In defence of Asura's Wrath

Retr0gamer

I remember when this game came out and there was a lot of negativity about it. It's a game filled with QTE cutscenes that you cant fail, combat that isn't that interesting (and on the easiest setting you can't fail) and to top it all the demo was very disappointing. In fact I was pretty put off by the demo myself and didn't know what to think of it. The combat wasn't exactly Devil May Cry, hell it wasn't even God of War.

The game failed badly due to poor reviews and was discounted quickly. It was because of how cheap it was that I decided to take a chance on it. A very positive retrospective on eurogamer also convinced me and I've been a fan of Cyberconnect2's previous games such as Solatorobo.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-12-24-games-of-2012-asuras-wrath

Well I'm glad I took that chance because I thoroughly enjoyed Asura's Wrath.

The big mistake to make when approaching Asura's Wrath is to think of it as a videogame. Sure you get to control Asura for some 3rd person brawling every now and again but it's definitely not a videogame in the traditional sense. The game is broken up into 18 episodes that last about 30 minutes each, much like a TV series. In fact Asura's Wrath is closer to a weekly anime series than anything else and that's pretty much the way it should be approached.

You spend much of your time watching cutscenes with QTEs. The QTEs aren't an annoyance though like they are in most games since you can't fail them. Fail a QTE and Asura fails the action but the story continues on. They are just there to make the player feel more involved in the scene and they do a great job of that. The combat when it does happen is quite basic but there is some nuance to it and some of the boss battles can be quite challenging, especially if you stick the difficulty level up to hard. They have a different flow to most games, you fill up your rage meter by attacking with ranged attacks until your Rage meter is full before getting close to do heavy damage.

It's a game where you spend most of your time watching it and this would be a bad thing if the set pieces weren't so spectacular and the story wasn't so interesting. It's one of the best looking games of the last generation and some of the fights are so ludicrous that you can't help but smile at them. But it's not just about ridiculous fights with planet sized enemies. There's a story here and a really good one that deals with very down to earth themes. It's a story about a father that can't relate to his daughter despite how much he loves her and this eats away at him. Asura only knows how to do two things, getting angry and then beating the crap out of things. His daughter on the other hand is the total opposite. Unlike something like God of War where Kratos is a one note dullard Asura's Wrath tells a very human story despite the silliness and has some real emotional pay offs during its 18 episodes.

There is one thing many people were up in arms with about with this game and that is the DLC episodes. The last four episodes of Asura's Wrath are DLC. Now while this is annoying, if you don't pay for the DLC you do actually get a pretty satisfying conclusion without it. There's a secret ending that does lead into the DLC. However I'd wholeheartily recommend you get the DLC. Each of the last four episodes is far better than anything else in the game and much longer than a typical episode. There's some really great fights and lots of spectacular set pieces. The ending to the DLC is just fantastic and a real emotional suckerpunch. Also stay until after the credits because it has a very bizarre and hilarious epilogue. You'll probably get the game for 10-15 euros now so the DLC price isn't much especially considering how great it is.

There are other DLC packs, there's two that take place between episodes and I'd recommend against getting these. They are both 10 minute 2D animations with QTE's over them. They add nothing to the story and the animation is really cheap. The other two are Asura fighting some street fighter characters which looks fun but I've not tried them.

You should be able to pick up Asura's Wrath for very cheap now and if you approach it more as a slightly interactive TV series than a game then you should get just as much enjoyment out of it as I did. I didn't even mention yet how spectacular the soundtrack is either.

Cravez

Retr0gamer wrote: »

The big mistake to make when approaching Asura's Wrath is to think of it as a videogame.

I agree with you here, Asura's Wrath was meant to be primarily an Interactive Anime-esque story series, with a melting pot of different play styles thrown in like Street Fighter, Devil May Cry etc.

I'v never actually played it, I heard great things about the story,soundtrack and cutscenes so gave some a watch online and pretty much ended up watching all of it because it was that good/epic. If I did have an Xbox 360 I'd probably buy and play it just to re-watch everything in it's original format.

Id say the whole point of the presentation of the game flew over many heads, which is why it probably never took off so well. In general the gaming community don't seem to like mixing movie/gaming mediums together, usually wanting direct control over the content. "If I wanted to watch so many cut scenes, I would have watched a movie" they would say.

It's a shame as from what I have seen regarding Asura's Wrath it did quite well to break a mold. It will probably be one of those niche game styles that some people appreciate rather than a general collective, maybe if more of these types of games get created (as long as the content is good), then perhaps we could see more of them and then get accepted more.

Retr0gamer

Well it's not surprising that it flew over so many peoples heads since it really is very different from what people expect from a videogame. However once it clicks and you realise 'Hey this is just a crazy ass anime TV series not a game!' then it makes sense. Sure each episode opens a synopsis of the previous episode and ends with a 'in the next episode' segments just like a TV show.

When I sat down to play it it felt more like I was sitting down to binge on a few episodes of a TV series rather than sit down to play a game. I have to say the story caught me off guard. Asura's plot arcs about his relationships with Mithra, Yasha and the human girl were really well down and the DLC ending, that was a fighting back the tears moment.

As an interactive narrative it ****s all over anything David Cage has done.

super_furry

The part where they sold the ending as DLC was the point where I lost interest. It's the kind of thing that would get the likes of EA or Activision crucified but Capcom got a pass because it's a common practice with anime.

Was there ever a GOTY style collection release with everything included?

Retr0gamer

The game bombed hard so there was never a GOTY release.

In defence of the DLC as I said you do get a satisfying ending without it. Also if you do play the DLC you can tell that it wasn't just capcom cutting the ending to sell as DLC, an awful lot of work went into it and it introduces some new mechanics and QTE twists so you can tell it was developed after the game went gold.

That and it's really god damn good.

As far as I can recall Capcom did get crucified for it at the time. Hell I was furious about it at the time as well.

johnny_ultimate

So this thread reminded me to dig out my copy of the game I picked up for a couple of euro recently. Half way through the main game, and it's a complete piece of crap so far. IMO the problem is it's neither a good game nor a good anime series, and it certainly isn't a good combination of the two.

As a game, it's a complete and utter failure. It presents a visceral, in its way pretty smart combat system - it plays fast and well, and the idea of building a rage bar instead of reducing the enemies' health is quite a clever one. Unfortunately, every single encounter is identical - once you've had one fight, you've played them all, at least up until this point. It peaks in scale so early, and Asura is drawn as such an absurd deity, that any drama in the smaller fights (and even the occasional defeats) feels completely artificial and unconvincing. Repetition is one of the main flaws - the settings and enemies technically change from episode to episode, but the beats and flow never do. I believe there's a little bit more variety later on, but from episodes two and three onwards the game feels stuck in a rut it only rarely escapes from.

And if there's any depth to the story, it's taking its goddamn time getting to it. Contrary to Retr0's statement above, IMO Asura makes Kratos (both of whom are broadly similar) look like a character of genuine depth. Our hero here is basically, well, nothing but a walking ball of rage - which serves the incredibly basic narrative, but isn't exactly the sort of likeable protagonist we can get behind. Other characters - such as the offensively generic daughter character - are archetypical to the point of laziness. And yes, from time to time the 'game' does embrace its own absurdity, but so much of it outside the action is presented as po-faced melodrama it's hard to care about anything. Generously I'd call the story 'serviceable nonsense'.

It's strange to see a piece of work that has chosen the completely wrong medium, but its liberal borrowings from anime highlight how much of an identity crisis its having. Mid 'episode' titles in anime are intended to house ad breaks, but here simply break the flow of the story. The persistent credit sequences are distracting, since I can't imagine anyone intends on playing this over the course of 18 separate sittings - if that's the creators' intention, they should have highlighted it better. With so many menus, (admittedly pretty) concept art and 'next time on...' sequences nestled between 'episodes' and my simple want for the developers to get on with it, it would certainly have worked better as a weekly serial. At least with something like Alan Wake, the 'episodes' were longer and better suited to extended play sessions - and by extended I mean something longer than fifteen minutes at a time.

As for the QTEs... well, I have no problem with games offering limited interactivity, as some of my favourite games do so. But I also feel games like Dear Esther create a strong, immersive connection to their world even when you're effectively just walking forward. Here, it is simply an awkward compromise between interactivity and passive viewing. If you want to play, your input is limited to fairly arbitrary button presses - they might roughly match what's happening on screen, but at times they're so irregular as to be pointless. If you want to sit back and watch, you're still going to be distracted by flashing button prompts and placeholder animations that shatter the connection to what's happening on screen.

There's some pluses. The art is gorgeous at times, and at least with the endless cutscenes the creators have the opportunity to highlight it to the best of their abilities. And yes, when the game does indulge its wildest urges, it is something to behold - I hate the major compromises it has to take to get there, but there really has never been spectacle on this scale. For better but mostly for worse, it is unique, and even if it fails far more often than it succeeds its attempts to try something completely different are at least worthy of some admiration.

I'll play it to the end - maybe even the DLC since it's so cheap - because it, thankfully, is short. Maybe my response will change. But halfway through, and Asura's Wrath has yet to reveal anything but the very occasional utterly shallow moment of ridiculous spectacle. There's a line at the back of the box boasting of a 'seamless link between gameplay and story' - it offers no such thing, and it offers it poorly.

Retr0gamer

I'm not going to defend gameplay, as you say it utterly fails as a game. While I wouldn't be that harsh on it when the brawler sections do appear they are very basic. On hard mode some of the bosses give a decent challenge later on but then your still using a very basic combat system. Then again sometimes it can be a bit frustrating. Again I don't really think the gameplay is really the point of it, it's more something you enjoy as an anime series than a game. It's a weird thing to say but if you stop treating it as a game then you might like it more.

As for the story you say it's absurd and derivative and well I kind of have to agree with you. Asura's Wrath takes the Dragon Ball Z super saiyan zaniness of that kind of anime and runs with it. However I thank that as a genre piece it does it really well. Yes it's full of melodrama but it knows it is unlike something like recent Final Fantasy games were they think they are something more artful. However despite the melodrama I do feel there's an awful lot of heart behind that melodrama and Asura is a more complex character than you make him out to be. The story does get a lot more interesting later on.

If you aren't enjoying the absurd spectacle then it probably isn't for you. I enjoyed just seeing how insane it got and enjoying those moments especially when the plot shows a bit of heart. I can see how people wouldn't like it since the anime genre it's in won't appeal to everyone.

johnny_ultimate

Retr0gamer wrote: »

It's a weird thing to say but if you stop treating it as a game then you might like it more.

It would be easier to do if it stopped treating itself like a game

Retr0gamer

I felt it was more an episodic anime with game bits bolted on than a game with too many cutscenes The actual 3rd person combat is by far the weakest element of the game. Some later boss battles, particularly the DLC ones do work rather well but I never liked fighting the standard enemies in the game.

johnny_ultimate

Reh, could have done without that onsen scene and its gratuitous jiggling breast physics That kind of crap is never needed, even in a game this exaggerated.

johnny_ultimate

OK, so I finished the game at the weekend, and my opinion towards it has shifted slightly - I'm now firmly convinced it is one of the worst games of its console generation (fundamentally broken, badly made games aside).

It is to me representative of many of the worst trends in modern gaming. It favours empty, barely interactive spectacle above all else. The story is laughably poor, even with its limited pretensions - and Asura's 'arc' is a whole lot of nothing other than getting angry (at one point, he gets extra angry). Even taken as the mindless nonsense it is, the tale is paceless, meandering and poorly told. That it puts its story front and centre only amplifies all this.

One factor particularly irked me: for a game that is barely 6 hours long and musters only about 90 minutes of something vaguely resembling gameplay in there, the amount of repetition is ridiculous. Several fight scenes and setpieces are repeated three or four times - even the climax is an almost identical retread of the prologue. Most of the core boss battles are just bland, identikit fights in craters, and I lost count of the amount of times I had to battle a fleet of ships. It's one thing to reduce the player to little more than a spectator, it's another thing entirely to do so while forcing them to watch the same things again and again and forcing them to occasionally endure through the same combat arenas five or six times.

As an icing on the cake, the game locks its 'true' ending behind 'S' class performance demands - the sheer cheek of rating the player based on their ability to press a button prompt or spam the enemy with heavy attacks (which is almost all the combat ranking system is based on). And why would I want to go back just to watch a fifteen minute cutscene or 90 seconds of shallow gameplay again? As I had only one ranking left after my standard playthrough, I did repeat the second level to get the 'true' ending - and was met with little more than an advertisement for DLC. The 'false' ending was actually more satisfying.

It has been a long time since I played a game that rubbed me the wrong way like Asura's Wrath did. The only positives I got from my time with it were a couple of minutes of enjoyable silliness, some occasionally pretty art design, and one or two strong music cues. Other than that though, I'm sad to report my experiences with Asura's Wrath amounted to little more that pure and simple sh*t.

Skerries

how come you like this and you hate Metal Gear 4!?

Dave_The_Sheep

While reading this thread, one line stuck out.

Retro wrote:

The big mistake to make when approaching Asura's Wrath is to think of it as a videogame

If I wanted an anime series, I'd have bought an anime series. If I wanted a game, I'd buy a game. If I bought a game and ended up getting an anime series with occasional interactive moments, I'd be annoyed.

johnny_ultimate

Dave_The_Sheep wrote: »

If I wanted an anime series, I'd have bought an anime series. If I wanted a game, I'd buy a game. If I bought a game and ended up getting an anime series with occasional interactive moments, I'd be annoyed.

And that's the key problem, a fundamental one which I simply couldn't forgive. If we give the game the benefit of the doubt and accept it as an anime series, it's an anime series where immersion is broken by repetition, dull interaction and relentless button prompts. Imagine you watched an anime series that required you to rapidly hit a button on your remote control at random intervals - that's what much of Asura's Wrath amounts to, and would be distracting even if you opt to just ignore it. We've already been through the plethora of examples of how it fails as a game.

Worse still, it's a pretty damn poor anime series in terms of storytelling - one-note, po-faced / laughably melodramatic (bizarre for such an inherently silly idea), full of uninteresting & poorly defined characters, paceless and with an incredibly embarrassing attitude towards female characters.

If you're even remotely interested in checking it out, the demo is actually a perfect distillation of the game experience - there's very, very little in the actual game that builds on what you experience in the demo in any meaningful way.