put it together. So you could be wasting dozens of MP trying various setups and end up going back to what you originally had because nothing else was better, and all you'd have to show for it was an empty pool of MP.

Those are my two major complaints. Some minor annoyances with the controls, but otherwise the stylus interactions are flawless and the game's soundtrack is amazing.

I'll post more reactions as I get further into the game, but at this point I highly recommend anyone who enjoys light-hearted unique jRPGs to get this.

I've been playing it too and it's been fantastic.
Some of the codes are superfluous (Cat code - everytime you hit something your sword mews.) and then some codes equippable make things silly (*adds a code* WTF? Stupid bread?) but it's an overall ingenious game. The plot is as good as any final fantasy and some things will pretty much wow you into next week.

It took me a while to realise that the fire spirit was male, though. XD

Yep. I can see adding codes to food to increase the amount of health it restored, but it does virtually nothing except change the aesthetic features.

It's my primary code-bank.

The Hammer you get near the end of chapter 2, what a beast of a weapon that is if you put the proper codes in to make it the Grand Hammer.