I love Zangeki no Reginleiv for how it illustrates the divide between many gamers and our modern ‘Industry’. Reginleiv is very much an imperfect game, no doubt about that. It has many warts. However, it is also doing some things that games today refuse to do. EDF also followed the same course. It was ridiculed from those ‘experts’ but very much loved by many gamers.
The game is so over-the-top that I find it extremely entertaining just to watch it. I find myself laughing. The game is very campy. But it is extremely fun. It is like that movie that all the critics hate and the movie industry hates, but people enjoy the corniness and zaniness of it.
One thing Reginleiv does well is that it creates an epic battlefield with many, many units. Zelda used to do this long, long ago. It does not do this anymore. Most games don’t do the ‘epic battlefield’ because that would mean they would be forced to use lower quality textures and models. The weapons are also so over the top such as that exploding wand thing that causes body parts to fly in all directions. Ka-boom! hahaha
I miss when games were trying to be zany. Today, every game is trying to be ‘serious’. I do not know whether Reginleiv intended to be serious or not but the result is some great humor. With the fact that a spaceship appears in one level of this Norse god Mythology War certainly points that the humor is intentional.
But I love how perplexing the game appears to be to some people. Look at this EuroGame review.
Giving the game a 5/10, the review starts with…
Zangeki no Reginleiv is a terrible game, but don’t hold that against it. Some of my favourite games are terrible, like Sumotori, or Michigan: Report from Hell, or Raw Danger, or Jambo! Safari, or indeed Earth Defence Force 2017, developer Sandlot’s previous game. Zangeki – a Japanese-only, Wii-exclusive release – looks like a low-budget arcade game from the late nineties, it has ludicrously awful physics that send dismembered enemies whizzing comically across badly rendered landscapes, its trees look like seaweed on a stick, its cut-scenes stutter and jerk, the main characters spend half their lives caught on scenery and the camera doesn’t work. Sometimes, it’s enormous fun.
Does this writer not sound confused? It is like he is saying, “I enjoy playing it, but the game fails on the traditional review method of ‘graphics’, check, ‘cutscenes’, check, and so on.” Much of the ‘badly rendered’ landscapes and all is to allow many units on the screen at once. Sandlot is pretty good at doing that. Fans of their games enjoy the ‘epic battle’ feeling. The price for the ‘epic battle’ is low graphic quality for everything.
Glinting through all this awfulness are moments of greatness: when limbless ogres get caught on the scenery and jerk pathetically about, gurning gormlessly; or when a hammer strike makes four of five of the big bastards explode into meaty chunks at once, and you can barely see through the hilariously terrible blood effects; or when you’re fed up of slicing up orcs and suddenly an elephant with four tusks and an axe tied to its trunk appears out of nowhere, or spaceships arise from the sea and start beaming down yet more ogres (the story explains nothing about why any of this might be happening). It’s shonky as all hell, but Zangeki is rarely boring.
Talk about an abuse of parentheses.
It amuses me the writer does not connect the two in the bolded sentence. Perhaps Zangeki is ‘rarely boring’ precisely because it is shonky as all hell. With things like spaceships appearing, this was intentional. Some of the most memorable old school games were intentionally ‘shonky as all hell’. The Engrish and even Woolsyisms added to the experience. “You spoony bard!” “You son of a submariner!” “It’s a secret to everyone.” We love that stuff.
Look at Red Dead Redemption. The most entertaining parts are these ‘shonky as all hell’ parts. The critics and game companies may cover their eyes in shame, but gamers have a ball with them.
The glitches make Red Dead Redemption far more interesting to me than without them.
What I find most interesting about Reginleiv are the Amazon reviews. The Japanese translated to English certainly is babelfish, but you can get the gist of their comments. Out of 84 reviews, only 3 are 1 star, 4 are 2 star, 8 are 3 star, 23 are four star, and 46 are five stars. Someone apparently likes this game. (And I think the absurd chopped up ogre nature would play better to Western audiences than Japanese ones).
Usually when a game has some people liking it intensely but not pulling in large sales numbers, it means something about the game is very unrefined. The people who like the game have dug through all the unrefined stuff or ignore that part entirely. The masses, of course, cannot. The unrefined parts are pretty easy to identify with Reginleiv. But the game is doing something that is causing much love from gamers. What is it?
My guess is that the game is embracing ‘massive battles’. One thing I really wish 3d games would do more often is allow me to see more of the landscape. Many 3d games, such as Zelda games, exist in teeny tiny landscapes with tons of loading screens between them (hello Monster Hunter Tri). I would prefer to have less quality graphics and a larger landscape with swarming enemies than a nerfed landscape with few enemies but better graphics.
Remember when Zelda games used to have tons of enemies on the screen? When Link was in the midst of a vast battlefield trying to dodge and crawl his way out of there alive?
As you can see above, Zelda used to have vast battlefields with many units on it. You do not see this in modern Zelda. Twilight Princess tried in some parts, you have to give them credit for that. Some events were scripted like the horse battles. But I think the best moments of the game was when Link was on a large landscape with many units moving around him (like Gerudo Desert with those pig riders).
Here is one last Reginleiv video. This one has a dragon! When was the last time you saw anything like this occur in Zelda that wasn’t a scripted boss fight? It would be quite interesting for a dragon to just decide to invade the peaceful Hyrule Field. (Dragon appears at 45 seconds in.)
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