Avalon Code (1): The brightest hidden gem of them all

I am in LOVE with that game. Completely, deliriously, ridiculously in love. 

Avalon Code, developed by Matrix Software and released in 2008(jp), 2009(na) and 2010(eu) for the Nintendo DS, is the classic example of an underrated game. It’s a great and polished RPG that, for a number of reasons, went mostly unnoticed at the time of its release and then very quickly slipped into obscurity. 

Before I purchased and started playing this game, I browsed through a few reviews out of curiosity, just to know what kind of game I should expect. Those reviews painted a basic picture of a slightly-above-average game, with somewhat gimmicky and occasionally cumbersome mechanics. A game that was indeed good, but by no means extraordinary, and would certainly not rank amongst the best RPGs for the DS. And thus, my idea was made. I expected a game that would offer me a nice experience, but would ultimately not be that memorable, and would certainly not enter my personal RPG hall of fame.

Boy, how utterly wrong I was.

I fell in love with Avalon Code within the very first minutes of playing. It totally blew my mind, and swept me with an overwhelming sense on wonderment, elation and giddy joy that I had not experienced with such intensity since my Solo Run of Dragon Quest IX. In my eye, this game feels like a true work of love, and an impressive one at that. I want to give it the praise I feel it rightfully deserves, and hopefully make more people eager to discover that beautiful, sparkling hidden gem. 

But before that, I want to try to figure out how such a great game came to be so little known and underrated, while explaining at the same time what Avalon Code is all about. For it seems to me that the reasons why this gem slipped through the greatness radar and fell into obscurity are somehow linked to the very nature of Avalon Code’s concept and gameplay. 

That (in)famous Book of Prophecy

Avalon Code’s most distinctive and unique feature is the so-called “Book of Prophecy”, which you receive at the very beginning of the game. Long story short, it’s basically the most important item in the game world, highly coveted by several villains, and it allows you to record data from people, monsters and others objects of interest. This data is made of so-called “codes”, shaped like Tetris pieces, which you can recombine to your liking in order to change said people and monsters’ attributes, as well as create all sorts of weapons, accessories and objects to help you during your adventure. The Book’s very existence and presence is of course justified by the storyline, which puts you in the role of the “Chosen One” who will have the important role of recording into the Book everything valuable before the world comes to an end, and then decide what the new world will look like. 

This very distinctive feature is also the most universally lambasted by critics and players alike, who ramble endlessly about how cumbersome and inconvenient it is, and about how it turns out to be a really uncomfortable and unpractical menu system. And here is, in my opinion, the first great misconception that tipped Avalon Code towards that undeserved fall into obscurity: to reduce the Book to a mere menu interface, while it is actually so much more than that. While the menu is actually contained in the Book, the Book itself can definitely not be described as only a kind of glorified and somewhat gimmicky menu system. At this point, we have to remember who created this game in the first place: Avalon Code is the brainchild of producer Yoshifumi Hashimoto, of Harvest Moon and Rune Factory fame. The similarities between these two series and Avalon Code cannot be ignored and overlooked, as they share the same basic principle of nurturing, organizing and tilling a defined space in the game world. That defined space is pretty figurative in the Harvest and Rune series, as it happens to be a farm where you have to grow crops and tend animals, and more abstract in Avalon Code, where you are in charge of rearranging Tetris-shaped pieces of codes within the pages of a Book; but the idea at the root of the gameplay is undeniably similar. You are expected to take charge of the Book and to organize it to your liking, for instance by grouping similar codes together in some pages in order to make them easier to retrieve when they become necessary. Unfortunately, because the Book is so often seen and presented as only a mere menu interface, most players don’t dare to modify it as much as they could, thus making the search for specific codes unnecessarily harder and depriving themselves of the joy of mastering the Book and making it their own. It certainly doesn’t help that the whole concept is so abstract; in fact, the abstraction of it all may very well have fuelled this unfortunate misapprehension of reducing a key gameplay element to a mere menu gimmick.  

Three games in one

This reduction of the Book of Prophecy to a menu interface while it’s actually so much more is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the net of misapprehension surrounding Avalon Code. The game is nearly universally presented as an Action RPG with a few gimmicks, including the Book of Prophecy; but a closer look at it shatters this idea. Avalon Code is no mere Action RPG; in fact, it’s technically not even a full-blown Action RPG to start with. Upon careful inspection and play, Avalon Code turns out to be a genuine mix of three different gaming genres, represented in fairly equal proportions. 

Now, that certainly makes the whole picture harder to apprehend and fuels further dislike of the game. While many of us can gladly accept a twist on a familiar genre, approaching and appreciating a true mix of genres can be much more challenging, especially when the said genres happens to differ wildly and when the player is expected to switch from one genre’s style of gameplay to the other on the fly, which is precisely the case in Avalon Code. As for the three genres, here they are:

—When dealing with the Book, the game plays like a Puzzle game. You are expected to use visual memory and strategic thinking as you cleverly reorganize codes in order to create new items and make the Book your own carefully tilled field—albeit a rather abstract one, granted. As you progress through the game, you will obtain recipes to create new items, the most valuable of them being presented as sliding puzzles that you have to solve first in order to get the much coveted recipe. Basically, as puzzle-like as it can get without turning straight into Tetris.

—When on the field or in dungeons, the game plays like an action-adventure game, similar to the Zelda series. You are then expected to slay enemies on the go and solve practical puzzles entirely based on skill and good timing. You can handle two different weapons at the same time, just like in Zelda games, and even pull out a sword attack which is virtually a rip-off of Link’s Spin Attack. 

—When interacting with NPCs, the game plays like a glorified and expanded romance sim. The romance that you can initiate with a few chosen NPCs is only a piece of that juicy expanded romance sim pie: in fact, by handing over presents like there’s no tomorrow, you can deepen your relationship with virtually every single character in the game and get to know them better through cutscenes, on top on getting interesting items that they will gracefully hand you if you do their bidding.

Like I mentioned earlier, these three styles of gameplay constantly overlap: as a result, Avalon Code is much more demanding and harder to master than a game sticking to a single genre. This is also a bone of contention when it comes to criticizing the game, as many reviewers and players felt the whole thing turned out to be messy and confusing, without really being able to pinpoint the exact reason why it felt so. But when all is sorted out and when one knows what to expect, it’s really just a matter of being patient and dedicated enough to learn how to master Avalon Code’s complex patchwork of a gameplay.

From giggles to tears

Another point that rubbed some reviewers the wrong way is Avalon Code’s unevenness when it comes to its general tone. Most RPGs choose a type of atmosphere and stick to it all along the storyline, whether it’s dark, solemn, melancholic or light-hearted; but Avalon Code is a game that stubbornly refuses to commit to a single mood. In fact, Avalon Code may very well be the ultimate gaming incarnation of mood swings: here is a game that switches shamelessly from one tone to the next in the blink of an eye. 

Let’s first tackle the bright side of the Force. Avalon Code is a game that is unashamedly goofy. Goofiness basically pops up in every place, and no place or circumstance is sacred enough to be spared by this invasion. It pops up in the middle of fights, with the deliciously ridiculous Judgment Link move and the equally deliciously ridiculous dedicated music that accompanies it. It pops up in the peculiar dressing style of many characters, which will make your eyes bleed. Heck, this is a game in which minotaurs don kilts and in which your very character themselves are dressed like they basically jumped into the first pieces of clothing they drew out of the closet. It seeps from tons of cutscenes and one-liners making fun of characters, so much so that in the end, everybody gets their fifteen minutes of shame. Yep, even the king of the country, and even your main character. On some occasions, the goofiness even takes a step further and gets a corny edge. This corny edge, as you may imagine, appears mostly through the romance scenes. I have very little interest in romance in general when it comes to fiction or videogames, and tend to be rather blasé about it; and yet, I found myself grinning stupidly more than once as the romantic scenes unfolded. 

But as the Force, this game has a much darker side. The overall story actually has a rather dark tone to start with, casting you as a character whose mission is to save valuable things before the world’s imminent destruction, rather than to prevent that said destruction itself as in most RPGs. That very story then throws at you one of the most shocking plot twist I’m ever seen in a videogame, leaving your character in absolute misery and yourself in a whirlwind of conflicting emotions (and as you may expect, there will be a post about this). Towards the end of the storyline, the atmosphere gets darker and darker, both literally and figuratively, as though the game feels compelled to remind you at every second that, you know, the world is going to end soon; and it does so in a way that is incredibly effective. And yet, at the same time, you can still practice the silly Judgment Link move in combat, or get corny love confessions.  

So yes, this game has mood swings; and so will you when you play it. This is a game that will make you grin and giggle like a teenager at times, and feel sad and miserable at others. You will go from peaks of elation to pits of misery in the course of a single playthrough. Like it or not, that’s how Avalon Code is, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, especially since it’s so craftily executed. 

And all that’s in between

Apart from all this, Avalon Code’s road to glory may have been hampered by a few other elements that set it dramatically apart from the current trends in videogaming. 

—This game is HARD. It’s not one of those RPGs that will have you brag about clearing a whole playthrough while dying only twice. You WILL die in this game, and you will die a lot; so much, in fact, that you soon won’t bother keeping track of your deaths. You will die because enemies are numerous, vicious and determined to knock you dead, and your life bar starts off as miserably tiny. On top of that, the weapons take some training to get used to, and even the seemingly ridiculous Judgment Link move is quite hard to master, causing you to die again and again at the hands of enemies until you become an expert in all thing fighting. Still, this is no Ghost’n’Goblins: Avalon Code remains fair in its hardness and shows some mercy, allowing you to start again from the point where you die and to save your progression at any moment. So while there is undoubtedly an element of patient die&retry here, it’s thankfully not a punishing one.

—This game is CRYPTIC. Tutorials, when there are any, are reduced to a bare minimum, and even the manual is far from being exhaustive when it comes to game features and mechanics. Thus, you are left having to figure out a lot of things by yourself, by exploring and poking your nose and stylus all around the place. (Once again, quite a Zelda-like feature, in my opinion.) 

—This game is DEMANDING. Not only is the learning curve steep, but it also branches out in different directions, due to the mix of gameplay styles at the core of the game. It requires patience and dedication, and a lot of practice. On top of that, Avalon Code doesn’t flaunt its secrets easily: in fact, if you want to see all that the game has to offer, you will very likely have to tackle more than one playthrough. Even more than two or three, for that matter. Some items are basically too well-hidden to be discovered on a first playthrough, and may only be discovered on subsequent ones, as your knowledge and understanding of the game’s logic increases. On top of that, Avalon Code boasts a resolutely conservative approach when it comes to romance, allowing you to date only one character at a time. It also offers different types of romantic scenes, depending at which moment of the game you woo potential sweethearts. This, combined to the fact that you can play as a male or a female character, means that if you want to see the unfolding of all the romance events for all the potential bachelors, you will have to replay the game numerous times. Plain and simple. And unashamedly demanding. Now, of course, this can also be seen as high replay value; and replay value is good, o yes precious. 

So, while these points don’t lower the quality of the game by any means, one has to admit that they are not exactly in touch with the mood of the times. In a gaming era that gave birth to games like Final Fantasy XIII and Beyond: Two Souls, which play virtually like interactive movies, the notions of die&retry, meticulous exploration, patience and perseverance are not likely to make a hit. These are concepts that hark back to the old days of 8 and 16-bits gaming, when difficulty was not considered a major deterrent to gaming; and I strongly think that difficulty of this sort still shouldn’t be a deterrent to gaming and get in a game’s way to greatness. 

So, this is what Avalon Code is all about. I really feel that most critics approached that game with a set of mind that was too narrow, reducing it to less than what it actually is and brushing it off way too quickly. This is definitely a shiny hidden gem that needs to be rediscovered, appreciated, cherished and, last but not least, played to death. I’m not done yet with that game, both on this blog and on my DS; oh no! There’s more coming soon!

Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!