Sequence Review
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Now, another indie RPG in the same field takes a stab at the same type of gameplay, but with another twist. Sequence can best be described as the first in the previously non-existent rhythm RPG genre. Rather than puzzles, Sequence manages to carve out a niche for itself with addictive gameplay inspired by Dance Dance Revolution, infused with stats, equipment, and a fully-voiced story to carry it along. While the grind inherent in these sorts of games is just as prevalent as ever, the "rhythm battles" Sequence brings to the table are a lot of fun, and the originality of it all makes Sequence stand out in the crowd.
Fourth Wall? What Fourth Wall?
Sequence, for a game devoted almost solely to its core game mechanic, is actually surprisingly heavy on story and characters. Playing as Ky, a university student who has been kidnapped and trapped in a mysterious tower, presumably for testing purposes, you're aided by a friendly-yet-snarky female helper, Naia, who speaks via intercom. The initial story setup comes across as a bit forced, but as the game goes on, the characters are fleshed out a lot more than you'd expect. It's schlocky, no question, but it's the kind of schlock that still manages to make you care for its characters. The story beats and plot twists are all fairly standard and predictable, but even so I found myself interested in what would happen next.
If there's one thing that can be said of the story and writing in Sequence, it's that its author, Jason Wishnov, is pretty heavily invested into Internet culture. The game spouts a reference a minute, from 4chan, to Craigslist, to "yo dawg" jokes, and so on. Characters even talk in netspeak ("omg", "lmao", etc.) from time to time. Although it's clear the intent was to get some easy laughs from players - and admittedly, it does work from time to time - I did find myself getting a bit impatient with the constant "remember that meme from a few years ago?" shout-outs the game revels in providing.
A game like Sequence probably isn't going to have an excellent story, but considering the strength of its characters and plot relative to other entries in the genre, the forced attempts to be relevant to gaming and Internet culture can come across as more a plea for attention than genuinely funny. I appreciate the intent, but the conflict between the game's relatively self-serious storyline and the fourth-wall-breaking way in which it's almost constantly delivered hampers the effectiveness of it. It's easy to say "story in this type of game doesn't matter", but as it's one of the main hooks driving the gameplay forward, I think it's worth being critical about.
Dancing to Victory
Speaking of gameplay, it's about time I get to it. For those unfamiliar with Dance Dance Revolution, it's a popular rhythm game with arcade origins, which revolves around pressing directional arrows (up, down, left right) in time with a song. Although traditionally dance games of this nature have used mats or platforms with pressure-sensitive buttons to literally get gamers dancing, the popularity of the gameplay also led to dozens of similar games being produced for the PC and other platforms, where more traditional arrow key or directional pad button input took priority. In short: arrows come down top-to-bottom, and it's your job to hit the right buttons in sequence.
Where Sequence differentiates itself is in adapting a more traditional battle system to this type of gameplay. Rather than fighting against the clock, or going for a high score, you're trying to beat an opponent by launching your attacks and summarily defending against theirs. Instead of one playing field, Sequence provides three - one for defense, one for offense, and one for building up mana (which allows you to cast spells). Since only one field can be affected at any given time, you'll need to be able to keep an eye on all three at once and switch between them as needed. The eventual goal is to whittle down your enemy's hit points before he/she/it can do the same to you.
Early on, Sequence is outright confusing, but the game does a good job of providing tutorials that players who have never even played a rhythm game before should be able to follow. Concepts like attacking, defending, casting spells, switching playing fields, etc. are all handed out one at a time along with the story details, and it gives you enough time to build up the mental discipline and coordination necessary to excel in the game's later stages. The game is divided up into seven floors, with each floor bookended by a boss battle, which usually puts the new spells and dexterity you've learned to the test. By the first floor, I found I had already mostly come to grips with the game, and by the second and third I was ready to tackle the tougher challenges.
Sequence, though driven almost entirely by keyboard (on the PC), is quite functional and easy to play once you get used to the controls. Buttons are fully remappable, and what's more, it's possible to set up multiple binds for the same functions, which means you can play one-handed or two-handed; personally, I found that using my right hand on the arrow keys combined with my left hand on the Q, E and number keys worked well, considering the multi-tasking Sequence requires. As the game is also on Xbox LIVE, it also supports gamepads - these controls worked just fine, though I did feel that the keyboard was ultimately a bit more precise, so I'd probably pick the PC version over the console version if the choice was available. The learning curve is steep, but the sense of progress you make over the course of the game is quite palpable.
The RPG side of things is functional and straightforward. Level-ups are gained for defeating standard enemies and bosses, and influence hit points, mana, offense and defense. These automatically increase on each level-up, but different types of equipment (weapons, armor and accessories) also allow for bonuses. Equipment can also provide some interesting effects, like faster spell cooldowns, so often the decisions to choose between one piece of equipment or the other aren't so clear-cut. The sense of character progression is good, and while you'll be able to decimate enemies that previously gave you a hard time at earlier levels, the game's challenge level is relatively constant, with a big jump in difficulty in visiting each new stage, and slowly leveling off as you gain in experience.
Back to the Grind
Unfortunately, even with its innovative rhythm battles, Sequence is far from a perfect game. The biggest problem, which becomes visible even fairly early on, is that the game is heavily geared towards grinding. As some readers may know, I'm not a big fan of grinding to excess, and Sequence requires perhaps the most grinding of just about any game I've played lately, casual RPG or otherwise. In a game largely pushed forward by the prospect of new songs and story developments, being forced to play the same songs and fight the same enemies again and again really puts a damper on the experience.
The bulk of this grind makes itself manifest through the game's crafting system. In order to make progress through the game's floors, it's necessary to craft keys to unlock the way forward. Crafting ingredients are obtained through fighting enemies, and these have varying drop rates to them, some as low as 15% or so. This means right off the bat that just to progress, you'll potentially need to fight the same enemies several times over to make it to the next stage of the game. There were times where I had to fight an enemy about 20 times over in order to get a single ingredient, which, quite frankly, sucked. In this case I think going for pseudo-random numbers rather than true random numbers would have really helped the game - gambler's fallacy or not, at least it would make for less grinding.
If that was all there was, I could bear it. Unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to grinding. The best weapons, accessories, and spells must all be created through crafting, and these pull from the same ingredients as the keys needed to progress. What's more, crafting costs experience points to perform, and your chances can never be absolute - sacrifice almost an entire level's worth of XP and you'll still only have a 95% chance of success. Spells must also be crafted, and yet more XP must be sacrificed to attempt learning them (which is by no means a sure thing with some of the harder spells).
While in practical terms you'll rarely be let down by those 95% odds, when you consider that you'll need to battle monsters many times over to collect rare ingredients, and then add in the fact that you'll likely want to fight more to regain the levels you've lost, plus the fact that you'll potentially have to do it all over again due to failed crafting attempt, it becomes clear that much of the game's structure is devoted solely to extending play-time in the most artificial way possible. As fun as the core battles are, and the storyline is engaging, when you have to grind so much in between to make progress, it becomes easy to lose sight of where the fun is supposed to be. The sole saving grace is that at least you don't need ingredients from the earlier floors to craft items on the later ones - otherwise I think I would have quit the game out of frustration.
The crafting system and emphasis on grinding reveals another unfortunate truth in Sanctum - aside from the battles, or performing related challenges to learn new spells, or watching story sequences, there really isn't a lot to do in the game otherwise. Battles are selected through menus, with no exploration, dungeon-crawling, and so on to be found. Even the Puzzle Quest series had overland map navigation to break things up a little, and while I respect that Sequence is an indie game made by, more or less, two people, it's hard to get around the fact that it can grow repetitive. Even the ability to walk around a little, or go room-to-room like an old-school dungeon crawler would have been neat. Getting to a safe room should feel like an accomplishment, escaping the enemy hordes by a thread - instead it's just a menu screen you craft and battle from. Ho-hum.
Presentation and Soundtrack
Being a rhythm game, it's understandable that the majority of Sequence's production values went into its soundtrack, and for the most part, it doesn't disappoint. While I can't say I'm familiar with its contributing artists Ronald Jenkees and Michael Wade Hamilton, their electronic-styled music covers a range of tempos, moods and styles and is generally quite catchy and fun to play along to. There's both variety and consistency that comes out of keeping the soundtrack confined to two artists, which I appreciate. Sure, it's no Daft Punk, but in a game focused on music, it's still nice to see that the soundtrack is worth listening to.
If there's one blemish, it's that there simply aren't enough songs to go around. With about 20 songs in total, and some of them devoted to the menu screens, cutscenes, etc., the effective number of tracks in battle is about a dozen. I don't mind repeating the same songs, and the game uses the lure of new songs as a way to help drive progression, but there's no getting around the fact that eventually you'll tire of the same old tracks. This is exacerbated by the grindy nature of the gameplay, which ensures you'll probably hear the same songs three times more often than you'd wish, while others are mysteriously only used a handful of times in boss encounters.
Visually, Sequence uses 2D artwork almost exclusively, adopting a sort of watercolor anime-influenced style, all the work of a single artist, Wendi Chen. I can't say I'm personally in love with the art style itself, but the backdrops are colorful and well-drawn, even if they are largely static. Character art is a little more mixed - the human characters have a ton of personality, but some of the monsters have some pretty strange designs and a few look like they could use a revision. Spell effects are simple but distinctive, and while they aren't flashy, they're easy to read and don't get in the way of gameplay.
The audio department, outside of the music, is a bit more bare-bones, with sparse but distinct sound effects complementing the visuals. The game is fully voice-acted, and while the cast is limited, they do a reasonably competent job giving life and personality to the characters - it's certainly not something I'd expect from a $5 USD indie title, and I think it helps Sequence stand out from the pack, and even some more expensive titles put out by bigger developers, like the aforementioned Puzzle Quest.
Conclusion
What you get with Sequence is effectively a game of two halves. On the one hand, it's got a completely brand-new style of gameplay that combines rhythm games and RPGs in a way that, frankly, is just a lot of fun, especially for shorter sessions. However, its focus on grinding means that gameplay inevitably grows repetitive, and while I'm sure the idea was to help extend play-time in what would have otherwise been a four-hour game, that doesn't make fighting the same monsters over and over any more fun. Combine that with the lack of much to do outside of the battles themselves, and Sequence is never able to quite stand up on its core rhythm-RPG gameplay, as interesting and enjoyable as it is.
Perhaps I've been a little hard on Sequence. Admittedly, I'm critical when it comes to just about any game, and while I tend to give indie titles a free pass when it comes to aspects of presentation and scope, the fact is that Sequence does have some legitimate issues, and I don't think the catchy soundtrack or enjoyable battle system entirely make up for that. In the end, Sequence is a strong first effort for Iridium Studios, and worth its asking price, as long as you're willing to put up with the grinding that comes with it. If you can get past the grinding and the awkwardness of some of the writing, there's a lot to like here. I'm eager to see where the rhythm-RPG gameplay concept will go, as well, and how it can be expanded beyond its current scope.
