"Isu: Celsetta's Tree Sea Transformation" review: The history of the growth of Red hair

Before the beginning of the "Isu" series of stories, we already know the end of the adventure career of the protagonist, Yatlu Christine - after his old age, he sorted out more than 100 adventure logs of his own experience and became a rare adventurer in the legend.

Whether it's failing to challenge the North Pole, returning to the countryside to die of old age alone, or mysteriously disappearing while challenging the North Pole. Although the end of Yatru's life has been changed and changed by Falcom's official "eating the book", it does not affect our admiration for the red-haired adventurer. After all, the highlight of an adventurer's life is not the ending, but the journey.

"Isu: Celsetta's Tree Sea Reform", which is now on PS4, dates back to 1993. Bold Falcom will "Isu 4" story original, provided to Hudson and TONKINHOUSE company, respectively, the development of the Dawn of Isu and the Mask of the Sun two games, and Isu: Celsetta's Sea of Trees is a 2012 version of Falcom's self-produced remake of two different titles for PSV.

So you should know that "Tree sea reform" is indeed "old", but it is not the same as "outdated".

Players who play "Isu" for the first time will have many reasons to reject it, "the picture is too vague", "the characters are too rough" or "the battle is too old-fashioned". But as long as you tolerate the "first sight of disgust" at the beginning, you will develop a motivation to simply want to continue the adventure.

There are many elements to an adventure, starting with a map that players can explore. In the upper right corner of the map UI of Isu: Celsetta's Tree Sea Reform, there is always a value called exploration rate, and what the player has to do is to make the exploration rate "from 0 to 100", which puts the main goal of the game "exploration" on the surface.

The progression of the plot is accompanied by the gradual deepening of the exploration, because the overall plot is still a linear framework, so the player's actions on the map are generally sequential. However, Falcom also added a few more degrees of freedom before the story progressed to a linear narrative, in an effort to increase the player's sense of adventure.

Since the game does not have very detailed guidelines, the player can only expand the exploration area on the map based on simple objective markers, and trigger the story guide. The conventional understanding of "The Mystery of the Third Chapter" was completed earlier than "The Polluted River", but in fact, you can also complete "the fourth chapter" first, and then go back to "the third chapter".

This little design is not perfect, and there are risks to jumping ahead of the normal process, mainly the threat of higher level wild monsters. We are not unfamiliar with the operation of "leapfrog spawning" in the game, which has always meant that the player has to take a high risk, but at the same time, it also brings a high return.

In "Tree Sea Change", the rewards of fighting high level monsters are high, and some of the benefits come from special skill learning mechanics - instead of buying skill books at the store, you "learn" new skills by defeating high level monsters.

The design of "understanding" skills encourages players to "leapfrog". Compared with the "leap-level brush" more difficult, more strategic turn-based combat mode, it is the "Isu" series of ARPG style action system, providing players with the possibility of "leap-level kill monsters".

The action system of "Tree Sea Change" is not complicated, because the jumping mechanism is canceled, the role can only carry out limited operations in 2-dimensional space, and the only particular micro operation is to pinched the timing of "instantaneous anti-flash".

The "instantaneous defense and flash" mechanism is the finishing touch of the "Tree Sea Change" action system, which increases the sense of action and brings satisfaction to players for the "turn-based" combat that was originally just repeated offensive and defensive exchanges. Although the risk of failure is to withstand high damage, the high "blue amount" reply brought by "instantaneous defense" and the "bullet time" brought by "instantaneous defense" not only bring spectator improvement to the game, but also increase the player's sense of accomplishment. Therefore, it is not too much to say that "instantaneous anti-flash" is the finishing touch of the action system of "Isu: Celsetta's Tree Sea Reform".

After the "flash guard" was introduced as a reward mechanism on the action system, more traditional reward mechanisms were placed on the map to provide players with some short breaks.

In Isu: Celsetta's Tree Sea Transformation, players spend almost 70% of their time in combat. Even if the action system is called feel full, but too long battle, it is inevitable that people lose the power to play. At this time, a large number of collection points and treasure chests arranged on the map become the reason for players to continue fighting.

In addition to providing sensory enjoyment to players by exploding coins all over the ground, a large number of collection points and treasure chests on the map encourage players to continue exploring. The design that resources can be replaced with each other, so that there is no more "garbage" when collecting, and the occasional excellent equipment that appears in the treasure chest, similar to high-level weapons, is the motivation for players to explore the map.

If 70% of the play time of Isu: Celsetta's Tree Sea Reform is spent on fighting, then the remaining 30% of the time is divided into three parts: "Solving puzzles", "updating equipment" and "plot".

The "decryption" part of the "Tree Sea Change" is very traditional JRPG flavor, mainly maze box court, this part has nothing special to say, because the design intention is only to increase the play time. "Update equipment" is not complicated, players only need to come to each new stronghold, timely go to the store to update the "best sword in the village, boxing, gun, hammer..." That's enough. There's not much room for action.

In this "30% of time", the part worth talking about must also be placed on the plot. Because the "Isu" series of king JRPG flavor, compared to "Dragon Quest" is not inferior, and both were born in the late 1980s.

The plot feature of "Isu" is mentioned in the opening paragraph, all the people, things and things that the player sees are just one of the memoirs "adventure log" written by the elderly Yatru. The end of the story has long been foreordained, and powerful adventurers such as Atru cannot escape the erosion of time, and they will also encounter complete failure in their adventures.

However, unlike "Dragon Quest", the protagonists of all generations are "brave", Yatlu, the protagonist of the "Isu" series, has been carrying out the positioning of "adventurer" from beginning to end, which makes the "ending" seem less important.

The quality of the plot of "Tree Sea Reform" can only be regarded as normal, centering on "friendship and inheritance", but it did not successfully depict the delicate emotion. The overall rhythm begins with an ordinary beginning and ends with an ordinary end, which even the female characters fail to impress.

True envy

Although the plot of "Tree Sea Reform" itself did not reach the height of subsequent works, such as "Isu 8: Dana's Requiem", it played a small role in completing the world view setting of the "Isu" series and enriching the protagonist's character.

During the adventure, players will find some fragments of memory, which not only runs through the plot of the game, but also helps players understand the world view of Yatlu and the entire "Isu".

Full of longing for the distance, the young Atru would climb to the top of the mountain alone, saying, "So there is still a mountain on the other side of the mountain," and then began to think, "Where is there on the other side of the mountain, where is there on the other side of the sea, where is the whole continent?" With these questions, the young Atru grew up and began to go to sea for the first time, writing his own story.

The fragments of memory in the game pile up a messy puzzle, although it can not spell out a picture that can be described as "complete", but the shape of the outline is enough for players to have more understanding of Yatlu.

At the end of "Tree Sea Change", the winged man Eldill recalls Yatru's actions and, after careful consideration, characterizes him as an "adventurer". This is the name that best fits the characteristics of Atru, and all the experiences of the red-haired teenager since then are the adverb prefix "rare" filled in front of the noun "adventurer".

When Falcom first created "Isu", the ending set for Yatlu may be precisely to remind players of a truth. The destination is not more important than the journey. We must learn to enjoy the journey. The best games, they say it all the time.