Spectrobes: Origins (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We end this today!

Krawlosphere

Final dungeon looks like a dump and is just not
interesting to explore. Checks out.

Rallen and Jeena land their ship inside the planetoid and step out. The place is nothing but writhing Krawl flesh. Gross. No other way but forward. I mean it, too; this dungeon is nothing but one long corridor forward with larger rooms for battles. You have exactly one unavoidable battle in each corridor, and then one longer fight in each room. Multiple rounds of enemies topped with mini-bosses. Thankfully, the mandatory fights don’t return once they have been cleared, which means that you can go back to the ship at any time to save, heal your Spectrobes and swap your team around.

Rice balls! Pluck 'em right out of the ground, and eat 'em!
It's okay, they're clean! Somehow!

Kinda annoys me that there’s no other way whatsoever to heal your Spectrobes, other than when they level up. The only healing items in this game are rice balls, coming in four varieties that heal your player character 30, 100, 300 or 1000 HP. Nothing for your creatures. No way to bring them back into action during a battle after they’re fainted, either – no Revives here! Nope, the only controllable way to heal any of these battle beasts is through a save point. And, oh yeah, you can’t buy rice balls anywhere. There's only two ways to find some. The first is to find them with your searcher critter. The second is to discard a cleaned fossil, which trades it away for random items – can be minerals or rice balls, gotta be lucky. Not a very reliable thing. Kinda sucks when you're short and need many, quick, before heading out to fight a boss.

These charged attacks are pretty awesome to watch.
They're better when they actually deal, y'know, good damage
to the enemies and bosses.

And the Krawlosphere being what it is, you won’t find any fossils, crystals or healing items here. Any light patches to investigate will summon enemy encounters. Which, to be fair, makes the planetoid a perfect training spot if your team is still weak against what’s coming up.

Of course, Krux stays behind while his lap dog attacks.

The mandatory fight at the end of the third large room leads directly into a cutscene, and then the final boss fight, so you can’t go back to train some more or save between them. That fight will be tough, as it’s a battle against Krux AND another massive Krawl, at the same time. The large monster is a lot easier to defeat, so it’s best to focus on that one first. But Krux is a tough boss on his own, constantly teleporting around and appearing close to your character or your creature for sneak attacks.

Stop teleporting like a coward and fight me head-on, Krux!
Don't just appear behind Rallen or Jeena!

A very impressive scene, rendered in better CGI than the rest.
Hey, might as well give the final victory its due.

Well, the story commands that he loses, so he gets his demise being thrown down into the core of the Krawlosphere. The place begins crumbling down and the planetoid is getting dangerously close to Wyterra. Jeena hurries to get the ship, while Rallen will go down to destroy the core with the Legendary Spectrobe Kaio. The two hug, then run off their separate ways to enact their plan. Jeena struggles to start the ship and it falls into a chasm, while Rallen gets to the core and summons Kaio to shatter it. Which it does, in majestic fashion. The place freezes over and breaks apart, but he is saved in time by a different ship, piloted by Grant and Kamtoga, who rescued Jeena. The four fly out of the Krawlosphere and head back to Wyterra, while the planetoid explodes into stardust floating around the Earthlike planet.

The NPP officers return their Cosmolinks to Radese, then get their big hurrahs from everyone at the village. Even Gretta and Salia from Doldogo come by, and we even get a communication from Tidy and Scout, who are accompanied by Neal. On this, Rallen, Jeena and Grant wave their final goodbyes to the Kaio system, and go home. Roll credits!

Hopefully that portal doesn't open only once every 30 years!

Postgame

Yeah, this thing is even more impressive than the first time.
Also, there were no intrusive Krawl enemies in the fight
back then.

After beating the story, you unlock a new chapter that takes you back to just before heading out to the Krawlosphere (with the levels your team had after the final boss). If you follow through this secondary storyline, you’ll have to revisit every major area of every planet, with the caveat that Krawl encounters will be several levels stronger. In late-game spaces like Mt. Awakening, enemy levels will reach all the way to 95. The same goes for all bosses, back even stronger than before. And they’ve all reappeared where they were previously fought, too.

The one difference appears when you defeat every major planet boss (excluding Jado and Krux) again; this summons an even stronger bonus boss, Darkroe, which you can meet through a portal in the Great Desert. It's got all the hallmarks of a classic RPG superboss.

That thing Krawl-ed right out of Hell...
And I'm gonna send it back crying to its mommy.

...nah, I'm good. I'd take a trophy though.
Cut me some slack, that was a goddamn Superboss.

And what do you get for defeating that one? Well, we can go back to Kotetsu, the blacksmith of Haven Village in Wyterra. He will unlock the 100 Krawl Challenge in the Chamber of Ordeals, within the Sanctum Ruins visited at the very beginning of the game. In this challenge, you have to fight as many Krawl as possible; they’ll all be of a single base "species", but if you defeat many with a Spectrobe of a specific property, they’ll start spawning with the property that’s strong against that one, encouraging you to switch your partners occasionally. In my opinion, a reward like this should have been unlocked right after the final boss, as it could serve as a one-stop spot for level grinding the remainder of your collection. As a reward against the superboss, it’s disappointing. What you earn is: More fighting!

Beating the main story adds a silver-colored Komainu to your profile. Completing the Spectrobe Database (I almost called it a Dex) gifts you a second, golden one. That’s not too difficult, since you’re guaranteed to have found at least one fossil of each type during your journey. That’s only 28 families, each with one child form, one adult form, and one evolved form, for a total of 84; plus, the five secret species, available solely through code inputs, that’s 89; Kaio, the Legendary one, isn’t on the list, but Pegatinum is, taking the total to 90. Not too difficult, really.

Quick thoughts on Spectrobes

Spectrobes are a ‘Mon game so collecting is part of the point, even if the focus on an action RPG gives it a flair that several bigger franchises in the genre don’t have. I guess it makes sense to have a separate section for my personal thoughts on these creatures.

The postgame is just going through every area again,
which means playing the same puzzles a second time.
Hey, if it means more child Spectrobe interaction...

I appreciate the concept of child forms helping outside of battle while anything stronger is geared for combat – there’s only two downsides to this. It means you need to keep a few Child forms on standby. Good thing they can evolve to adult as early as Level 5, since leveling them is otherwise a slog; unearthing items gives minuscule amounts of EXP, and the only other way to raise them is through minerals in the incubators. Not that there's much of a reason to level them up significantly before evolution anyway.

Also, this all-blue boi? Only available by talking to the guy
on Menahat and connecting Origins to the Beyond the
Portals DS game.

The second is that digging for stuff gets bland after a while; all you’ll generally find is fossil cubes, rice balls, enemy encounters, and on rarer occasions, expansion cubes for the incubator system or kyptos for training. Aside from boring old EXP-gain minerals, you can find special ones that evolve a Spectrobe, or grant extra points to attack, defense or HP. Even then, EXP minerals aren’t great; the more they give, the rarer they are, and when you start finding the minerals that give the most, you’re at the point where your creatures need several of those to level up even once, and beating just two enemies will give out as much EXP for less hassle.

I would have loved to see more items appearing in the overworld when digging, especially ones giving more options to players; introducing items to heal or revive an adult or evolved Spectrobe would be great; the only way to do either is through a save point. I would have also loved more puzzle sections where we control our child form into areas where the masters can't go; it makes for a fun gamneplay shakeup in dungeons from Kogoeria to Slayso.

Looking pretty fierce there. And not too exaggerated
on details, either.

The system for evolving Spectrobes was complicated in the franchise’s first game, but I think it got streamlined too much; every creature goes from child to adult at Level 5, and then from adult to evolved at Level 30, which removes some uniqueness in that regard. Adults all gain a special attack at Level 10 and a bonus ability at Level 25. However, if you evolve a Spectrobe at Level 30, it will lose both, only to regain the special attack at Level 35 and the bonus ability at Level 45. …Why even lose either of those? Is it because there’s no PvP and the game needs some way to complicate things for the player?

You will rely mainly on the fast attackers above any others.
Also, you can have status effects inflicted on you or your
Spectrobe, but as far as I know, no creature you can use
can inflict effects to Krawl monsters.

There’s an attempt at balancing Spectrobes; the ones that take time to charge might attack multiple times in a row or, in the case of range attackers, shoot repeatedly. But since this is an action RPG where encounters either involve a quick-acting boss or lots of enemies, any Spectrobes that are slow to attack are automatically penalized. My favorites ended up being those that packed the biggest punch or attacked too fast to let the opponents react. Those that attacked slowly were a pain to level up and to use, no matter the battle.

Could you tell, through that mass, that this
is supposed to be a dog?

The last thing, mostly vibes on my end, is about designs and ideas. If this is a ‘Mon game, it will inevitably get compared to Pokémon. I think most child forms are cute, as they should be, just like unevolved Pokémon. Most of the adult forms hit the perfect spot, improving on the design of the child they come from, and looking as you’d expect a “grown-up” version of said child to be.

The evolved forms, though? Aside from a couple I did like, most feel utterly over-designed. Too much added to the adult form, going overboard and ruining the design. I would look up families on the Spectrobes Wiki, check evolved forms, and either be disappointed or struggle to tell what some of these creatures are even supposed to be! I can't forgive the lion one, it goes from cute to awesome to fugly. There are Evolved forms that I do like, and I feel like I could warm up to some more of them over time, but that first impression left a long-lasting impact.

Child: Cute. Adult: Perfect, no notes, don't add anything! Evolved: You said
to add nothing? Too bad, I ADDED EVERYTHING. Enjoy!

(Ideas-wise, most are fine, but a ‘Mon game can’t help it, some are weird. One is a dragon buoy that becomes a boat and then a ship; another is literally a pair of shoes.)

True final words

Spectrobes: Origins was the last game in the Spectrobes franchise, released for the Wii instead of the Nintendo DS like the other two games. Though it’s laying dormant and is unlikely to make a comeback, the series has its fans. It does something special by being an action RPG rather than turn-based, and the focus is on fighting off an alien invasion instead of being about a friendly competition among users of the titular creatures. A clever idea, no doubt.

Maybe it could have been fun to have slight differences in
gameplay between Rallen and Jeena. More than just a
different base weapon, anyway.

This game feels like a chapter into a larger narrative that isn’t yet finished; there’s ties to the previous entries, and it makes enough that we could reasonably imagine another game that follows up on them. Krux’s origins take centerstage, revealing his shared past with Rallen and Jeena’s commander, and how even Spectrobe Masters could fall prey to the Krawl if they’re driven to extremes. A secret ending reveals that Krux would have come back in a fourth game. By the same token, we’ve found out that Grant knows deep secrets about Krawl biology (such as their life fluid) that could imply a permanent end to this conflict. Like I said: Some middle chapter. Knowing that the story shouldn’t end there, but does due to outside factors (this game did not sell well enough to warrant further entries), is bittersweet. Putting aside the lore revealed, the story here is as classic as it gets, and not that groundbreaking.

Rallen and Jeena are fun, and getting to play as either is great; the secondary cast is made of archetypes but is decent. Did wish the returning characters were explained better for newcomers. I’ve gone over my thoughts on the Spectrobes. Same for my thoughts on the game’s three major gameplay elements, using child forms to dig up items, using adult/evolved forms in battle, and raising both. All three have their weaknesses that make me think a little more fine-tuning and more variety in options could make them excellent. I think having only five properties is low, but it’s better than three! Battle does tend to get a little repetitive down the line.

All in all, more areas that justify using the child forms
for more than just digging up stuff would have been great.

The game makes decent use of the motion controls; they’re better while searching for items, but the hectic pace of battle can lead to mistakes like calling back a Spectrobe when you intended it to attack, or vice versa. Motion controls shine best when excavating fossils; it can be tricky to do right and the last lousy percents before final cleanup can be quite annoying, but the whole process can still feel rewarding, especially when cleaning a new fossil (or doing better when cleaning one you had already done before Awakening is bland though, just shaking the remotes on a sequence of notes.

There's some interesting fights in there!

I was annoyed at the simplicity of dungeons in the second half of the game; there were interesting things in the Dodolgo and Kogoeria temples, then from Slayso onwards it’s all linear, without puzzles that would force the player to explore around and work their grey matter. Past the Memorial Tower, no other dungeon requires using a searcher to solve puzzles, either.

It's not a game that wowed me, it sits a little more on the okay side of the scale than great. While I enjoyed many aspects of it, I think it’s weak as a ‘Mon game, though it’s enjoyable for being a fresh spin on the concept. Action RPG creature collectors still aren’t common. If that sounds up your alley, you can check it out if you’re intrigued.

I’m not done with creature collectors, but I might want a month before posting about them again… well, expect something else soon!