{"id":458,"date":"2009-11-16T06:00:36","date_gmt":"2009-11-16T04:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/isabout.wordpress.com\/?p=458"},"modified":"2020-01-02T20:25:30","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T20:25:30","slug":"recommending-sonny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/2009\/11\/16\/recommending-sonny\/","title":{"rendered":"Recommending Sonny"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My series of <a href=\"http:\/\/isabout.wordpress.com\/2009\/11\/13\/a-beginners-introduction-to-browser-games\/\">browser game reviews<\/a> continues.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/armorgames.com\/play\/505\/sonny\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-right:1em;border:medium grey ridge;\" src=\"http:\/\/armorgames.com\/files\/thumbnails\/sonny-505.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/armorgames.com\/play\/2900\/sonny-2\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"clear:left;float:left;margin-right:1em;border:medium grey ridge;\" src=\"http:\/\/armorgames.com\/files\/thumbnails\/sonny-2-2900.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>The two Sonny games are console adventure games (CRPGs, as they&#8217;re called) in style, closely akin to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Final_fantasy\">Final Fantasy<\/a> and the like. Now, I don&#8217;t remember that I&#8217;d have spilled my full invective against the genre here at the blog, but those who know me might have heard me say some very unflattering things about the combination of passive consumership, bad writing and atrociously grinding gameplay typical of this Japanese genre of games. Thus it is all the more surprising that I actually like <em>Sonny<\/em> &#8211; it might be the best game (series) in the genre that I&#8217;ve ever played (depending on how you define the boundaries of the genre, anyway); and it achieves this by being sensible and matter-of-fact about the core activity of this type of game, rather than by pushing out into other types of game like some other good runners do.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The <em>Sonny<\/em> games stand out positively in the genre due to four main features:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>No-nonsense plotting doesn&#8217;t take itself too seriously, and doesn&#8217;t waste the player&#8217;s time. Sparse cutscenes and a few lines of dialogue here and there serve to contextualize the game, but at no point does the designer imagine that he is writing literature. The game is very genre-conscious while also being subtly original and irreverent towards the same; most importantly, the lyrical (as opposed to dramatic, plot-related) content, such as graphics and literary concepts, are well-made, complimenting the actual gameplay content and giving the games a very personal, flavorful overall look.<\/li>\n<li>There is no meaningless running around in the game world or encountering random encounters. In fact, there is no running around at all &#8211; the main interface consists of a button for shopping, a button for character inventory, a button for having a training combat (for grinding experience) and a button for fighting the next plot fight. There are no renevable resources, even, so no time is wasted on healing the party between fights. Fight all the plot fights successfully, and you win the game. But to do this you need to equip the right equipment, the right team and the right skills.<\/li>\n<li>The game&#8217;s core activity, as befits the genre, is optimizing a team of fighters for the round-based, largely numeric fighting game that matches the player against increasingly difficult opponents. The player gets to optimize his own character&#8217;s skills, as well as the equipment for the whole team. Both optimization problems are ever-changing and have no absolute answers, you just have to work constantly to keep ahead of the (at times steep) enemy power curve. You get to change your own character&#8217;s configuration around pretty flexibly, which means that you can and will have to change him up for different fights.<\/li>\n<li>The fight scenes themselves are quick and simple insofar as the game controls and user interface go, but actually pretty complex rules-wise when compared to what you usually get in this genre. For instance, temporary conditions caused by both attacks and buffs are much more important than usually in the genre, and there are many tools for manipulating those. It seems that there are no enemies that would be immune to status attacks, too, so this is one of those rare games in the genre that seems to play fairly with its own rules. (A typical cop-out in the genre is to make the most difficult or plot-important enemies immune to status attacks that&#8217;d cripple them, making for the old jungle saying that you should never invest in anything but damage-per-round in these games; you&#8217;ll never get to use that blinding attack in an actually difficult fight, anyway.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Based on the above it might seem that less is again more with this browser game, and I guess that is true &#8211; the genre in question suffers horridly because the core activity is usually encumbered with half-wit attempts at purple prose and transparent speedbumbs in the form of random fights. <em>Sonny<\/em> in comparison has a flavourful setting (with zombies and stuff; no rason to explain in detail, it&#8217;s ultimately secondary in this genre), but the attention is totally focused to making the fights and character optimization for them work for themselves: once again the core activity wins the day in game design, making for a much more compelling <em>game<\/em> than the last <em>Final Fantasy<\/em> I bothered with.<\/p>\n<p>The two <em>Sonny<\/em> games are pretty similar, the second just improves on the first in all of the above four categories except the second one &#8211; the games are identical in what you actually do in them. It&#8217;s entirely feasible to play the first game through (it&#8217;s not very long) to learn the basics and enjoy the plot (such as it is), especially as the second game seems to be considerably more difficult and much longer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My series of browser game reviews continues. The two Sonny games are console adventure games (CRPGs, as they&#8217;re called) in style, closely akin to Final Fantasy and the like. Now, I don&#8217;t remember that I&#8217;d have spilled my full invective against the genre here at the blog, but those who know me might have heard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,15,32,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actual-play","category-browser-games","category-volume1","category-reviewing"],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Eero Tuovinen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/author\/eerotuovinen\/"},"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arkenstonepublishing.net\/isabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}