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Post by UltimaterializerX on Aug 2, 2009 16:21:01 GMT -5
This review won me 50 bucks awhile back...
EarthBound
"No review could do this game proper justice... sort of."
7/10
When EarthBound first debuted in Japan in 1994, RPGs were flat-out dominating the SNES. Series like Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, and countless others were being pounded out one after the other, and it was beginning to crowd the genre. But along came one brilliant game called EarthBound that would take a look at every other RPG of the time and give it the proverbial middle finger. EarthBound was designed to do one thing: make fun of the various trends that were all over RPGs of the time. Little did Ape realize that they were creating one of the finest parodies of gaming pop culture that we would ever see.
Story: 10/10
The biggest strength of EarthBound is easily its storyline. First and foremost, the reason why EarthBound was so successful in the first place was because of a perfect translating team. In a time period when many games either had multiple translation errors or the English looked like it was written by epileptic seven year old girls with one functioning eye and three functioning fingers, EarthBound's translation was second to none. There are so many inside jokes, pop culture references and parodies of other RPG trends that a perfect translation was absolutely necessary to pull everything off. Without the amazing job done by the translation staff, the game would not have worked properly.
There are two main themes within EarthBound. One is the serious story involving the war against Giygas suffered by Ness and friends -- and the other are the various parodies, the inside jokes and references to the sixties that cause everyone who understands them to laugh their asses off. There are even various groundling humor jokes to keep those who may not be so educated about the sixties or their gaming history to roll on the floor. The game does a perfect job of balancing the humor with the seriousness, and it all comes to a dramatic conclusion in the latter 20% of the game that amounts to one of the best stretches of gaming in history.
A young boy named Ness is awoken in the middle of the night by his next door neighbor banging on the front door. A meteorite has fallen in Ness's hometown of Onett, but his neighbor Pokey has run off to investigate the phenomenon by himself. After Ness reaches the meteor, a bee from the future appears and tells Ness that the meteor represents a far deeper threat to the world. Giygas, the ethereal enemy of the known universe and the embodiment of evil itself, plans to destroy Ness's world by attacking from the future. There is a prophecy that three boys and a girl will be the ones to stop Giygas, and regardless of whether Ness wants anything to do with this destiny or not, he'll have no choice. Giygas already believes that Ness is one of the chosen ones, and will stop at nothing to make sure that Ness's destiny is not fulfilled. Ness has no choice but to don his baseball cap and his baseball bat and fight Giygas's minions as they harass Ness's every move.
While the story is fairly linear until the latter 20% of the game or so, the true beauty comes in the humor. There are inside jokes and random humor all over the place, and most of EarthBound is meant to be a parody of RPGs as opposed to a serious tale. Everything from the names of the cities down to what virtually every NPC in the game says and does is hilarious, and players with patience will find themselves wrapped in a great gaming experience. For example, one of the ways that Giygas tries to stop Ness and friends from progressing is turning everyone in Happy-Happy Village into cultists obsessed with the color blue.
"Happy-Happy Village is turning blue! Ha ha, get it?"
There's another part of the game in which you take control of a young schoolboy, but before sneaking out of school, you must go and get your goods from inside your locker. The key you're given doesn't work, but when you go back to the guy that gave you the bad key, he simply says "The key didn't work, did it? I thought that might be the case. So I just invented this 'Machine that Opens Doors, especially when you have a slightly bad key.' Sorry for the inconvenience." This is not only hilarious, but it's a parody of the fact that RPGs of the time did this to their players all the time. You'd get an item or a hint about how to complete your next task, yet said item usually wouldn't work and the party would have to find an entirely different route to take care of business. The constant modifications made to the airship in Final Fantasy 4 is a great example of this.
The humor also goes even deeper than the game's dialogue. The items and weapons in the game are all given hilarious descriptions, and in battle, you're almost always dealing with hilarious enemies with cooky designs and funny attacks. Watch out for the New Age Retro Hippie, because he's apt to brush his teeth in the middle of a fight, and the whiteness from his newly clean teeth may cause you to go blind and have your Guts stat temporarily go down. You may also want to watch out for the Dali's Clock (a tribute to the Spanish artist), Mole Playing Rough, the Ramblin' Evil Mushroom, the Cranky Old Woman, and any one of a hundred other hilarious enemies while on your journey.
Best of all is that even though EarthBound deliberately tries being absolutely hilarious, Ape still found it within themselves to create one of the all-time greatest stretches in the history of gaming as EarthBound winds down to its exciting close. Almost every RPG party is courageous, but it's easy to write courageous characters when making RPGs; but Ape takes it two steps farther with the party of EarthBound. Through the game, Ness barely speaks. In fact, the only insight you really get with his character are what others say about him and the flashbacks that Ness experiences at each "Your Sanctuary" location. Ness may be a mute, but his character manages to be dynamic. Crono could learn a lesson or two from EarthBound's hero, and the biggest reason why EarthBound's party is more courageous than the rest is because the characters aren't fighting because they want to. They're fighting because they have to, which is a message that EarthBound conveys much better than most any other RPG does. In most other RPGs, an unlikely team of heroes confronts evil, gets over their initial fears and eventually saves the world. In EarthBound, Ness and company have their destiny thrust upon them without having a say in the matter, and this does not change between the beginning and end of the game.
To add to this, by the end of the game Ness gives you a ton of insight into what he is feeling while on the adventure, and you're practically told point blank that Ness never wanted any part of the adventure thrust upon him. Yet still, Ness and friends march on to arguably the biggest sacrifice ever seen in an RPG. It's a very touching experience, as well as completely unexpected given the game's humor and events leading up to what the party eventually does to give themselves a chance at the final boss. There are very few stories as well-done as EarthBound's, if for no other reason than the game itself delivering one of the most dynamic and well-rounded scripts ever seen. The game isn't necessarily for everyone, but if you're a big RPG fan and this game fits your niche, prepare to be another member of the cult known as EarthBound's fanbase.
Gameplay: 3.5/10
Easily the weakest part of EarthBound, the way the game is played leaves it wide open to being very dry at times, and downright frustrating and annoying at others. This isn't to say that the gameplay doesn't have some good parts, but it's clear that the designers were more focused on making the gameplay funny rather than making it fun. The result is EarthBound taking its biggest hit in any category.
One of the lone bright spots in EarthBound's gameplay is how battles are initiated. While roaming the world, you'll see the enemies right on the screen rather than simply entering a random battle out of nowhere. What follows when Ness runs into the enemies are very innovative ideas that never caught on with other RPGs. If Ness and an enemy run into each other head-on, a normal battle occurs. If Ness is able to come up on an enemy from behind, Ness's party gets a preemptive strike to start the battle. If the enemy sneaks up on Ness, the enemies get a preemptive strike to start the battle. Best of all is that as the party grows stronger, battles don't even take place. When running into a weak enemy, the screen looks like it's about to enter the battle, but cuts off and gives Ness the win automatically. This is the idea that other RPGs should have caught onto years ago, but simply refused. Even today, RPG designers don't seem to want to copy off of this brilliant idea from EarthBound, despite the fact that those same enemies from early in the game will still give you the same experience and items as if you fought them in the first place. And without the fear of getting hurt in the slightest, no less. Some enemies will eventually get so weak that they'll turn around and run like hell away from Ness in hopes of not getting the crap kicked out of them. The one drawback to this is not seeing funny battle quotes from early in the game if you wish to revisit them, but given how the battle system is, it's not a total loss.
For a little while, the battle system in EarthBound is very fun. You'll enter battles, enjoy hilarious attacks from enemy and ally alike, and have a grand old time to the tune of almost feeling bad that you're beating the hell out of what's in front of you. But with few exceptions, the novelty can gradually wear off as the game progresses due to the extensive nature of how the battle system operates.
For those who have ever played one of the older Dragon Warrior games, EarthBound's battle system will look very familiar. The enemies will be in the middle of the screen looking at you, and you'll be attacking them from your position at the bottom of the screen. The catch here is that you won't actually see your characters on screen in battle. You'll see a little box with your character's name and stats in it. When that character performs an action, their box moves up a little. Ness's box going forward is supposed to symbolize Ness the character performing the action, and given that EarthBound was released in 1995, something this primitive is simply unacceptable and tacky.
EarthBound also tries to take the humor a bit too far, and it extends into causing a very overblown battle system that makes a mountain out of a molehill. In battle, you don't actually see the actions taking place; you merely see some flashes and effects on the screen, with narrative text at the top of the screen telling you what's going on. Everything from damage to skills to the casting of magic spells and even the effects of status are given to you in narrative form. It's cute when you first begin and stays funny for quite a long while, but by the end of the game the narration serves to drag battles out for far too long. Even those who are able to look past the narration dragging out a good deal of fights to long lengths could easily get annoyed to death when the biggest flaw from this system emerges: status effects. Since the game likes to run down every status effect on every character one effect and one character at a time, be prepared for hell in the event of your characters getting hit by multiple status effects in one battle. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the battle mechanics themselves, but the tacky nature of your characters not even being on the screen paired with narration having to give long run-downs of everything that happens can easily make one fear even the easiest of battles before the game is finished.
And it gets worse. Every RPG requires a fair amount of time getting your characters equipped and organized, yet given when EarthBound was released, its inventory system was much too outdated. Each character can only carry 14 items including what they have equipped, and duplicate items are counted separately and take up multiple inventory slots. As you progress through the game, you'll find yourself having to discard and rearrange many items, and the worst part of all is that you'll have to do this one item at a time. For example, if Ness's inventory is full and you've come across a brand new bat that you want to equip on him, you'll have to go into Ness's inventory, give one of his items to a fellow party member who is lucky enough to have a free inventory slot, then have the party member holding Ness's new weapon to give it to Ness. Then you will have to go into a separate equipment menu to give Ness his shiny new baseball bat that you plan on taking names with.
All the time. One at a time. It gets very annoying and very overblown quite quickly. It even extends past using, equipping, or rearranging items as well. At shops, you'll have to buy or sell items one at a time; there's no buying in bulk or buying quickly like in other RPGs that made sense of the system well before EarthBound came along. At the end of a battle if an enemy drops an item while you have a full inventory, you'll have to go through a whole song and dance to either make room for your new item or to let it go.
And if that wasn't bad enough, EarthBound's mostly bad gameplay is capped off by having a questionable control style. Movement is simple enough, but performing actions while outside of battle can be a hassle. Pressing A brings up a menu of six different options, and to talk to someone or check something without having to bring up said menu, you have to hit L; which is a tad ridiculous, given that the X/Y buttons have virtually no functionality in the entire game. It would have been better if X brought up the action menu and A were used to bypass it when needed, but for whatever reason EarthBound doesn't do this.
However, this is not to say that the gameplay doesn't have its bright spots. Enemies appearing in the areas rather than being invisible and only appearing in random battles was rare at the time of EarthBound's release, and the flow of the game is very smooth. There are very few spots in the game where you'll have little idea as to what to do next, and even if you do get stuck, every town in the game has a Hint shop in which you can pay a small fee to be told what to do next. This especially was a wonderful idea, and something that other RPGs would benefit from. You'll also find that while the towns and tasks within EarthBound are often rather large, you spend just enough time in each to feel like a part of each community, but not quite enough time to be bored out of your mind. The timing that EarthBound gives everything is wonderful, and each area is vastly unique in its own special way. In fact, some areas of EarthBound manage to further the humor factor of the game to a perfect level. Not only are inside jokes all over the place when it comes to game script, but the towns themselves help to add to this as well. And they need to, because EarthBound isn't like other RPGs in which towns are a safe haven and everything of note happens outside of them. In EarthBound, virtually all of the action is either within the towns or closely related to them. This will give you the feeling that the feats you're accomplishing are worthwhile, because everything is happening literally right in everyone else's backyard.
But few lights in EarthBound's gameplay shine brighter than the enemies and character variety among your party members. You'll acquire four characters through your adventure, and they're all different when it comes to strengths and weaknesses. For example, while Jeff is a master of items and can fix broken items overnight, Paula can't use items worth a damn. But Paula makes up for this by being a master of the Psi arts, while Jeff learns no Psi attacks through the entire game. Ness is a physical powerhouse with a little bit of magical ability, but is generally slower than everyone else. And Poo, while seemingly a master of everything, joins the party very late and is limited in his effectiveness.
Yet regardless of how strong your party becomes, EarthBound's enemies are unique in that no matter how strong you become, there are still enemies in this game who can easily whip your ass while barely breaking a sweat. Other RPGs will see enemies become practically obsolete by the end of the game, but not EarthBound. EarthBound is a good game in that it favors the tactical fighter over the powerhouse types, for if you charge into every battle and simply unleash your strongest spells you'll occasionally come across an enemy that will reflect all of your most powerful attacks back at you and kill you. And that's only one of the various tricks that the enemies possess. The enemies may be dynamic and funny to fight, but they can absolutely destroy you if you let them. In most RPGs, this should be the rule, but it's unfortunately the exception.
Overall, EarthBound's gameplay is nothing to write home about; in fact, it's well below average. But at the very least, it has enough bright spots to keep the game at least playable. Most games with below average gameplay can't claim this.
Graphics: 9/10
Graphically, EarthBound will be unlike most games you ever play. Very few games have the same graphic engine as EarthBound, and for good reason. It's very difficult to pull it off properly.
While viewing the world of EarthBound, you will be looking at the game from mainly three different perspectives: outside, inside, and in-battle. The main view of the world comes while Ness is exploring the world around him, and you view from a standard bird's eye view. However, what separates Earthbound from other RPGs is that while you're in a town, you truly feel like you're in a town. Towns in other RPGs are typically very small and can be explored in minutes, but towns in EarthBound are as large to Ness as a small community would be to a real person in real life. Given that one of Ape's goals for Ness was to seem humanized in comparison to other RPG characters of the time, accomplishing this graphical feat was paramount.
The towns in the game go a lot farther than simply being large, as well. They all have their own little natural features typically seen in small towns in real life, such as parks and hills. This is important to the EarthBound because the game's flow is about passing from one community to the other, not for the towns to be resting stops. In every place Ness visits, virtually all of the events take place in the town, and you the player are supposed to feel a part of each community. The size and graphical detail of each town is supposed to represent this. EarthBound also takes the extra step of angling the plane that Ness is walking on a little farther back to make said plane look more real than in other games. Typically, RPGs have a very plain top-down view that allows for very little realism. In EarthBound, it feels like you're viewing Ness's world from a 45 degree angle above Ness's head and that Ness's world looks very real -- a feat that was very difficult to implement in the 16 Bit era, and such that very few other games have been able to do it correctly.
When inside, the graphics engine becomes even more interesting. The viewpoint on Ness stays the same, but the world around him moves to a plane that converges on a distant point, as if you're looking at Ness's world while on his level. This makes every room that Ness enters feel more real, and you'll gain a true appreciation for how truly difficult it was to create the world of EarthBound. Even better are that the NPC sprites are all wonderfully detailed and very varied through the game, and that Ness's party isn't just Ness while on screen. Ness's friends walk besides him. Granted a lot of the sprites are literally grinning ear to ear, but it's a small price to pay given how unbelievable EarthBound's graphics turned out in the first place.
Last, but definitely not least, are the in-battle graphics. The way that the battle system is set up might be relatively archaic, and the enemy sprites may not do a damn thing other than sit there in their original artwork, but the game somewhat makes up for this with some of the trippiest battle backgrounds ever seen in such a battle system. Half the time you'll literally find yourself staring at the hypnotic backgrounds of the game rather than paying attention to the fight, but it will be very much worth it. It's like crack, and it helps add to one of the most overall graphically polished games of its or any other time in gaming.
Music: 7/10
Listening to EarthBound is much like beer in that it's an acquired taste; it's very love or hate and you'll rarely pay any casual attention to it unless you've actually grown fond of the taste. Some of the tracks in the game stand out, and you may find yourself humming along after you're forced to listen for awhile, but there are very few things that stand out overall in the game's soundtrack.
However, given that most of EarthBound is specifically designed to feel laid-back, the music not being intrusive and overly noticeable makes sense. In fact, all of the music in EarthBound is specifically designed to play along perfectly to the game's setting, and virtually every track goes along perfectly with what Ness and friends are doing. When you're in a casual town like Summers or Twoson, the music expectedly feels laid-back and calm. After ordering a pickup from Escargo Express and seeing the delivery guy magically run across the entire world in an effort to serve you out of thin air, the music is loud and obnoxious, just like it should be. There is not one moment in EarthBound where the music is out of place given the setting, which is an extremely large factor in the success of any RPG. RPGs are different from most genres in that the music plays a very large role in the game, and even though EarthBound's music isn't up there in terms of the greatest gaming soundtracks of all time, it doesn't need to be. The game isn't designed to have such a soundtrack in the first place, though this doesn't mean that a few of the tracks aren't memorable. The various battle tracks especially are worth noting, and given all of the time that the battle system will cause you to waste, it's a good thing that you'll have decent music to listen to while doing it.
Replayability: 6/10
EarthBound, while an extremely fun game to play the first time around, doesn't have enough variety within the play style to warrant many replays and challenge runs through the game. However, given that the game is relatively short by today's insane RPG standards -- The average playthrough will take anywhere between 30-40 hours -- it's worth playing through the game again once or twice just to catch everything the game has to offer. But other than speed runs, there is very little else to do within the game. What you see is what you get, and EarthBound's linear style and lack of sidequests won't usually give you a different experience when playing the game more than once.
Though EarthBound is so good in some aspects that one may not want a different experience when playing the game more than once, which speaks volumes for the game's staying power among its fans.
Overall: 7.1/10
EarthBound is a unique game in that it does some things better than almost any other game out there, but follows it up with gameplay elements that really leave you scratching your head in awe that you're actually playing a game from 1995. For all the perfection that is EarthBound's storyline, the fact that so many parts of the gameplay are well past outdated truly drags the game's overall appeal down a few notches. EarthBound had the potential of being arguably one of the single best RPGs ever made, and if you only look at the game's storyline when comparing and analyzing the game relatively with other RPGs, it's near the top of the list.
However, for all the good that EarthBound has to offer, it is simply unforgivable for some sections of the game to play out as if the designers were either lazy or didn't know what they were doing, especially for a game released in the prime of the 16 Bit era in gaming. It's one thing for RPGs of the NES era or the very early stages of the 16 Bit era to be flawed, but another thing entirely for a 1995 title to repeat mistakes made years prior as if said mistakes and flaws never took place. Gameplay mistakes aren't supposed to be repeated over five years later in a clunky system that does its best to ruin one of the best stories ever told in a video game.
But despite this, EarthBound is still one of the better RPGs to ever come out, and every fan of the genre should play the game at least once. The tale of Ness and friends is brilliant, and though the gameplay is horrific at times, it has its bright spots and keeps the game playable. The least that can be said is that while the gameplay is bad at times, it doesn't single-handedly ruin the game and isn't a reason not to give EarthBound a try. Who knows, maybe you too will find yourself a part of the cult before you're finished.
Ratings
Story: 10/10 Gameplay: 3.5/10 Graphics: 9/10 Music: 7/10 Replayability: 6/10 Overall: 7.1/10
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Aug 2, 2009 16:34:43 GMT -5
Phoenix Wright
"And people say that gaming no longer sees innovation or fresh ideas."
9/10
Through nothing more than sheer internet word of mouth, Phoenix Wright has become a name so popular among message board gamers that on those rare occasions when you see Capcom getting off their lazy asses and shipping new copies of the game stateside, they're off the shelf within minutes. For most of the people reading this, they've already experienced said internet word of mouth firsthand. The fads, the mildly famous "Objection!" site, the ASCII.... for those of you that haven't given in to peer pressure and bought the game yet (assuming you can even find it; Capcom has made it rather difficult), haven't you yet stopped to wonder why people constantly talk about Phoenix Wright?
Like the subtitle Ace Attorney implies, Phoenix Wright is an attorney simulator. More specifically, it's a text-based adventure game that takes place with a lawyerly setting -- that is, Phoenix Wright isn't purely an attorney sim. It's feel is more a detective game than anything else, because you'll end up having Phoenix do all of his own investigating on cases. This isn't like real life where the police will find mounds of evidence for you. Save the autopsy reports and other scarce examples, you will have to find pretty much all of the case-cracking clues on your own, but then again Phoenix Wright's design was never meant to be courtroom canon.
Phoenix will take on five cases throughout the course of the game. The first case is a mere tutorial of how the game works, and the following four are cases in ascending difficulty in which you'll have to get seemingly guilty clients off the hook. Given the massive amount of evidence each client will have against him, this is no easy task. To paraphrase a question asked of Phoenix by a partner of his, "Does every case of yours make you feel like you're about to drown, and you can never quite reach the surface?"
Yeah, pretty much. In all of the cases Phoenix Wright takes on, his clients are on the verge of being declared guilty virtually the entire way through. All but one case in the game is named "Turnabout" because of how often it looks like Phoenix is going to lose. The question then becomes what role the game's player takes in all of this.
The entire game can be broken down into three phases: storyline, out of court investigation, and the trials themselves. In the beginning of every case, the case is set up by a well-told story. Phoenix will inevitably end up defending the client. From there, you'll take on the role of detective and attorney wrapped into one. Defense of your client entails going into all of the necessary areas, talking to everyone you encounter and examining every area for clues that will assist in your defense of the client. Once Phoenix feels he has enough clues to put up a decent fight in court, the scene shifts to the trial.
This is where the true fun begins. The courtroom sections of Phoenix Wright are easily the highlight of the game, and they're far easier to navigate than the oft tedious investigation phases between court dates. This is where Phoenix puts together what he has found in an effort to formulate a defense, though this is far easier to do than it sounds. The bare bones model of doing such is to rip apart every witness's testimony until you get the full truth out of them, which is for the most part only done by finding contradictions in said testimonies and presenting evidence in court to back up your claims. From there the game's storyline takes care of itself. After enough investigation-court cycles, you'll inevitably get your client off the hook.
Gameplay-wise, most of this is very easy to accomplish. The entire game save for one tidbit at the very end can be played by using the touch screen, and everything you'll need to do is easily mapped out for you. The only part of the game in which the DS's higher functions are used is the fifth case, which was added to the American version of Phoenix Wright to show off what the DS can do. But for those of you who don't feel like yelling at a handheld in public, don't worry. You're only required to do so once in the entire game. The other facet of the game that uses the mic, fingerprinting, requires little to no noise. Phoenix Wright is about as easy a game to play as you'll ever find, and it's designed more to challenge your perceptive ability than it is button-pressing skill. The only way you can "lose" is if you screw up in court enough times to run out of exclamation points. You'll start with five on each court day, and every time you present wrong evidence or make a wrong choice you're penalized. If you hit zero, your client is declared guilty. For the most part, only the final case should put you in any real danger of seeing this.
However, the awesomeness factor of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney goes far beyond gameplay. As a text-based adventure, the text and characters are the most important part, and in this aspect Phoenix Wright delivers. In fact Phoenix Wright does this better than just about any other game out there. Few other games have characters as dynamic as this, with such well-defined character relationships. Even more impressive is that all of this happens in a 10-15 hour game; most 40 hour RPGs can't create characters half as good as Phoenix Wright, which is kind of sad. The characters all work very well separately and together, and the text drives the game so well that the gameplay takes a back seat to story and succeeds anyway.
Few other games are able to go from perfect allegorical humor (which mostly takes place in character names, such as Lotta Heart, Jack Hammer, Will Powers, Dick Gumshoe, Redd White, and even Phoenix Wright himself just to name a few) to a dead serious dialogue back and forth so fluently, but Phoenix Wright pulls this off seamlessly. Some of the courtroom scenes are so hilarious and dramatic at the same time that there will be periods where you wish you could just watch the game and not actually plat it. This right here... the dialogue, the character relationships, the humor, and how it's all tied together perfectly, is what draws near everyone that plays the game into loving it. Everything else, wonderful as it is, serves as a bonus.
Speaking of which, the graphics and soundtrack of the game shouldn't go unnoticed. For a DS title, both are quite good, especially the soundtrack. There's a very dramatic flair to most of it (listen to the song "Cornered" if you want proof), and the graphics are clean and crisp. The font is very easy to read, which is the most important graphical factor in a text-based adventure title.
The only real flaw that the game has is the same issue present in virtually every adventure title. There will be times when you miss something, and the game will turn into you meticulously looking through every area one by one just to find that magical pixel or two that you missed the first time around. But other than that, Phoenix Wright is golden. You've sorely missed out if you haven't played it by now, but good luck finding a copy.
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Aug 2, 2009 16:44:35 GMT -5
Demigod
"Ripoff version of a DotA, a better game that's available for free."
3/10
As most everyone knows by now, talented people using Warcraft 3's equally talented map editor created and honed Defense of the Ancients, a simple but fun mod that grew so large in success it became its own game. If you're loading up Warcraft 3 these days, you're either playing DotA or building up an account available for non-pub DotA. No one is playing actual Warcraft 3 ladder anymore. Warcraft 3 ladder is pretty much dead, in large part because everyone migrated to DotA. DotA at its core is a 5v5 team game in which each team pushes their army via three lanes into the other base to kill their main building. It sounds like a simple premise (and it is), but ends up a very deep game with a ton of little intricacies involved. No matter how much DotA you play, there are always new things to learn, new strategies to try out and new factors coming into play with almost every map update. One could easily play 5000 games of DotA and have 5001 still feel fresh, new and exciting. DotA is up there with the most successful game mods ever made, and will continue on this path because it's privy to some of gaming's most dedicated players. DotA is a unique dynamic of great game meets great people, who in turn help make said great game even better. It's the absolute perfect storm of awesome, which is near-impossible to replicate.
Which is where Demigod comes into play. Demigod attempts to recapture DotA's magic, which is perfectly fair because any successful game influences other games. The problem is Demigod not only doesn't come close to DotA, it doesn't come close to being a good game period.
At the bare bones level, Demigod does a well enough job of using DotA's formula. You pick a hero and your team has a main building to defend. Your creeps push the enemy base as far as they can, and you have some strong turret defenses to keep enemies at bay. There are also a couple of good advantages, like there being more than one map and the ability to upgrade your creep and new, more devastating stuff. There are even some fun kill streak messages, just like DotA.
If this was the entire game, it would be just fine. Not quite as deep or fun as DotA, but still a good game. Sadly, it does far too many dumb things that hold it back. First and foremost, consider yourself lucky if you install Demigod without running into any dumb glitches. If you play the game for a week without getting the infamous [no text] glitch in which the fix wipes out all your single player data, you can be especially thankful for that horseshoe you're clearly carrying around. Being a PC game not made by Blizzard, there are all the standard hoops to jump through typical of today's PC games. PC developers seem content having one foot in the grave, always ignore how well simplicity works, and have yet to figure out why "Let's just release a patch later if something comes up" is lazy. These however are problems plaguing the PC gaming industry as a whole, not just Demigod.
For Demigod specifically, more issues are popping up nearly every day. The most famous is the connectivity problem. Unless you have the best of connections, you can and will have connectivity issues online. There's almost no way around it, and even <I>with</i> a good connection you'll still have problems connecting with other people because of their own less than perfect connections. With a game based purely around multiplayer, common connectivity problems are unforgivable.
The game also has a very bad system called favor points. Favor points are earned after games win or lose, though obviously you get more if you win, and also via various game achievements. Achievement systems in modern games are almost always superfluous and terrible, and Demigod is no different. Demigod also goes the extra mile by making these points <I>really</i> matter. There is a favor point shop in which you can exchange points for items, and some of the items are quite good. You only get to use one per game, but it's all you need most of the time. One in particular is a global lightning burst, which can be available to you before other players just for playing the game longer than everyone else. A fundamental factor in balance is that all players <I>must</i> be operating on equal parameters at the beginning of a match. This is common sense Balance 101 stuff that somehow eludes Demigod. It's somewhat fixed given favor points are reset with every patch, but it's clear that patches will be very rare and it shouldn't come down to that anyway. Not allowing all players access to all items ruins any semblance of balance.
Further ruining balance are the heroes themselves, even though there are a scant eight to choose from. Unclean Beast especially is the ultimate noob hero. He has two viable builds, and they're both easy and dominant. If set up with a smart support hero or two, especially a good Sedna, he becomes a hall of famer. Any hero has the potential to carry a team, but Beast with good Sedna support is by far the easiest to do it with. Hero diversity and imbalance is very noticeable in Demigod, because most if not all fights are toe-to-toe. There is very little actual strategy or sneakiness involved, which is odd given the game is part of the real-time <I>strategy</i> genre. The maps all have very simple designs, and rarely will you get the chance to team gank someone from behind and trap them. It would be like trying to flank someone on a bridge. You can't do it.
Then comes currency and the forced RTS elements. Even though you only control one unit, you actually do have an army and a base to worry about. Your money increases by vaguely defined amounts -- unless you kill a hero, in which case you get a ton -- and your upgradeable main citadel has war effort that increases over time through more vague definitions. The basic idea is to kill the other team and upgrade your war effort to overpowering amounts, but Demigod's design runs into another problem here. Because the game is designed for anyone to pick it up and feel like they're doing something relevant, the game never seems to truly shift from the middle unless a <I>massive</i> domination is going on. Even with upgrades, the tide of the war always feels even and undefined and can change on a moment's notice, which is good for aesthetics but bad for gameplay. Be prepared for many a game in which your team gets an early advantage but can't take full advantage of it because of war effort not going up as fast as it needs to -- all of which a catering effort to casual gamers who always want to feel like they matter, at the expense of the experienced. You'll always want to know exact numbers on how you're doing and what more needs to be done to win, but rarely if ever will you get there. The game is specifically designed otherwise.
You could of course just invest in items to make your Demigod live up to its namesake, but this of course opens up a whole new can of worms. Items are powerful, as well they should be. If you spend 18000 gold on something, you should be rewarded for it. It can lead to heroes being overpowered and unkillable, but normally they've earned the right. The issue comes with basic common sense stuff that somehow got left out. The only thing you can see on other people is their HP. That's it. You can't see their mana, the items they're holding, and even the HP you see is gimped. The bar above the enemy's head isn't close to the HP they actually have (it's usually far more), which will lead to many an early nuke that you think should kill someone. The HP bar that tells the truth of the matter is off in the corner, giving the feel of one of those cheaply designed Japanese cars with the speedometer in the middle. The perils of not having foresight of enemy mana levels or items is obvious, as you can't plan around what they have and will end up guessing.
Last but not least, maps are built around a little more than powering up and destroying the enemy citadel. Maps have flags on them that you must capture, some of which give very nice bonuses like lower cooldowns on spells, higher hit points, troop bonuses, money and even units. Yes, each team's units come out of a portal based on who controls the closest flag. It turns a potentially fun game into a cheap version of capture the flag, only with multiple flags all over the place to worry about. It's a gimmick, and a very bad gimmick at that. Flag capturing in an RTS is pretty much the worst idea ever, and is the cheapest version of "map control" ever conceived. Imagine an adventure game or an RPG where a dumb gimmick determined whether or not you could swing your sword. People would be justly outraged.
Oh wait, they made this game already. It was called Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and it was unsurprisingly terrible.
In a nutshell, every game boils down to running around controlling flags for awhile, spamming spells whenever an enemy shows up and waiting out a good war effort score until you watch uncontrollable units win. If you're lucky you'll get around the game's awful design, kill a hero or two, get a nice jump on items and avalanche effect the other team into a loss. Either way, any amount of fun to be had will end within a few games. There's just nothing fresh and exciting going on, and it's certainly nothing like the infinitely replayable DotA despite the obvious influence.
There's also a ton of little minor issues that would annoy most anyone. Skill selection has no hotkeys attached, skills themselves are assigned to numbers instead of letters (and thus make no sense whatsoever), and a good amount of the game's premade hotkeys also make no sense. For example if you buy the Bishop item, you summon them by pressing 7. Even if you have gigantic ham hands like The Big Show, 7-9 are a long way away if your other hand is occupied by a mouse. No one is ever taught to press stuff on the right side of a keyboard with the left hand. Ever. There's a hotkey to select your demigod + minions or just your controllable minions, but no hotkey to select just your demigod. There's very little in terms of assignable hotkeys. And on and on and on. A lot of little oversights and errors add up after awhile, especially with a fundamentally bad game.
Worst of all is Demigod has one of the worst communities out there, filled to the brim with contagious elitists that ruin most any gaming experience. It's gotten so bad so fast, that Stardock's own people are openly turning away from Demigod to work on other projects. This means less people working on Demigod's improvement, which in turn means less of everything: patches, fixes, balance patches, and anything else that helps a multiplayer game become successful. If the game's own designers want nothing to do with Demigod or the community, why should anyone else? There's a common sense cause and effect in play here.
It is of course not all bad. Take a wild guess what Demigod does best. Yep, graphics and music. As we have seen over and over and over again in modern games, your game is probably bad if graphics and music is what you do best. Demigod is damn pretty with some very, very engrossing themes. But a polished turd is still a turd, a pig with lipstick is still a pig, and a bad game with good graphics and music is still a bad game.
Demigod is a decent attempt at mimicking DotA, but it is an attempt that badly failed.
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Aug 2, 2009 16:48:05 GMT -5
Another old review, but I don't feel like sifting through something this wrong for random typo fixes. Enjoy a time when I sucked at writing!
Tales of Symphonia
"Put aside the Gamecube stereotype. This game ranks with the all-time best RPGs.
10/10
In a generation that loves RPGs, the Gamecube has never really made its mark in the RPG community. Because of this stereotype, people practically gave up on the Gamecube as a system willing to deliver any RPGs worth playing.
But this continues no longer. Tales of Symphonia bursts onto the RPG scene as a title exclusive to the Gamecube, and a title that is so well-done and complete that even the people who never bothered to give the Gamecube any respect will not help but take notice. Games like Tales of Symphonia don't come along very often, and no matter <i>what</i> system this title would have been on, it would have made a gigantic splash regardless.
<b>"I want a world free of sacrifice."</b>
The story begins from the perspective of Lloyd Irving, a teenager with a heart of gold, not to mention an absolute moron. He loves to sleep in class, he has horrendous study habits, and oftentimes relies on his two best friends, Genis Sage and Colette Brunel, to help him get by. But Lloyd has a reason to be this way. His mother was murdered when he was too young to remember what happened, and he has no clue as to the whereabouts of his father or whether his father even lives in the first place.
The trio of children grew up in a town called Iselia, guided by their mentor and teacher, Raine Sage. Raine and Genis are siblings, though Raine's maturity and age has allowed her to act as the mother of the family since the disappearance of their real mother. Raine is a strong woman who does not back down from her beliefs, and has no compunctions against bringing down the hammer on any who would challenge them. Raine is the perfect type of leader --- strong-willed, yet open-minded at the same time --- but her personality indicates that her strong will covers many underlying issues stemming from her past.
The game starts with Raine teaching her class, and Lloyd typically asleep in the back of the room. The class is studying the World Regeneration Journey, a story in which the Chosen of Mana goes on a worldwide pilgrimage to save their world of Sylvarant from its current decline. Colette, the Chosen of Mana herself, is a student of the class and knows the answers to nearly ever question Raine asks. Lloyd, as always, learns next to nothing and the rest of the party is stuck explaining everything to him throughout the game. Raine's lesson is little more than a refresher course however, as the beginning of the game marks the time when Colette is about to begin the World Regeneration Journey itself.
The Light of the Oracle, the symbol that the Chosen must begin her journey, soon appears at the nearby Martel Temple to set the game in motion. When the party arrives at the temple, they manage to recruit a mercenary named Kratos. Kratos is a mysterious, cold figure who seems only dedicated to his profession and not much else. He vows to commit himself solely to the safety of the chosen, and he also makes it a habit to constantly remind Lloyd of how poor Lloyd's swordsmanship is in comparison to his own. After some more events, the party is attacked by the Desians, the main villains of Sylvarant and an organization of Half-Elves that seems focused on little more than making lives miserable for humans. The entire purpose of the World Regeneration Journey is to bring peace to Sylvarant, which includes the scouring of the Desians.
The party easily fends off the Desian attack, and after more dialogue back in Iselia, Genis convinces Lloyd to go to the Iselia Human Ranch, a Desian-run ranch that uses humans as slaves, to assist a friend. Though it violates a non-aggression treaty Iselia has with the Desians, Lloyd agrees to go anyway. The results are disastrous, as Lloyd is not only recognized by the Desians, but Iselia is raided and destroyed afterwards. Worse yet, Colette decided to begin her World Regeneration Journey without allowing Lloyd to come along. After being exiled by the mayor of Iselia, Lloyd and Genis, with no where else to go and no one else to turn to but each other, set out into the world around them in an effort to find Colette, help her complete her pilgrimage, and fix the mistakes of their past.
<b>"You pathetic, inferior being!"</b>
Tales of Symphonia's storyline of saving someone as they travel on a journey may seem cliché, and it is. It's the exact same story seen within Final Fantasy X and Grandia 2; however, Tales of Symphonia is far different. The game's story begins as a bland series of predictable nonsense, but as the game progresses, you will learn of the true nature of the game in that the story goes far deeper than anything you could have concluded at the onset. Colette's journey, while important, is but mere exposition for the more underlying motifs and plot lines within the game.
The game plays out like a well-written Shakesperian. The beginning of the game --- the cut scene that appears when you first turn the game on --- resembles Shakespeare's strategy of using early fireworks to keep the groundlings in the front of the audience interested early, knowing full well that he was to bore them with mounds of exposition afterwards. The true beauty of Shakespeare's playwriting came in how his plays evolved as you read them, and Tales of Symphonia does the exact same thing. Colette's journey can be interesting in its own right, but the game's story eventually involves into an entity far bigger than what it seems at first. The game examines the effects of world order, and whether or not accepting authority is always the correct thing to so. There is also a large, underlying examination of racism and prejudice's effect on the world, and all sides of the issue are carefully examined closely - views upon holding onto one's past, the struggle between femininity and masculinity, and even the struggle to find one's place in the world are also looked at within Tales of Symphonia, not to mention many other viewpoints. Colette's journey is but a look at the surface, both in the game's raw plot line and the underlying philosophical debates that can be drawn from the game's late plot line. The game's story is told in superb form; the story constantly builds upon itself with one plot twist after another, which not only sucks you into to game's storyline and the hidden meanings behind them, but forces you to look at the same issues that take place in your own world around you as well.
<b>"Feel the pain of those inferior beings as you burn in hell!"</b>
It's difficult for an RPG to survive on story alone, but Tales of Symphonia needs not worry about such things. It has a superb battle system, as well as equally amazing gameplay. Before you even go into the world and start taking names with the game's near-flawless battle system, the options given to you in the menu alone make this game one of the most well-done, in-depth RPGs ever made.
Gone is the method of stockpiling 99 items and using them to get through any situation. The most number of any item you can have in Tales of Symphonia is 20. Gone are your characters having meaningless Status screens. You can earn titles for your characters and equip them in your characters' various status screens, which not only gives your characters a more personal feel, but also slightly affects their stats. There is also a Synopsis section for players who feel the need to brush up on what they have done in the game so far, be it for reminiscence or to give themselves a quick memory job of the game's events.
In terms of equipment, each character has set types of items that they can equip; you can't simply slap anything on each character. Characters like Lloyd and Kratos are the ones able to wield heavy equipment, while Colette wields lighter equipment. Each character's possible equips suit their character, which is a very detailed aspect of the game. And even though you cannot see what armor or accessory you have equipped on a character when in the field of battle, the same cannot be said of the amazing weapons in the game. Meticulous detail is given to all of the game's weapons, and it shows when your characters use them in battle. The weapons your characters wield range from a simple wooden sword to weapons that are alive and moving in and of themselves, and the way your weapons blend in with the general feel of battle is superb.
Some of your characters are not proficient in the healing arts, but they make up for this by Cooking. You start off with a simple Sandwich recipe, but as you traverse through the game, you can encounter the enigmatic <b>Wonder Chef</b> by searching every possible corner of every town you encounter. A bit of an oddball at first, <b>The Wonder Chef</b> soon becomes the comic relief of the game - when searching for him, you'll never see him in his real form; rather, he takes the shape of various household items and hides himself away in odd places. It's your job to find <b>The Wonder Chef</b> whenever possible, and when you do, he will teach you bigger, better recipes to add to your collection of foods. The entire Cooking system seems a bit off, but it adds a large tone of realism to the game. It's a nice change to not have every character capable of casting high level healing spells after each battle, and you'll have to carefully consider when and where to use your money and rations in order to keep your party going. You'll also enjoy the fact that you'll be eating Steaks capable of curing the entire party of Paralysis, Omelets capable of curing the entire party of Poison, and Cream Stew capable of curing the party of <i>everything.</i>
Your characters will all eventually equip Exspheres unto themselves, and thereafter attach EX Gems to the Exspheres themselves. It's a system similar to Final Fantasy 7's Materia system, though it is not nearly as in-depth. After your characters equip an Exsphere --- you never actually get the Exspheres as an item; the characters all have them innately equipped from the beginning --- each character will have four slots available for the equipping of EX Gems. There are four levels of EX Gem, 1 being the strongest and 4 being the weakest, and after your characters procure and equip multiple EX Gems, their natural fighting and character abilities are available for release; furthermore, as your characters equip more EX Gems, Compund EX Skills become available to your characters. These allow your characters to not only enhance themselves further, but to give themselves a more personal feel to them as well. For example, Lloyd has a Personal EX Skill that allows you to walk faster in towns and dungeons, while Sheena has a skill that slows down the reaction time of enemies in dungeons. The entire system is wonderfully crafted, and when taken full advantage of it allows you to craft your characters to your own personal liking. You're also able to develop your characters as Technical (T) or Strike (S) type characters, which is another way of depicting between magical attackers and physical attackers. You can develop any character in either field (though each character has a field that they are more well-suited for) depending on the types of EX Skills you assign to them, and whether your character is developed as a T or S type decides what types of Techs they will learn.
Each of your characters has a set list of Techs unique to themselves that they will learn as you progress through the game, but depending on how you choose to develop your characters, only certain Techs will be learned by your characters as you progress. This adds a <i>wonderful</i> effect of humanism to your characters, and keeps the feel of battle unique; no battle will feature all of your characters using the exact same skills over and over again. Every character has a unique skillset, and Tales of Symphonia does not allow you to simply teach all of your characters identical abilities. There is a wonderful - perhaps necessary - variety to your characters' skills.
<b>"Do you earnestly believe that you can defeat me?"</b>
The true beauty of all of the detail put into your characters, of course, is seeing it in action in the field of combat. Tales of Symphonia's has a live action battle system, and though it can be difficult to get used to at first, players will quickly learn that the all of the work out into the behind the scenes detail on the characters directly translates into true beauty on the battlefield.
Solid Snake and Otacon once had a conversation about whether or not love could bloom on a battlefield. For them to have such a conversation, they have clearly never played this game. Even the battle-hardened Solid Snake himself would fall head over heels for the ingenius wonder that is Tales of Symphonia's battle system. The first thing to note about Tales's battles are that the vast majority of the game's random battles are optional. As you walk across the world map, towns, and dungeons, you will not be magically sucked into battles to the death out of no where; rather, you will see the enemies walking on the field. You, not the game, choose how many random battles you will fight.
Once in battle, the wondrous constitution of the meticulous detail given to your characters all comes to a head. When a battle first begins, your characters start on the left of a circular field, while the enemies begin by being positioned on the right. You will only control one character manually, while your other party members are controlled by the computer. This doesn't mean that you don't have most of the control over the battle, however. Before anything even starts, there is a Strategies option in the menu that allows you to control nearly everything about the AI of your party members, from their starting positions to how aggressive they are, from which enemies they are to attack to how far away they should stand from said enemies while attacking, and even how they are to ration their Tech Points in battle. If you want, you can even have all of your allies do nothing while you do all of the work on your own. There is even a setting that allows you to control any character you wish in battle. You don't <i>have</i> to control Lloyd, though most players will do so anyway on first playthroughs of the game.
This all leads to what will feel like unorganized chaos at first; your allies will brutally massacre enemies as if they are extensions of Napoleon Bonaparte, while you'll wind up scurrying after each enemy like an ant in a feeble effort to get kills on your own as well. But despite the growing pains that most players have when they initially experience the battle system on their own, half the fun of the game is slowly learning how the system fully works and then using what is learned in the field.
For starters, even your basic attack has multiple uses. By pressing different directions on the analog stick while attacking, your characters can attack with aerial assaults, ground combos, or you can simply take any enemy dumb enough to stand in front of you and maul them into submission. Mashing the attack button can't win battles on their own however, because no character is able to keep up a flurry of attacks forever. For your characters to avoid getting destroyed after unleashing attacks, there is a blocking function that allows them to stand their ground. Not that this allows them to stand there forever, for if a character blocks too long or gets hit from behind while blocking, their guard will be broken and they shall be at the mercy of any enemies smart enough to keep up the pressure.
But battles are far more in-depth than simple attacking and defending. Techs are a large part of battle; a lot of attention, both extraneous as well as normal, is given to their use. There are four combinations of the B button and two combinations of the C button that Techs can be shortcutted to, and by doing so, Techs can be unleashed with speeds that keep up with the speed of battle rather than by sifting through a menu. Physical characters have Techs that can be linked together when done in the correct order, which allows some characters to let loose multiple Techs in a row. The magical characters have their own Tech characteristics to worry about, as they must stay away from the enemies and charge their spells before they reach resolution. If they get hit mid-charge, the spell is left interrupted and uncast.
With a solid mix of physical melees and Techs flying all over the place, the game's battles play out with enemies and allies flying at each other with everything they have, and because of all the action going on at once and the methods with which the actions are all executed, the battles have the feel of the RPG and fighting game genres mixed together. Battles are an absolute pleasure to watch, and even more fun to participate in. As the game progresses, the battle system evolves as well. There as Unison Attacks that combine Techs in one moment of unleashed hell, Shortcuts that allow you to command seemingly your entire party at the same time, and various other strategies and nuances that seem to take everything about the characters into account when they're on the battlefield.
<b>"It could almost be called art."</b>
Tales of Symphonia closes out its brilliant design with wonderful cel-shaded graphics and a brilliant music score composed by Motoi Sakuraba. The game's design is absolutely gorgeous, with amazing detail given to all of the environments. The towns, dungeons, and world map's graphics are so detailed and lifelike that you can easily be fooled into thinking the world as your own. The color scheme used through the game is very bright, which only serves to enhance the surrounding features even more. For example, there is a large town that you visit in the second half of the game that houses all three class structures --- the wealthy, the middle, and the poor --- and the graphics only serve to enhance the various lifestyles within the city. The slums have unpaved roads and dirty citizens, while the commoners have relatively average homes, average character models walking the streets, and average scenery. The full attention is given to the wealthy section of town, complete with multistory mansions, paved streets, formal attire on the citizens, and bustling plant life in the surroundings.
The characters themselves are drawn in cartoon fashion, but this does not cause the game's overall graphical prowess to suffer in the least. They blend in well with the surrounding environments, and it gives the feel of traditional RPGs to go along with the present-day modernization trend undergone by most new RPGs released in the last few years.
Score-wise, though not every track is of the near-perfect standard created by the rest of the game's qualities, it is still an amazing piece overall. Most of the tracks fit well with their surrounding environments, and some of them manage to stand out from the rest as being the brilliant music most RPG fans love to hear during their play. The music that plays during the opening cutscene, the Angel Battle theme, Exire's theme, Asgard's theme, and the theme playing during the game's final dungeon are all tracks that stand out from the rest in that they are able to draw a full range of emotions from those who hear them. They, along with most of the game's musical score, only serve to enhance an already brilliant gaming experience and allow the game to be a complete product with few if any flaws.
<b>"The boy sets out on a journey, bearing his sins. Do not forget the past."</b>
Tales of Symphonia is nothing short of a well-crafted masterpiece. Everything is put into the game for a reason, everything builds upon itself, and everything about the game continues to build upon itself until it reaches its awe-inspiring climax. Part of what makes the game so amazing is that <i>everything,</i> not simply the music and battle system, is given such attention. All facets of the game compliment each other perfectly, which can easily be seen by simply turning the game on and taking in the artistry of the opening cutscene.
There are also a ton of amazing nuances within the game that fly under the radar, but serve to prove how in-depth the game truly is. There is a Collector's Book that keeps track or the items you obtain, and there is a title you can earn for collecting all of the items. There is also a title that Colette can earn for naming all of the dogs in the game, as well as a Grade Shop that appears after the game is beaten the firs time. With the Grade Shop, players can spend the Grade they earn after battles on various bonuses that carry over to the next game, including unlocking Mania difficulty, restrictions or benefits on items and experience points, and the ability to retain the titles and Techs one has worked hard to earn on a first run through the game. Even after Tales of Symphonia ends, you don't run out of things you can do thanks to the innate replayability within the game, as well as all of the loose ends that you can sew up. Tales caters to the needs of players who like to achieve everything possible, as well as players who only want to experience the game once. Tales simply has so much to offer that nearly everyone who plays the game will likely find something to love about the game, and because the game does everything so well, players may be surprised at not only everything that the game has to offer, but how well all of the game's parts mesh together to form such a brilliant product.
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Aug 2, 2009 17:24:50 GMT -5
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
"The best get even better."
10/10
After two successful titles on the Game Boy Advance, the Fire Emblem series takes its first leap onto a major console since the days of the SNES, and its first console release on American shores outright. And despite the high standard set by previous Fire Emblem titles, Path of Radiance lives up to a level of excellence that fans of the series come to expect. For those unfamiliar with the nuances of a Fire Emblem title, it is a strategy RPG typically set in a medieval world, featuring a succession of epic battles pitting a small number of good soldiers up against all odds beset by the forces of evil, eventually culminating in a grand coup de grace and epic ending.
In the Path of Radiance universe, you'll follow the story of a young boy named Ike who yearns to follow in his father's footsteps as the strong leader of the Greil Mercenaries. Ike is forced to grow up in a hurry however, as his homeland of Crimea is invaded and easily waylaid by its neighboring country of Daein. The horrors of war are soon realized to the Greil Mercenaries, and they also learn that it's up to them to put an end to Daein's tyrannical actions and bring about peace to the continent of Tellius.
Furthermore, humans and shape-shifting half-humans --- otherwise known as beorc and laguz, respectively, in the Path of Radiance world --- have decades-long prejudices against one another and must learn to put their differences aside lest they all be consumed by Daein's iron fist; a task much easier said than done, as both beorc and laguz have in their histories taken the opposing race into slavery.
Though Crimea is wiped out before they can offer resistance to Daein's attack, the princess of the country is able to survive and enlists the Greil Mercenaries for assistance. Her task is for Ike and his small following of soldiers to help her take back her country. This is done via a series of battles that take place all through the continent, featuring a battle system equally endearing to Fire Emblem first-timers and veterans alike.
As with the other Fire Emblem games released in America, there are an overload of simple tutorials to help new players get their feet under them, but veterans of the series can simply skip over them all unless they see something new to the series they're interested in. Many of the tried and true features are still around, such as the Weapons Triangle, Skills, Rescuing, the Random Number Generator (RNG), the Magic Triangle and various weapons that can be used to cheat the system. Other features, such as Direct, Order and Shove make their first appearance in Path of Radiance. It can all seem a bit overwhelming at first, but it's actually very easy to pick up. Either a nuance will be easy enough to learn after a bit of practice, or the in-game tutorials will do a good enough of teaching you everything there is to know.
Everything comes to a head in battle, which takes place on a big chessboard-like grid. Battles take place in alternating phases, with allies and enemies taking turns unless neutral units are on the map. The basic premise of the game is simple enough; kill all the enemies, keep yourself alive, and any unit that gets killed is gone for good unless you restart the entire chapter over again. However in standard Fire Emblem fashion, Path of Radiance is both simplistic and deep at the same time. Many things are taken into account when units battle, not to mention the legion of map factors that play in as well.
On maps, units can see different advantages or disadvantages in battle depending on where they stand. For example, standing in a bush will increase a unit's evasion during a fight, and walking in a desert or on a mountain will decrease the movement area for certain units. Some units, such as those who can fly, avoid such movement problems but take a lot of extra damage from arrows. All of this applies to the enemy as well, and most players will have a fun time figuring everything out as they go along.
In battle itself, things get even better. In basic terms, units attack each other with either weapons or magic. There are three weapon types that work in a triangle against one another; swords best axes, axes best lances and lances best swords. A fourth weapon type, bows, attacks from two panels away with no fear of counters unless the defending unit wields a ranged weapon of his or her own. The catch is that bows can't attack adjacent units, so bow-wielding units are helpless to counter when attacked. Certain weapons are available to cause extra damage under certain conditions, such as an Armorslayer causing extra damage against a knight-type unit or a Poleax doing extra damage to anything on horses. It's imperative for players to read all item descriptions to see what is and is no effective at any given time.
Magic works in much the same way. There are three main types that work in a triangle against one another; fire beats wind, wind beats thunder and thunder beats fire. Light magic ends up being the odd man out in this case, as it is perfectly neutral and not strong or weak against any other magics. Unlike the previous two Fire Emblem titles, dark magic does not appear in Path of Radiance. Mages in general deal good damage, but can die rather easily if the enemy manages to get to them.
A new unit type exclusive to Path of Radiance are the shapeshifting laguz, which are half human, half animal. Most laguz are useless while in human form, but are among the highest damage-dealers in any fight once they transform. The laguz in your party may seem like a free ride to victory on any map, but there are a lot of weapons in the game catered specifically to killing laguz. There are also some maps in which these powerful beings fight with the enemy and make your job all the more difficult.
Individual unit statistics come into play to determine exactly how a fight plays out. Every unit has their own stats that determine damage dealt and taken and such, but the most important stat of all is Speed. If a unit is fast enough, it'll be able to attack twice in every fight, which is a gigantic advantage and the single most effective way to get through most fights. Units also gain stats randomly at level up per the RNG, so no two playthroughs of the game will ever be perfectly identical. Some units will be blessed by the gods of randomness, while others will suffer. There are well over 40 units available for use by the game's end, and it's difficult to see them all and retain a party with good stats. This requires further playthroughs to see what all of the units are capable of, which most fans of the series do not object to.
Though it may only seem that the end-all be-all for every fight is to obliterate the map, each map in the game may have different victory conditions. Some maps require you to wipe everything out, yes, but other maps simply require you to kill a boss or to arrive at a spot in a set number of turns. This, paired with the intricate check and balances system in the game and permanent unit death make for an interesting series of fights from start to finish. There is almost always a unique quirk thrown into each map as well. Sometimes you'll have to stop bandits from destroying nearby towns by getting to them first, which thins out your army but typically rewards you with good items, while other maps may simply call for you to reach treasure chests before thieves or brigands do. There's a lot to do on virtually all of the game's maps, which all contribute to a fun, chaotic, often addictive pace.
Being the first Fire Emblem title on a major American console, Path of Radiance is able to take advantage of the Gamecube's capabilities and earn bragging rights as the first Fire Emblem title to feature battles in full 3D. The Gamecube graphics aren't the best compared to its generational system counterparts, but they don't need to be. Most individual battles take no longer than a few seconds, and the graphics do a great job of setting regardless of platform. For those who wish to speed the game up, an option of turning off battle animations exists that rids you of watching the fights and simply has everything taking place on the map itself. Path of Radiance has a fairly disappointing soundtrack for the first half of the game, but vastly picks up later on as the story unfolds into a more gloomy setting. By game's end, the music is a key contributor to an already outstanding atmosphere that lasts until game's end.
Path of Radiance is a very well-done, polished game with no major flaws to speak of that fans of not only good strategy, but good games period should try out. It does the series justice for its first major America console appearance, and hopefully there are many, many more yet to arrive.
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Aug 3, 2009 22:33:38 GMT -5
Another older review I'm proud of, even though I don't think it's written perfectly by any means.
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
"Hideo Kojima has clearly ingested one too many Russian Glowcaps."
7/10
As an American plane flies over a seemingly pristine forest over U.S.S.R. airspace, a soldier prepares to take the world's first HALO jump. The soldier, after taking a moment to take what may be a final drag on his favorite cigar, gets up from his uncomfortable seat and equips himself for the descent. Not too long after, he jumps out of the back of a plane with utmost confidence, despite being unsure of whether or not he would be alive upon landing.
The scene is the Cold War, just after the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis. After the Soviets were equipped to the point of being able to unleash a nuclear winter upon any point in the United States, they decided to lay down the arms in exchange for a Russian-born scientist that fled to the United States, Sokolov. Sokolov had been working on research so important to the Soviets that the Cuban Missile Crisis ended in exchange for his return to the country.
However, the United States isn't about to give up such powerful research to the Soviets quietly. This is where you, codename Naked Snake, come in. Your mission is to infiltrate the base in which Sokolov is being held, and to rescue him so that he may be returned to America. Unlike previous Metal Gear Solid titles, you are actually given a weapon to start off with and are given official recognition by the United States government to undertake the mission.
Hideo Kojima's final project as official director of the Metal Gear Solid series gives a precursor to the story that veterans of the series already know. The main character has been put into a new era, the 1960s, and a new environment, the jungle. But unlike previous installments of the Metal Gear Solid series, the main theme of the game is not as much stealth so much as it is survival. A direct infiltration of land under Soviet jurisdiction would be a bad idea shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, and as such, you are thrown into the middle of an out of the way jungle with minimal supplies and left to fend for yourself. You are given regular contact with your commander, a medic, and a weapons specialist, but on the field, you are completely on your own; just the way fans of the Metal Gear Solid series like it.
Survival is done by becoming one with nature, as well as using the environment around you to your advantage. The radar of old has been replaced with a Camouflage Index. In simple terms, the higher the percentage within the Camo Index, the less likely it is for the enemies to see you. There is a slight learning curve to the Camo Index, but it is nothing extraordinary and it will feel natural to most players as they progress through the game. The Camo Index is affected by everything, from how fast you're moving to the clothes you wear to the noise you make. As you progress through the game, you will have to crawl through underbrush, be as quiet as possible, and utilize the various costumes and face paints that you will acquire throughout the game.
But it goes much deeper than simply going through the game and avoiding all contact with the enemy whenever possible. You have to worry about keeping your stamina up, keeping yourself healed, and what items to carry. In past Metal Gear Solid titles, you had immediate access to everything you picked up, and getting shot simply drained your health. Metal Gear Solid 3 takes this a few steps deeper. At all times, a Stamina Gauge appears under your Life Gauge. Every action you take decreases your stamina, and the main way to increase it is to eat. You don't have any home-cooked meals with you, so the only way to feed yourself is to capture or kill the various animals around you. Seducing an animal with your tranquilizer gun will allow you to capture them alive, but you cannot do this to large animals. Flat-out killing animals allows you to capture anything, but dead animals or plants will eventually go bad and give you food poisoning should you attempt to eat them. It's important to keep your stamina as high as possible, because Snake's Life Gauge regenerates automatically. The higher his Stamina, the faster he regenerates his health.
Various scenes and weapon attacks will not only injure Snake physically, but will force you to heal him through field surgery within the Survival Viewer (the Start menu). The game takes a lot of injuries into account, including broken bones, burns, and gunshot wounds.
In terms of weapons, you are limited to what you can bring onto the field with you. You are restricted to eight weapons and eight items, and though this may seem like a lot, there will be many points in the game where you will have to rearrange your Backpack to fit some key situations.
In the event of enemy incident, aside from the standard combat seen in Metal Gear titles of the past, a deeper feature was added: Close Quarters Combat (CQC). Co-developed by Snake and his mentor, The Boss, CQC is a series of close combat attacks that involve immobilizing and swiftly killing your enemy. It sounds complicated, but all there is to it is to simply press and hold the circle button when near an enemy. This will cause Snake to put the enemy in a headlock with a knife to his throat, and from there, a world of options are available to you. You can interrogate the enemy, break his neck, slit his throat, knock him out by throwing him to the ground, use him as a meat shield, or even steal frequencies that reveal radio stations. CQC is a very new, yet important facet of combat within the game.
For those who have played Metal Gear Solid 2, the controls will feel very natural. For others, the controls are simple enough so that most players will get used to them very quickly. What won't feel natural is the drop in frame rates from past titles to this one. The Metal Gear Solid engine was originally designed for indoor stealth gameplay, but Metal Gear Solid 3 has to compensate for the engine being moved to mostly large areas by dropping the frame rate down. This doesn't cause that much of a problem, but it can still be a nuisance.
Graphically, the game is absolutely beautiful. Konami put everything they had into making Metal Gear Solid 3, and it shows. Immense detail is given to every facet of the game, from the largest mountain down to the tiniest spider, and everything in between. Musically, though this game does not quite live up to the standard set by the first two games in the Metal Gear Solid series, but it gets the job done well enough outside of one major exception: "Snake Eater", the game's title track. "Snake Eater" is a Bond-esque track, and though it's role as title song can be argued for or against, the song is constantly, annoyingly thrown into your ears at some of the worst times in the game.
No Metal Gear Solid title is complete without a story chock full of plot twists, and to this end, Snake Eater's story is the main strength of the game. There is a nostalgia factor for the players who have played past titles in the series, but even if you enter the series by playing Snake Eater first, that's fine as well. Snake Eater serves as a prologue to the events of Metal Gear Solids 1 and 2, and you can jump right into Snake Eater without fear of having missed out on anything important. There are a couple of easter eggs that you may not catch, but that's a minor technicality.
For the most part, Snake Eater's story is flawless. It's ripe with plot twists, an anti-war, pro-patriotism theme, and is presented in absolutely perfect fashion. Few game series are better at storytelling than Metal Gear Solid, and though Snake Eater can be dry at some points, the overall feel is both shocking and climactic; it's everything that a story should be, rather than the standard god-slayer storyline seen in most RPGs out there.
The main exception to this is the Cobra Unit. They, along with Volgin, serve as the main villains of the game. The problem is that most of the Cobra Unit has no background story whatsoever --- only its leader and an ex-member have any type of solid explanation to them, while the rest of the members meander around like bumbling idiots while saying little more than their own names when you finally battle them. If I wanted to hear that, I would go and watch one of the Pokemon movies.
Another major con with the game's overall performance is the deep detail being counter-intuitive to the gameplay, as well as the game being far too linear for over half of the journey. In an effort to reduce backtracking, the game takes it a few steps too far and practically eliminates it altogether. This prevents you from becoming attached to any of the areas you visit in the game, whereas this was not the case in past titles. The gameplay is also flat-out boring until you reach the mountains. All of the detail put into jungle survival is nice, but it gets old fast. Unfortunately, most of the true action in the game doesn't take place until it is half over. Furthermore, late in the game, you'll have to hit the start button every time an enemy so much as sneezes on you to heal the various wounds you'll incur. This takes away from the action and only serves to slow the game down, which gets very annoying very quickly. Even worse is when this happens during boss fights.
This all adds up to what I like to call a flawed masterpiece. When the game is at a high point, the feeling of playing it is like none other; but then the game turns around and begins to blare "Snake Eater" at a rising crescendo during the final boss fight, and you're left scratching your head in wonder of what the hell Kojima was thinking in allowing clearance of such infernal nonsense. I'd like to say that the entire game doesn't play out this way, but sadly, I can't; however, this does not mean that Snake Eater is not a game worth playing. It most definitely is, but there are a lot of little things to deal with as you go along that make Snake Eater the worst of the three main Metal Gear Solid titles.
But that's on par with being only the third smartest genius at Princeton, so it all works out.
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Aug 4, 2009 0:14:23 GMT -5
Got bored and wrote for Mario 3, because every real gamer likes Mario 3.
Super Mario Brothers 3
"Timeless."
10/10
Mario 3 was an amazing game when it first came out, and gamers knew it. It sold nearly 20 million topics and was way ahead of its time even compared to even games that came out a full system generation later. It remained great as time passed, being treated with higher regard as people had more time to reflect on it. It was a perfect mix of great game and influence, and it remains great even by today's standards. Because while games of today are building themselves around graphics and sucking out more and more of the fun, Mario 3 is perhaps the best proof that fun trumps everything else. If a game is very fun to play, it'll end up being a great game. Period. Any other factor is a bonus. Mario 3 has grown to such enormous critical acclaim that the words "Super Mario Brothers 3" are a holy grail to gamers --- a fountain of youth, a forever-masterpiece, a game words cannot do justice to --- and Shigeru Miyamoto ascended to royalty status among gamers in large part because of how good Mario 3 was.
The basic concept of Mario 3 is well-known by now, but perhaps you've lived in a sewer your entire life. In that case, the idea is simple. You're Mario, and the Mushroom Kingdom is under siege once again by your arch nemesis Bowser. Normally Bowser employs cartoonish methods to enslave the world, but in Mario 3 he's dead serious. Bowser turns all Hyrule's high ranking royalty into harmless animals, employs a literal army of minions to destroy anything that moves, kidnaps the princess and even sends his own children into the fire as troops. Bowser is freaking <I>evil</i> in this game, and it's all up to dinky little Mario to save the day. In the beginning he's only armed with gaming's most famous fat roll, mustache, hat and jumping skill, and he's stuck taking on Bowser all by his lonesome. If you play with two people, Luigi tags along as the eternal understudy, making the odds two against forever. Whoopdedoo. How Luigi remains overshadowed even though he jumps higher than Mario remains a mystery, but that's a different conversation for another day.
Being a 2D platformer, the most important factor of the game is level design. Mario 3 arguably does this better than any other game ever made, and there are a ton of atmospheric and aesthetic features making it all better. Nearly every level in the game is interesting, and it doesn't throw an overabundance of dumb gimmicks at you in hopes you'll find it good. The level design is good all by itself thanks to well-placed obstacles, fun enemies and never overstaying its welcome thanks to reasonable time limits in each. You go through a fun level, cross the finish line and move on to something harder. One might not equate "Nintendo" with "hard" if they got into gaming on recent generations, but Mario 3 pulls no punches. The game is quite challenging at times, especially when you hit the last world of the game. It's no exaggeration to say Mario is a one man army, because he has to be.
Then you hit all the random add-on stuff that makes such fun level design better. Mario needs ways to defend himself, and he has plenty of them. One of the best parts of any platformer along with level design is the items, and Mario 3's items are quite famous. There is of course the standard mushroom and fire flower, and a whole host of new items. The feather, p-wing and <B>Kuribo's Shoe</b> all became staples thanks to Mario 3. <B>Kuribo's Shoe</b> especially is one of the greatest fads ever, because what beats hopping around a giant shoe as if the game were you own personal Monopoly board? Nothing, that's what. <B>Kuribo's Shoe</b>, gamers the world over salute three. You can even store items for later use, which is perhaps Mario 3's defining gameplay mechanic. Nothing beats bypassing those insane levels in World 8 with p-wings and clouds.
There are of course other little things making the game great. The world map is top notch, and each of the eight worlds has a theme to it. There's a basic starter world, a desert, an ocean, a sky world and all the rest. Each level ends with a basic cross the finish line goal, and each world ends with not a castle, but a freaking airship invasion. How badass is that? You see this airship flying off, and Mario grabs onto the anchor and invades the thing special op style. The world maps themselves have a ton of little add-ons, such as on-map mid boss enemies, warp pipes, forts, shortcuts, minigames and more. The minigames are particularly awesome, especially if you're playing the game with someone else. You'll spend more time stealing items from your best friend than you will playing the game, and the single player stuff is equally awesome. There's a memory card game, a gimped slot machine and at the end of every level you'll get a card. After three cards you'll get an extra life or two, and you <I>will</i> jump into every card at full speed. Just like you'll catch every wand at the highest point possible. It's compulsive tradition.
The specific atmosphere of each world adds a ton to the whole game's experience, especially once you really get into things. The most famous example is the giant world, where all the enemies are gigantic and Mario is an ant by comparison. The game does a ton of graphical things that are highly impressive by NES standards, culminating in the jet black military setting of World 8. The entire game is worth playing for the atmosphere of that world alone, but thankfully the seven proceeding worlds are perfectly fun to play through. You'll also get treated to some great music that is technically astounding given NES standards. The music feels like actual music in Mario 3, not endless midi techno loops, and it fits everything perfectly. The best themes play during boss fights, but you might like something else. Who knows. Gaming music is a wholly subjective matter, but you're probably a communist if you don't like the music in Mario 3. Then again, you're a communist if you don't like Mario 3 period.
So how does all this add up to Mario 3 getting mentioned by many as the best game of all time? Play it for yourself and see, assuming you haven't already. Some games get overrated thanks to people liking them so much, but Mario 3 is fairly rated. Every person on the planet coudl call Mario 3 the best game ever made, and it would deserve all the praise. Sometimes you have to play a game and feel all the nostalgia yourself, and Mario 3 fits this bill. Do other games have better graphics? Sure. Better music? Of course. Do other games, even within Mario's own series have better level design? Maybe. Better items? Definitely. But no game ever made brings everything together as well as Mario 3 does, even to this very day. There's a magic about this game that little else comes close to repeating, and no one is a true gamer until playing it.
The <I>one</i> flaw is lack of a save feature, but saving Mario 3 means turning it off before you're finished. Who would do that?
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Oct 8, 2009 9:35:16 GMT -5
Sorry about the broken html. This (like all my reviews) was written for GameFAQs, and I'm too lazy to change all the tags for a site that has like 3 active members on it.
Special thanks to James for letting me borrow the two Lunar games.
Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete
The world will once again be mine on a delicious half shell.
8/10
<B>"Fang of Justice!"</b>
If you liked Lunar 1, you'll like Lunar 2. Simple as that. Lunar 2 doesn't quite measure up to the standard set by 1, but in fairness it's impossible to compete with a game that's perfection in every way. Still, Lunar 2 is a great title that stands up on its own, and worth a playthrough of Lunar and RPG fan alike. While it's preferential to play Silver Star Story Complete before getting into the sequel, it's not 100% necessary. Eternal Blue is meant to stand on its own with only spotty references to the original, and it does a good job of this.
Eternal Blue takes place 1000 years after the conclusion of Silver Star Story Complete. If you play 2 before 1, the thing to know is that the game takes place on Lunar, with a giant planet called the Blue Star orbiting overhead. In ancient times, the Blur Star was a rich world inhabited by humanity, but was eventually corrupted beyond repair. The Goddess Althena had to turn the world into a barren wasteland to kick all the evil out, and helped the humans migrate to Lunar. Althena created a good world on the smaller Lunar, and promised humanity that she would one day return them to a thriving Blue Star. Lunar 1 in a nutshell is evil rising up and taking control of Althena's powers, and the good guys eventually winning. However, the populace still inhabited Lunar, not the Blue Star.
1000 years later, a new character awakens from cryostasis on the Blue Star. Her name is Lucia, charged with guarding the Blue Star until it's able to be restored. Unfortunately, her awaking early means Lunar is about to be in huge trouble, so she flies to the other planet in hopes of meeting with Althena and preventing catastrophe. When she arrives, she meets with the main character of the game, Hiro. Hiro is an adventurous child who always barely escapes from danger, living in peace with his grandpa Gwyn and his pet baby red dragon, Ruby. Hiro falls in love with Lucia at first sight, and vows to help her find Althena.
Problem being Althena's Guard, specifically Leo the White Knight, was assigned to execute someone named Lucia the Destroyer on sight. Apparently someone got the bright idea that this "Lucia" character was destined to come to Lunar and destroy the place. For the first half of the game, Hiro assists Lucia in running away from Althena's Guard and meets some new friends along the way. It wouldn't be a Lunar game if there weren't some good characters, good relationships and NPCs worth talking to several times. Ronfar is an ex-member of Althena's Guard, currently wasting his days away as deadbeat bar trash; Jean is a carnival dancer, who also randomly knows the strongest karate in the world; Lemina is the current head of the Vane Magic Guild, even though Vane itself is a town in ruins; and of course, there are a ton of surprises and plot twists along the way.
Admittedly, the first half of the game where the party runs away from Althena's Guard is very dry. It's all character relationships, vague hints of what will happen later and wholly boring plot events. But right around when the party finally makes it to Pentagulia, the game becomes the proverbial book you can't put down. Saying more would obviously spoil a ton, so play the game and see for yourself. Just know that all the boring nonsense you have to deal with in disc 1 is worth it. Very, very worth it.
<B>"I saved this for you, infidel!"</b>
The gameplay is almost identical to Lunar 1, with some added features and fixes. In battle, you start out in whatever formation you want. Basic attacks bring you close to enemies, enemies can get close to you during their own attacks, and the abilities and varied weapon and character types you get throughout the game make it all a fun, clustered mess. Characters and enemies are all over the place in fights, and it takes quite a long time until you get the GG abilities and items that lay waste to any enemy in the game. Until then, true strategy is involved with what skills to use and when and having enough items to get through a dungeon. Enemies aren't quite as hard as they were in Lunar 1, but you can still get killed if you're careless. Hiro is a standard overpowered RPG main character, but he can't carry the team by himself all the time. Enemies will have strengths and weaknesses to certain attacks, and so forth. It's a simple system to get used to, and one that any Lunar 1 vet will jump right into with no problems.
Each character gets skills and weapons that fit their theme. Hiro is a swordsman with a lot of HP and great stats, meant for the front line. Ronfar is a healer that does no damage, meant for back line support. Lemina is your mage, and pretty much breaks the game with the right items. And so on and so on. Lunar 2 also has more stuff to play around with than in 1, such as the Crest system. Each character can equip up to two crests, which affect various things. Most give you some magic, others give stats, and others give random abilities like Attack Power going up every round. It's fun to play around with, though you'll find that it's a gimmick by game's end. Very few of the crests are relevant. There is also the standard weapon/shield/head/armor/2 accessories equipment system, an item inventory, and of course bromides of various characters. But perhaps the biggest improvement from Lunar 1 to 2 from a gameplay perspective is item stacking. No more dealing with a million Star Lights in one place. You can hold 20 at a time, in one spot.
Most importantly, there's a epilogue adventure once you've beaten the main game. Lunar 2 doesn't do the ambiguous ending. You get to make a true conclusion, with challenging bonus dungeons and bosses, and some awesome items to find.
<B>"Taste my refreshment!"</b>
Graphically and musically, it's virtually the same game. This is a good thing, because Lunar 1 had some amazing sprites for characters and monsters and NPCs, and some very cheery music that got serious when it needed to. Lunar 2 does the exact same thing with no complaints. They even brought back the cheesy, over the top voice acting that everyone loves. Anime scenes pop up now and again during the story, and in battle everyone has ungodly over-the-top spell quotes. Playing around with all the crests and magic spells is worth it just to hear everyone's spell quotes, especially with a spoilerific character you get late in the game.
<B>"Discipline feels GOOD, haha!"</b>
There are however a couple of glaring problems that keep Lunar 2 from being as good as 1 was. It's nothing game-breaking and Eternal Blue is a great game in spite of this stuff, but they're still there.
For starters, this game has a <I>HUGE</i> audio problem. The game itself seemed like it was recorded very loudly, which would be fine if it was constant. But if you turn the volume down, an anime scene will pop up and you won't be able to hear anything the characters are saying. So then you turn the TV back up to hear what's going on, and by then you've either missed stuff or the game shifts back to normal and you're back to annoying the neighbors and helping your own hearing loss. There's a very unconstant volume coming from this game. Thankfully you're thrown a bone with the Rememberizer item found in the epilogue. You can go back and view all the scenes from the game, provided you zoom all over the world to where the scenes took place and add them to your list. The music player comes with all the music free of charge, but the Rememberizer requires scene-hunting. Makes little sense.
Another audio problem comes in battle, though this was seemingly done on purpose. In Lunar 1, you <I>felt</i> all the attacks your characters put out. When Alex stabbed something, you heard it plain as day and almost felt bad for that skewered beetle. In Lunar 2, it sounds like the characters are fighting with sandpaper underwater. You barely near any sound effect from any attack. It's a good thing voices are so fun in fights, else fighting in this game would not be much fun.
Lastly, Disc 1 truly is boring. Every RPG has some exposition, but this one has exposition unnecessarily taking up half the game. Lucia being in battle is nice, but for half the game? No one likes AI-controlled allies.
<B>"Kneel and perish!</b>
Overall, Lunar 2 is a damn good game and any RPG fan should play it. It has a few minor problems and isn't as good as Lunar 1, but then again how many games are as good as Lunar 1? You won't be disappointed here. Play Eternal Blue. Or better yet, play them both.
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Post by Yamazaki on Oct 15, 2009 18:50:32 GMT -5
Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days
Coming out of lurker mode, I feel the need to discuss a game I just recently finished. The most recent addition to the Kingdom Hearts series is 358/2 Days, for the DS. An odd choice, but not a bad one.
Story: Bloody fantastic. It covers Roxas's story during his time with Organization XIII, starting with his creation just moments after KH1 and ending with the beginning of KH2 (and the events of Chain of Memories affect this story greatly). It focuses greatly on Roxas's friendship with Axle and Xion. And if you don't reconize the name Xion from the other KH games, that's because she's a new character.
As the game progresses, we watch Roxas grow as a character. He starts off as a zombie (to quote Axle) until the very end when he's feeling a whole range of emotions. I won't say any more, else I spoil and James would kill me for that. Though I will say that you will see Roxas, Axle, and Xion sitting at the Twilight Town clock tower eating ice cream A LOT.
Like the other games, you visit the various Disney worlds, but you barely interact with the characters. Instead, the Organization Nobody's are the primary source of conversation and plot.
Graphics and Sound: Given that we're using a DS here, it's not half bad. The cutscenes look awesome, but that's to be expected. The gameplay graphics are fine, although some textures are a bit off.
The sound is nice and chrisp, as we'd expect from an KH game. The voice acting is nice, however very spare.
Gameplay: Ahh, the meat of the game. Combat plays out about the same as the other games, involving a lot of mashing of the A button (which leads to hand cramps because of the design of the DS lite). The biggest change is the implement of the Panel System. You get a nice little grid to place panels that represent the various abilities, equipment, and spells you acquire throughout the game. The MP gauge is ditched for a limited number of spell castings, based on the panels you've placed. The same is even for your level, as you must place a level panel to level up Roxas. Even your Keyblade is determined by your panels. As weird as it sounds, it becomes very intuitive very quickly. There's no particular way to organize the panels, as long as they all fit (some panels link to others to power up their abilities, including the Keyblade panels).
358 also boasts the first multiplayer KH game. As story mode progresses, you'll find 'Unity Badges', which unlock the missions for mission mode. In this mode, you can play as the various Organization XIII members and a couple of unlockables (including Riku, Donald and Goofy). You can play mission mode on your own, collecting emblems for items in story mode, or go with team play to get the rest of the emblems and have a good reason to say you're better than your friends.
Overall Judgement: I hate giving a grade to games. But I will say this: I loved the game. I almost cried at the end, and that rarely happens (Lunar 2's ending did that, though... but that was happy tears lol). If you liked the other Kingdom Hearts games, you will enjoy this one. It's rather short for an JRPG, clocking in at about 25 hours for the main story, assuming you barely grind for Synth materials and levels. But given that you will spend about $30 on this, it's well worth it. But if you've never played or hated the KH games, I wouldn't touch it.
Now to go grind for heart points to buy Zero Gear. I want dual welding Roxas in mission mode.
-Max
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Oct 21, 2009 15:20:11 GMT -5
Silent Hill 2
In my restless dreams, I see that town -- Silent Hill.
9/10
A recent retro review of Silent Hill 2 by prominent Zero Punctuation author Yahtzee kindled renewed interest in the game, which is a damn good thing. Silent Hill 2 is one of those games where it's hard explaining why it's so good; you just have to play it for yourself and see what all the fuss is about, and avoid as much outside information as possible. It's one of those deals where the more you learn about it before going in, the less you'll get out of the initial experience.
In the original Silent Hill for the original Playstation, the town of Silent Hill falls into the old "evil cult causing evil stuff to go down" corollary. This manifests itself into a haunted town with overbearing dark powers in the sequel, and the chief representative of the biggest mindjob of all time is James Sunderland. At the beginning of Silent Hill 2, he gets a letter from his wife Mary. In it, she tells James that she's waiting for him in Silent Hill, their special place.
One problem -- she's been dead for three years. But James, who really gives off the impression he has nothing to live for, heads to Silent Hill blindly hoping she'll actually be there. That leads to the other problem -- the entire town is haunted, everything is trying to kill him and all the would-be normal people James comes across are unreliable schizoids.
It all looks to build up to a typical haunted house routine, but Silent Hill 2 does atmosphere and immersion on par or better than any other game ever made, with very able storytelling and plot twists to boot. It's cliche to say a story will keep you guessing until the end, but Silent Hill 2 really does keep you guessing until the end with a climactic conclusion leaving you emotionally drained in every way. Whenever you think things can't get worse for James, they do. Whenever you think his world can't get darker, it does. And not only does James go through hell itself in Silent Hill, you the player experience the same thing. The game is legitimately terrifying, and not because of cheap jump-out-and-yell-BOO stuff. There is a very thick, dark tension that you experience along with James as you go through everything. Any sane person would bolt out of Silent Hill the moment the first blood stain popped up on the street. James not only plods on, but he does so in the face of stuff that would drive any normal man insane. It's bad enough when you first start playing and there's a thick fog during the day time, reducing visibility to around 2 feet during the day time. Now imagine that, but inside of a pitch black building. Imagine opening a door with your dinky little flashlight, but still barely being able to see anything down some disgusting hallway. And you go forward anyway, because there's nothing else in your life. That's James Sunderland, a tragic figure in every way, yet throughout the entire game he lives off this unshakable aura of feeling like he deserves going through this hell on earth.
Compounding all the tension are subtle little add-ons the game throws at you to keep you freaked out. You're given a radio that emits static whenever a monster is nearby. In theory this helps you, but in reality it helps freak you out even more. You don't want to go around that next corner as is, but then your radio emits an increasing static as you move closer. Good luck with that. There are also a *ton* of random noises and effects scattered about for no reason other than messing with your head. There's one part in particular where you're going through a prison hallway full of jail cells, and something on the second floor is rumbling about. James even looks up there, but nothing ever comes of it. Whatever "it" is is only there to keep you on edge. And that's where stuff like The Ring and The Blair Witch Project and Silent Hill 2 freak people out. It's not what's actually there, but the anticipation of what's actually there. But unlike a movie that keeps you on edge for a couple hours, Silent Hill 2 keeps you there for 10-20 hours.
And then there's Pyramid Head, the perfect horror villain. He's never there when you expect him to be, always there when you never expect him at all, and has a character model based on a medieval executioner. He's like a cross between a butcher and a masked executioner manning a guillotine, complete with his trademark pyramid helmet and gigantic sword ripped right out of Final Fantasy 7. But unlike your standard "kill everything rawr" villain, Pyramid Head serves a greater purpose and almost symbolizes the pain and suffering of Silent Hill itself. He's not only the justice and executioner of crime, but a victim of it as well.
The story and atmosphere might be top notch, but the gameplay is very suspect. In fact, it's pretty bad to actually play Silent Hill 2; but oddly enough, this is actually a very good thing that adds to the game's overall experience. You're playing as some random loser that wanders into Silent Hill like an idiot. You're <I>supposed</i> to be fumbling around and terrified and struggling with R2 and Square and X and strafe buttons all at once whenever an enemy shows up. And make no mistake, the controls of the game are <I>awful</i>. You go forward and backward from James's perspective, not the camera's. To use a melee weapon or fire a gun, you have to hold R2 to aim while pressing X to fire. To run, you have to hold down Square and work from James's perspective regardless how bad the camera is. But again, this is all forgivable and perfectly adds to the game's tension. Knowing how intelligent Konami is, it wouldn't be a surprise if this was all done on purpose, and the game does throw James a huge bone in the form of his foot having the Hammer of God in it. Seriously if he kicks any enemy in the entire game, they die. It's hilarious.
The main issue with the game, and what keeps it from getting a perfect score is a ton of start menu madness for changing weapons and solving puzzles. Oh god, the puzzles. Puzzles in survival games are expected, but Silent Hill 2's are about as unintuitive as possible. The riddles are fine, but the item fetching and their use is ridiculous without outside help. There's one part of the game where a box is locked with four locks. You have to find all four locks -- two of which are unlocked by solving other riddles and getting codes, mind you -- then combine the item found inside with another item you may or may not have found, just so you can eventually open a flimsy little door upstairs. This is no joke, and it goes on throughout the entire game. Or for another classic WTF Silent Hill 2 moment: How many people do you know in real life who would look at a badly clogged garbage chute in an apartment complex and think to themselves, "I bet this will get unclogged if I throw a box of juice at it". The best crowbar in the world couldn't have unclogged that garbage chute, but a not-so-heavy box of juice? No problem! It's wholly ridiculous, and very out of place throughout the entire game. But even the best games have something wrong with them, and item puzzles are Silent Hill 2's version of Cindy Crawford's mole, if you will.
The graphics and music do a great job of staying out of the game's way, only being noticeable when necessary. The music is almost as scary as the game's storyline, and the graphics do a great job of enhancing all the tension without being overly gory. There's blood and such, but nothing overpowering. Graphically, the game's choice is to be dark and mysterious without being cheesy. Even the few areas in the game lit up are difficult to make your way through.
Overall, Silent Hill 2 is a game everyone needs to play through at least once, and is a crowning achievement in the Playstation 2 library. It has one of the best plot twists ever, and if you haven't been spoiled on it yet, all the better. A PS2 costs like 27 cents these days, so get to it.
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Post by Yamazaki on Nov 3, 2009 12:11:06 GMT -5
Boarderlands
I almost dismissed this game right out when I saw it at Gamestop. Normally, I would have. But one of the guys at work picked it up and was having a blast, so I rented it (lack of money kind of keeps one from buying games). Turns out, this is what Hellgate London should have played like.
Graphics: Wonderful cel-shaded style while retaining a nitty-gritty feel. Most of the time, you won't notice the cel-shade graphics unless you're really close to someone. And you won't be doing a lot of that unless you're hitting them in the head or blasting them with a shotgun. Everything has a sort of space-western sort of feel. Like someone was inspired a bit by Trigun. And Fallout 3. All the major characters and bosses look unique, and the little bit of customizing of your character (just palette swapping here) is nice.
Music and Sound: The music sounds great, but doesn't persist much throughout the game. You'll only really hear it during gun fights, and even then you may not be paying attention to that because you're too busy gunning everything down.
The sounds are what you would expect from an FPS - loud and clear. If a gun's being fired, you know it. If a psycho-midget is running up to you from any direction with his little knife, you'll know (hopefully). And you'll hear those damned flying Rakk's, but never know where they're coming from until those bloody things have killed your shields.
Story: This is the game's weak point. You're searching for the Vault, a massive hidden stockpile of ancient alien technology. The entire game centers around this quest, all the while you're gunning down the local wildlife and the bandits. From there, there's not much of a story, or at least what I can tell with about 10 hours of gameplay.
Gameplay: This is the core of the game, as is for most games. It's an FPS, so expect guns, guns, and more guns. It handles like most of type, with fairly smooth and responsive controls. Grenade tossing tends to be rather clumsy though. Combat is fast and brutal. If you're not paying attention, you may be dead soon. 'Specially when those Psychos come running up. Gotta kill them before they get to you. And you get crits by getting head shots, or by shooting what other weakpoints the target may have.
But what's this bit about RPGs that people keep spouting about? While the game for the most part plays like a FPS, it still has RPG elements. In fact, it's like playing Diablo - skill trees, lots of loot, and hordes of enemies to kill. There are 4 classes: Solder, Hunter, Siren, and Brick. The classes determine the skills available, the action skill, and what guns they prefer. The Solder favors combat rifles and shotguns and can drop a gun turret, while the Hunter likes the snipe and sends its pet bird to kill things.
Equipment is pretty basic: you got your guns (repeater pistols, revolvers, SMGs, shotguns, combat rifles, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and weird alien guns), shield belts, grenade mods, and class mods. The mods, as you would suspect, affect what the grenades do, and what class abilities are improved. You can get stuff like teleporting 'nades or life-leeching 'nades. You can mod your class to heal a little faster, regen ammo, boost skills, or even get more XP. You'll find plenty of everything, especially guns. Guns can also have elemental traits, like fire, acid, lightning, and explody. Yes, I had a sniper rifle with explody bullets. It was pretty awesome.
Vehicle combat is a bit tricky. While it plays a lot like Halo's vehicle bits (which is decent controls, thankfully), it's difficult to shoot and drive at the same time. Co-op mode makes this easier to handle.
Online play is pretty well done. Who ever is hosting the game has their missions available. Like Diablo, the more teammates you have, the stronger your enemies get. Fighting Badass Fire Skraggs is not fun unless you have backup. Voice chat helps, too.
Final Judgement: Yes, it kind of looks stupid at first, but it's actually really fun. They balanced the FPS bits and RPG bits quite well, though it's mostly FPS. Give it a shot if you have a PS3, 360, or a decent PC. Online play is cross platform (GASP!), but there's a few issues of finding people cross platform. Regardless, it's a lot of fun.
-Max, has 'No Rest for the Wicked' stuck in his head because of this game...
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Dec 10, 2009 2:59:08 GMT -5
Resident Evil 0
A great man once said, "Capcom aren't bad people, they're just IDIOTS."
1/10
Even if you're the most diehard Resident Evil fan on the planet, just go read a script of this. You'll notice how awful and lame it is, save your money and move on some of life's better things -- which include skinning yourself with a tuning fork, eating earthworms, shaving with a piece of broken glass, a busted hemorrhoid or even worst of all, playing Final Fantasy 11. To be fair a lame script and characters is expected and often welcome of Resident Evil games, but Resident Evil 0's story isn't in the "so bad it's funny" category. It's just bad period, along with the rest of the game.
The idea of a prequel is obvious enough, and answers a few key questions. Namely why Rebecca ends up in the Spencer Mansion in the first place, who Billy even is, some back story for Wesker and Birkin, the story behind James Marcus's assassination and how Capcom was dumb enough to make the abomination known as Resident Evil 5. It's acceptable enough to make Wesker look awesome, and he is the game's one bright spot, but every other character is done so cheesy, even by Resident Evil standards, that this game is not worth playing for its story. At all. It's not worth playing outright, but stay away especially if your big reason is getting a few prequel questions answered. The internet blesses us with the ability to get storylines without suffering through bad games first. Take advantage of this.
Early on, a train gets completely wasted by millions of mysterious little slime bug leech things with teeth, and stuff. Rebecca Chambers (doesn't this sound like a porn name?) is dispatched to the scene to investigate, and she comes across Billy Coen, an AWOL Marines escapee buff criminal guy. Rebecca of course ignores orders to capture him, and thus begins Capcom's lovely decision to loose AI-controlled co-op upon the world. As a general rule of thumb, co-op gameplay is terrible. Resident Evil 0 is no exception, and if anything it's a perfect example of why you avoid games that don't let you solo stuff.
Rebecca and Billy traverse through a train, an imposter mansion slash training facility, a factory and some nuclear waste dump in their lovely adventure of nonsense, working together and apart to kill some zombies and viruses, and of course there is a bad partner system and worse "puzzles" to solve -- "puzzles" being a very loose term here because all that ever happens is the two are forced apart to open some door now and then. The enemies are especially notable here for being awful, because there is not ONE memorable or threatening enemy in this entire game. You'll spend all game wondering when the zombies or bugs will pose a threat and pick up a bit, but they never do. Most lumber toward you without any true intent to kill. Even the rare Hunter or boss fight is easy ownage with the correct weapon, and bosses being this easy is a huge disappointment. The first few bosses are joke city if you have more than 4 brain cells, and the last few require holding R and mashing A with the heavy weapons. Only the last part of the very last boss fight breaks the mold, but even that ends up being a joke. The only challenge in this game is fighting with the fixed camera angles, but you'll eventually learn that R + A = Hit Enemy and not care.
What's left past this are exploration and the aforementioned non-puzzle-solving, and do not expect much in either area. You'll run around finding various interpretations of keys to open various interpretations of doors, some of which would make even Silent Hill 2 cringe. Late in the game, there's a fork lift with no battery, holding a small crate. Maybe 2 feet above the crate is the key to one of the game's final doors, and the characters could easily climb the fork lift, snatch the key and escape this terrible excuse of a game. Instead they find some water, 2 chemicals that mix to make sulfuric acid, then mix these three items together to make a battery. Then they find a bigger battery, plug the smaller battery into the bigger battery and call it an OMGHI POWERED BATTERY. This all leads to one character standing on the crate, on the forks, with the other pressing a button to reach said penultimate key. It wouldn't be as embarrassing if not for about 10 minutes earlier, when Rebecca hops on Billy's shoulders to get a key off some ceiling rail that's maybe twice as high as the fork lift thing. It's complete nonsense, and the entire game plays out like this.
"Plays" should also be a term in quotes used very loosely, because you won't be doing much of this. The partner system is clunky at <I>best</i>, and is more like a what-the-hell-am-I-doing. There are two options: solo or team. If you have your partner solo, he/she acts by themselves. This is a euphemism for "Stand still and die". If you select team, they follow you around and fire their equipped weapon when you fire yours. This actually isn't so bad when you have like 200 handgun bullets and need to blaze through a room with 5 normal zombies in it, but terrible if they have a killer weapon equipped by accident. Each character also gets a custom "ability" -- again, a very loose term here. Rebecca's chemical mixing is legit, but Billy's custom skill is lightning a lighter. Apparently lighters are a very complicated tool that women could never hope to operate, which explains how no females have ever smoked anything in the history of mankind. Emphasis on <I>man</i>kind, because clearly Capcom thinks of women as subhumans who cannot command the simplest of operations.
Best of all is each character gets a whopping six inventory slots, and Resident Evil 0 has no magical item boxes. This leads to the stupidest possible thing, which is leaving your crap lying all over the place and keeping track of it. The sheer stupidity of this needs no further explanation, because the ramifications are obvious. And worse <I>yet</i> is the game has a limit on how many items you can drop in one room, so you're specifically forced to leave your crap all over the place. Late in the game, even with an elevator shortcut to a few bases of operation, you're better off parting ways with some stuff and plodding on. Or better yet, you can not play this game and all and not bother in the first place. You'll be much better-off for it.
At this point, some games get saved by graphics, music or some other intangible. Not Resident Evil 0. Not even Wesker in all his glory can save this game. The music is objectively terrible, and the graphics are even worse. The game's areas are very generic in design, the characters all look like wax dolls and worst of all, there is nothing in this game, not even one time, that's scary. Isn't this game part of a survival horror series?
The short answer is no. The only survival horror to be had here is surviving the horrible, generic boredom. If the most fun part of a game is how fun it is, then Resident Evil 0 fails in the most complete way possible. And the worst fail of all here is Capcom. Resident Evil 0 is a clear, CLEAR template of forced co-op AI nonsense being god-awful gameplay design, yet they ignore how bad this game is and make Resident Evil 5 forced co-op anyway. It's like when we can think Capcom can be no more stupid than they already are, they set out to prove us wrong.
Capcom is all about quantity over quality. They figure if 100+ games get made per series, they'll luck out once in awhile and make something worth playing -- or better yet, something <I>good</i>. What's sad is this actually works, because people buy up all of Capcom's feces in hopes of finding that rare diamond. Wake up, people. Capcom is scamming you. Hard.
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Dec 12, 2009 1:08:26 GMT -5
Portal
If you don't like Portal, you have a serious problem enjoying life.
10/10
<B>"As part of an optional test protocol, we are pleased to present an amusing fact: The Device is now more valuable than the organs and combined incomes of everyone in <louder>[subject hometown here]</louder>."</b>
It's generic and cheesy and cliche to call a game a sublime, timeless classic. Yet every single adjective synonymous with "OH MY GOD HOW IS THIS SO AWESOME" applies to Portal and then some. Portal was a little pack-in at the end of The Orange Box, meant to be a little tech demo for Half-Life 2's physics engine in preparation for you to play... Half-Life 2. Instead, we're handed one of gaming's all-time classics practically for free. If you've been on the internet at all since 2007, you've heard all the one-liners and jokes and praise by now. And Portal deserves it. All of it. Every single last bit of fanboy drool is 100% applicable.
Portal is a first person shooter (FPS) in the pure vision sense, but in reality it's a first person puzzle game. The only gun you get is the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. It creates portals on walls, orange or blue. If anything enters the orange portal, it pops out of the blue one and vice versa. You don't start the game with the ASHPD, but you'll get to it after a few simple puzzles.
<B>"You're not a good person. You know that, right? Good people don't end up here."</b>
Consequently, you begin the game in cryostasis in the Aperture Science laboratory. You play the role of some part-time employee chick named Chell, but she's just a name plastered onto the first person's role as an excuse. When you first wake up, you're greeted by an overlord female voice called the Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System, or GLaDOS.
In the beginning of the game, life is good. You stroll along through some simple puzzles, GLaDOS cracks a few jokes and you move on. It's all playing out like you just woke up from a long nap to help Aperture Science test out some new gadgets and a fancy little gun that shoots portals. Even when you're introduced to death as a consequence for failure, it still feels like you're in a simple little test to see the measurements of reactions. Eventually you're ended handed a pull-fledged ASHPD and you're able to fire both portal colors yourself. Even when GLaDOS calls the gun more important than your very life, it's all in good fun. She doesn't actually mean it, right? I mean after all, she promised you a cake at the end of the test.
But as you keep going, GLaDOS -- and most notably, the puzzles you solve -- grow slightly more sinister even though they retain the appearance of "fun". Is this <I>actually</i> a test? Are you ever going to get to leave this place? You'll go into Portal expecting a fun little two hour puzzle game. You'll come out wondering where all the random dark humor came from, assuming you come out at all.
<B>"Momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between portals. In layman's terms, speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out."</b>
While you'll be pleasantly surprised at Portal's story being good, you'll likely go into this game expecting good, simple gameplay. And you'll get it. You only get the one gun, and it's not really used to kill things. You slap portals and travel through them either yourself or with a couple of random toys to solve some puzzles. You'll also have a few other things, like extending energy ball shots to targets at other parts of a level and things of that nature.
But beyond this are some unbelievably creative puzzles that Valve really needs to be commended for nonstop. The momentum jumps in particular are a stroke of genius, in which you slap one portal high up on a wall, and another way down on some floor. Jump to the one on the floor, and you fly out of the high exit like a bullet and hop over a seemingly impossible wall. There is a ton of stuff like this you can do, and when you get good at it you can add in some crazy nonsense -- crazy nonsense you'll actually have to pull off if you plan on beating the bonus maps. Good lord. If you've ever wanted to portal-hop over disappearing floors while flying through the air, all while having to fire perfect shots upside-down at things the size of pie plates in the first attempt to keep yourself from dying, then the bonus maps are for you. This is to say nothing of attempting least step or least portal challenges, which you will of course attempt for the hell of it. Portal's main game isn't all that difficult, but that's what bonus challenges are meant for.
Rather than spoiling it all, just go play and see for yourself. It's not like the game is long or anything. The main game is 2 or 3 hours, 4 if you go really slow. This is another part of why Portal owns. It doesn't overstay its welcome, much like a perfect appetizer -- whets the palette, keeps you hungry for dinner. That's Portal in a nutshell.
<B>"Cake, followed by grief counseling, will be available at the end of the testing period."</b>
Graphically and especially musically, Portal is fine. But Valve is a modern game developer with common sense, so they actually build their games around gameplay with additives used as.... additives. The graphics are good enough. Some good things, a couple of weird things, and it doesn't get in its own way. Most importantly, it isn't 30 shades of brown. The music is also very notable here, especially the final theme. You've probably heard Still Alive thousands of times by now, but the rest of the soundtrack is just as, if not equally good.
But again, Valve builds their games around gameplay, not graphics and music. And surprise surprise, their games all end up good because of it. You'd think all these generic dime-a-dozen graphics-obsessed failures of game companies would learn from the best once in awhile.
<B>"This was a triumph."</b>
With Portal being multi-platform, the only thing left is a system recommendation. Without getting involved in pointless console wars, a good PC is the best bet to play Portal on, especially if you've mastered the use of a trackball mouse. It's the easiest aiming and smoothest control, it's the best with the auto-saving and it's the easiest to do crazy endgame stuff with. There's also the added bonus of superior PC versions of Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2 if you go the route of The Orange Box.
But if you don't have the best PC and end up having to play this on a different console, it's not a giant loss. You can still do everything the game has to offer with only the tiniest issue of control problems, and most versions of the game are dirt cheap.
So get to it. If you haven't played Portal yet, your life is probably a mathematical error that needs correcting. Or in less extreme terms, you're missing out on an instant classic that everyone needs to play at least once.
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Post by UltimaterializerX on Jan 5, 2010 17:28:24 GMT -5
This was written for GameFAQs (and it took 5 revisions to get it accepted, rofl), so as always the html is broken.
Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Squaresoft's version of MUGEN in 3D. Fighting games need more than a ton of flash.
3/10
Sakaguchi can be fired over one mistake, yet no one else ever gets touched despite everything they've done since he was axed? Really? Just get rid of Tetsuya Nomura, already. He won't be missed.
Dissidia is the latest in an ever-growing line of mixed bag Square games since Sakaguchi was canned. Squaresoft is pretty blatant about treating Final Fantasy as a brand more than a video game series these days, and their misses are well documented with such titles as Final Fantasy X-2 and whatever other Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles 2.0: Friends of the Forever Universe title they're peddling this week. But once in awhile Square does show flashes of what put them on top in the first place, and Dissidia is good proof of this. Unfortunately, Square also likes to ruin any good thing they do, and Dissidia is proof of doing this <I>in the very same game</i>. Apparently Square's new strategy of making games is to a game that seems fun at first, but has eons of things wrong with it later.
On the surface, Dissidia will try calling itself a fighting game-RPG hybrid. This is a flat-out lie. Call it a free-flowing action sequence, an RPG without a home or whatever else, but do <I>not</i> call this a fighting game. Fighting games have throws, health that make sense and a host of other standard features that Dissidia straight-up fails at. But more on this later.
Dissidia is Square's version of Smash Brothers -- take a bunch of Square characters, throw them into a big mess and let fans enjoy watching their bad fanfics come to life. Heroes and villains alike from the first Final Fantasy all the way up to Final Fantasy 12 are in the cast, and for the most part each game is represented by a hero and a villain. The potential for a good story could obviously stem from this, but this is Squaresoft we're dealing with. All they do here is have good guys versus bad guys, with the lamest possible plot ever conceived guiding them.
In a nutshell, Dissidia's plot is "conflict, cosmos, chaos and discord, resolution, love and friendship and happiness, wild roses blooming". Rinse and repeat a few times. This is not an exaggeration. Play the game for yourself and see. In fairness it will of course seem awkward for Zidane and Bartz to work together for no real reason other than both being good guy main characters, but Dissidia's plot is a bad FF1 fanfic meeting its end in a meat grinder. It's so terrible you can't even laugh at how bad it is, plus the ending is the absolute lamest plot twist in the history of fiction. Even Star Ocean: Til the End of Time would cringe.
This said, no one plays fighting games for a compelling story. They play to kick the crap out of people, and at the core Dissidia's gameplay is decent. Every fight is a 1v1 duel to the death on a (usually) really big stage, complete with some cool moves and combos combining FF fanservice with "holy crap we need to put a lot of moves into this game or it'll suck" and it's mostly pretty fun. There's a charm about using Sephiroth and going all End-of-Disc-1 on people other than Cloud, and the controls are really simple. You only ever have to worry about the analog stick, three buttons and R/Triangle once in awhile. No overly complex strings of button combos and skill links need apply here.
You also get to do a <I>ton</i> of stuff. Destiny Odysseys (story line for the good guys; the villains are conspicuously absent from this, in a game preaching lol love harmony balance wild roses peace and friendship), an arcade mode, a very fun Duel Colosseum and so forth. But after a while the game gets considerably less fun, because Square put in so many bad ideas that they really need to be seen to be believed in some cases. Here's a list of all the big offenders, in no specific order:
<i>The Brave System:</i> Far and away the worst idea in the history of fighting games. In most fights, the following scenario takes place:
Bartz: Ride like the wind! Squall: ...whatever
Brtz unleashes several full combos while Squall continues staring off into space. They do next to no damage because he forgot to build up his Brave first -- and let's face it, Bartz would totally forget something like this.
Since Squall is a level 100, fully decked out godly pro owner fighting game master, he is prepared for such a challenge. He firmly pops out of daydreaming, swearing up and down he will break that Cloud in half one day.
Squall steps on Bartz's toes twice, breaking Bartz's Brave and rendering it 100% impossible for him to deal any real damage. Squall's own Brave shoots up to 9999, meaning all attacks will do 9999 damage and kill Bartz. Squall decides to finally pick off that nagging hangnail and flick it at Bartz's face. The ensuing nuclear catastrophe vaporizes Bartz, Squall and the entire eastern hemisphere off the planet in seconds.
That's Brave in a nutshell. The damage you deal to the enemy's health bar is entirely dependent on a separate value. You can potentially stab someone in the face 18 times for 0 damage, then get countered and die from getting sneezed on. It's a completely broken system that makes no sense. What's so wrong with a simple health bar?
The counterargument to this is obviously having both HP attacks and Brave attacks. Brave attacks will increase your own Brave while crippling the enemy, and if you do enough brave damage you'll break them. This gives you safety from HP attacks for awhile since HP damage is nonexistent while broken, and any stage brave in the middle all goes directly to you. In a game where stage brave can get into the several thousands, stage brave is another huge part of a system that doesn't even feign balance. Even more fun is how HP attacks work. They do damage equal to your current Brave value, then your Brave goes down to 0 before resetting to whatever your base value is. Then the cycle starts anew: build up Brave, attack, don't get countered, or simply build up enough Brave to win in one hit. In short, the game punishes you for any combo that doesn't end the fight. You can immediately be broken afterwards, which is ungodly stupid. And as a side note, some characters get to directly link Brave attacks into HP attacks with no opportunity for the opponent to dodge in between.
Square is known for having mailed it in since the Enix merger, but this is bad even for them. Having to raise a separate value before stabbing someone in the chest does numerical damage is pretty much the worst idea ever, and it gets even more painful when you consider what goes into actual character strength. More on that one later.
<i>Bad Camera Angles and Unplayable Levels:</i> This isn't a Smash Brothers situation where no one can ever agree on stage bans. Dissidia players universally agree that most of the game's stages are total garbage, and that's even if the camera wasn't god-awful. Add that in, and you have <I>maybe</i> 5 or 6 of the game's 25 levels being useable. Tops.
This game's camera is seriously the worst in the history of games. Even Devil May Cry, Shadow of the Colossus and Superman 64 are jealous of how bad this is. If you choose to lock on to your enemy especially (and you should, lest you get stabbed in the ass and die), good luck. Wild camera swings, getting stuck in corners when you can't see what's going on and not being able to look at what you're attacking dominate all the indoor levels. The levels with a lot of different floors are equally terrible thanks to getting stuck under floors all the time, and have the added bonus of the computer knowing how to attack you perfectly from blind spots. Square also put in a stupid gimmick where parts of every stage can break, which loosely translates into "We're going to put as much useless crap in your way as we possibly can, have fun".
Even on good levels, you still have a balancing act to worry about. Do you lock on to the enemy and lose some sight of where you're going, or remove the lockon and avoid all the junk Square threw into every map? This matters a lot if for example you're doing a Destiny Odyssey and fight something much higher level than you. One mistake, you die.
More silly is the random weird features Square threw into the environments. Since the levels are usually really big, Square had to make all the characters into skateboarding demigod birds so they could get around well. Every character can effortlessly run up walls at any angle (including running DOWN; try to figure that one out), infinitely fly and "grind" (seriously) on these predetermined skateboard energy track things. It's pretty absurd, if not altogether pathetic. The potential infinite air time is worth noting, by the way. A <I>lot</i> of your fights will be a Blue Angels air show from start to finish, which is some serious bad news when mixed with how this game's camera works.
<I>Whatever They Tried Calling "Limit Breaks":</i> EX, to be specific. This isn't to say supers in fighting games are bad -- quite the contrary, in fact. They're virtually necessary to keep a fighting game interesting. It's just that Dissidia's way of doing them is luck-based and imbalanced.
Remember Power Stone? Of course not, because no one bought a Dreamcast. In Power Stone, you and your opponent would fight on a 3D map and go after 3 colored stones. Once all three showed up, you'd beat each other up until the other guy dropped their stone. Eventually someone would get all three and unleash a super attack. They were good and powerful, but still balanced and avoidable.
Dissidia borrows from this concept, but borrows none of the good parts. Each character gets an EX gauge for a super -- or "EX Burst", or limit break or whatever other name Square wants to call it; but it's a super -- and once it's full they unleash hell by going into EX mode. Characters get powered up by a lot here, with boosted critical rates, an extra ability or two, better damage and so forth, and landing an HP attack means you get to do your super. Each character has different button combos, but none are really hard to do and most look <I>damn</i> cool.
The problem again lies in balance. Barring super lategame abilities and accessories, you gain EX from the map itself. When two characters fight, this EX Force pixie dust stuff flies off into the air. Absorb some, you get a little bit of EX. Alright, sure. Not a direct "fill super bar from giving or receiving damage" that most fighting games use, but still acceptable.
Then EX Cores (Dissidia's version of Power Stones) come into play. EX Cores are these stupid white bells with wings that pop up on the map, and whoever gets it has their EX raised by a lot. If the core happens to be on the map for a few seconds, it sucks up all the EX Force and gives the character who grabs it a megaton of EX. Double whammy of imbalanced nonsense, and there are some characters where EX Cores are an "I Win" button. And unlike Power Stone, there's no way to knock EX off someone once they get it, barring lategame accessories. Worse yet is the core's appearance is entirely luck-based. Literally. How close a core appears to your character is dependent upon their Luck stat, so one character can potentially never have a chance at getting cores. This wasn't a random accident, either. The in-game tutorial explains it clear as day. Good job, Square.
It's worth noting that when you EX burst, your brave resets to 0 before you start any combos within the burst. So all that nonsense about building Brave before HP attacks? Out the window, since your burst does HP damage before you even get into your super. Then it goes to 0 <I>again</i> afterwards. So make absolute sure your super wins the match, or the game effectively punishes you. It's also worth noting EX bursts are cutscenes; they're not an actual attack that happens during the fight. If someone lands an HP attack while in EX, they are given the option of using a super. The recipient has no say in avoiding, parrying or even attempting to dodge. If you get hit by an HP attack from someone in EX mode and they hit the square button, you're getting bursted. No questions asked, no opportunity at avoiding or blocking it, no balance in it whatsoever. Your only recourse is to run away until the other guy's EX runs out, though a smart player will just burst in the middle of a combo and skip the part where you have any chance at running. Good job again, Square.
<I>Chase Sequences:</i> Impractical at best, completely absurd at worst. Some brave attacks have an added "chase" effect, which means you have the option of pressing X and playing tennis -- er sorry, "engaging in a cinematic midair battle sequence that accurately depicts the struggle of life and death between two characters giving it their all for peace, love, understanding and <I>ending the conflict of the gods</i> during massive slowdown that lets the player appreciate background art and existential Japanese animation as well as Tetsuya Nomura's vision of something-or-other". In reality, whoever designed this was high as a kite, drugged their co-workers and snuck this into the game. It's the only explanation for it.
More specifically, you press a button and choose to attack either brave or HP. Brave attacks are fast, HP attacks are slow, and the other character has to guess which one you're using and try to dodge. Mis-time your dodge, you get hit. Dodge correctly, and you get a chance to counter. It's a grandiose way of saying "Trade 50-50 attacks until either someone scores a hit or the game gets bored", but they're borderline useless against a computer where 50-50 is never actually 50-50. You'll get used to chase sequence attacks and improve the odds in your favor over time, but you're almost always safer and better-off using normal attacks.
<I>Summons:</i> Through your travels, you will find Huge Materia -- sorry, "summon stones". Summons are either completely overpowered or completely useless. Very few fall into the fun middle ground, and <I>all</i> of them <I>only</i> affect Brave. A little variety could have been nice, or at the very least they could have some summons toy with the enemy's EX gauge. The methodology for why summons are imbalanced beyond belief is obvious enough.
<i>Menu Simulators:</i> JRPGs have been a genre without skill from the very beginning, so no one will pretend this is anything new. But being a fighting game (in theory), one would think Dissidia strays from the "Pick the correct menu options and win as a secondary side effect" routine.
Nope. The vast majority of your time "playing" Dissidia won't be spent playing much of anything. You have to manage character levels, play plans, the calendar, equipment, which mode to actually play in, SP, AP, CP, PP, Whatever-Else-P, summons, and on and on and on. JRPG fans will expect and enjoy this sort of thing, but it will continue alienating those looking for a more casual pick up and play experience.
This also happens to be the deciding factor in most fights, with player skill being a very distant second place. If you have the advantage in stats, level, skill selection and gear over your opponent, you're virtually guaranteed to win. This would not fly in a true fighting game, and is a good referendum on why RPGs and fighting games simply don't mix. Imagine how ludicrous it would be if Hakumen had to level himself up before taking on Ragna the Bloodedge. BlazBlue would have been laughed out of the production meeting.
<I>Lack of Throws:</i> Blocking is all well and good. Not being able to punish turtles with the obvious counter strategy is not. Throws not being in Dissidia is a horrid oversight. There is literally no way to punish a smart turtle in this game. The only way to get through well-timed blocks is with well-timed HP attacks and go right through blocking, but smart players can and will learn how to dodge all HP attacks and counter the counter before the counter is even used. Fighting game fans are routinely the most skilled in all of gaming, and it won't take long for Dissidia's metagame to flesh out. Turtling will be the predominant strategy in a game already lacking in reliable offense.
<I>The Final Boss:</i> SNK has absolutely nothing on this guy. It's okay for a final boss to be really difficult, but there is a certain level of absurdity here. Winning this fight quite literally means you have to outcheat him, and even then you'll need some blind luck. It's as if Square grew tired of hearing about how JRPG bosses were too easy and went as far in the opposite direction as possible. Square continues to flat-out not get it. Balance. Balance, balance, balance. It's all anyone wants.
<I>Rule Sets:</i> These only really plague the Duel Coliseum, but "plague" is definitely the optimal term here. Stage rules are Dissidia's version of Mario Kart's blue shells, and we all know how well that lovely feature turned out. If ever you're having fun in the Coliseum, a couple of moronic Cosmos Judgment-induced losses should clear that right up. Rule Sets make the Coliseum the least fun thing ever.
<I>Glitches:</i> You will wonder aloud many times if the folks at Square bothered play testing this game before releasing it.
And these are just the obvious gameplay issues. There's a couple other glaring things in other walks of the game, though nothing too bad. If you look at the all-inclusive soundtrack, you see titles from the entire series. It's no surprise at all how recycled tracks are good, while nearly every single original piece is objectively terrible. Dissidia actually does an amazing job remixing some of the older Final Fantasy songs, but falls apart when it tries doing something on its own. If you think this isn't a microcosm of the game as a whole, you haven't played many recent Square games. Graphically, Square remains ahead of the curve. "Pushes console limits" is a phrase you've undoubtedly heard a million times, but with Square it remains true. Their games routinely seem out of place on their respective systems, because they graphically look so much better than everything else.
There is one final glaring problem with Dissidia: the lie on the back of the game case. If you look, it says "What will you fight for?" with equal focus given to heroes and villains in the artwork. You can even reverse the inner lining to your liking, which would overall cause one to assume equal focus is given to the heroes and villains.
Don't get your hopes up, because it's absolutely false advertising. You will assuredly get a lot of playable focus on the Final Fantasy heroes; all of them get a Destiny Odyssey storyline, climaxing in a cinematic clash against their respective villain. The villains however get nothing. You'll see them in cutscenes, you can play as them in multiplayer or in Arcade and such, but none of them have a storyline to follow. It doesn't seem like a huge problem, but compare how you level up good guys and bad guys. The heroes all get a Destiny Odyssey, followed by Shade Impulse against high-level competition and then Distant Glory and Inward Chaos against even higher level competition -- they get their hands held all the way to level 100 and through several mastered abilities, basically. Villains get no Odyssey, so they get no boost to help them reach Distant Glory/Inward Chaos levels of skill. You have to Duel Coliseum or Quick Battle with villains to get them up to snuff, which isn't nearly as fun and you'll feel robbed of the villains having any character at all. Not that Dissidia's plot is anything but an unmitigated disaster, but even an attempt at the villain's stories would be nice given the back of the game box. It's worth noting that while the plot is a joke, the actual characterization of everyone is mostly spot-on. Fighter (er sorry, "Warrior of Light") come off very noble and proud, Zidane and Bartz and Tidus are their spunky freelancing selves, Kefka is off his rocker, Ultimecia has about 5 brain cells and so on. Speaking of Ultimecia, there is a severe lack of females in the cast. Of the 22 characters in Dissidia, four are women. Six if you count Cloud and Kuja. Square obviously had to go with the main character/main villain setup, but a few more characters to achieve some gender balance couldn't have hurt. More characters is almost always better than less characters.
Yet despite the plethora of things wrong with Dissidia, there's still a lot of stuff worth defending. As lame an argument as "fanservice" is, this game does it perfectly. There's something oddly satisfying about Squall busting out Revolver Drive all over Cloud's face, Sephiroth skewering Terra through a building or most importantly, Ultimecia being completely worthless. It's also a good game if you're big into JRPG completionism. There's always something new to do, even well after you've mastered the game. The game as a whole is oddly addictive and fun once you get the hang of things, even though you'll be sidestepping nonsense the entire time. In spite of Square trying to ruin Dissidia with all their standard nonsense, anyone can potentially have fun with it. Not much else really matters with a video game.
But the most important thing here is how multiplayer, the backbone of any fighting game, is done exceptionally well. If you want to show off your super-mega-awesome-l33t character against everyone, you can do it. If you enjoy balanced fights with everyone on relatively even starting ground, that's available as well. Best of all is humans don't generally get the same moronic advantages and gimmicks that high-level AI gets in single player. Even two mastered characters can have a good, close fight with very little BS thrown into the mix. It's damn fun fighting against another person, whereas single player feels like a job more than a game. Even fights where there's a predetermined winner can still be fun against another person, while the computer just reacts to your button commands. The community of Dissidia is also far more welcome than most fighting games, which is almost odd. Most fighting game people won't teach you anything, because it means losing a potential edge. Dissidia people will teach you stuff and be happy for you if you win now and again, which is refreshing. At the very least, it beats the hell out of 95% of Smash Brothers fans. For the record: Yes, community is a <I>major</i> factor in fighting games. You can have a terrible game be awesome if the people playing it are fun to be around (See Also: Kombat, Mortal; 1990s).
In the end, Dissidia boils down to whether or not you're already a Final Fantasy fan. If you like the series, you'll find a way to like this game no matter what's wrong with it. If not, steer clear away. You'll almost assuredly hate this game if you're not a pre-existing FF fan. For those in the middle, you'll definitely want to take the rent-and-see approach and test it out before buying it.
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The Lord of Blades
Game Masters
Ero Sennin
Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm a man of wealth and taste
Posts: 1,314
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Post by The Lord of Blades on Jan 7, 2010 4:18:34 GMT -5
Final Fantasy XI
"It all began with a stone... or so the legend says"
Produced by Hiromichi Tanaka, the same guy who was the producer and battle designer for Xenogears and Chrono Cross, it's no surprise that FFXI also comes under a lot of mixed reviews. People either praise it or slam it and they are both right in many ways.
Final Fantasy XI marks the first MMORPG in the series and that right there is a heavy departure from what most fans are familiar with. FFXI though has somewhat of a jumbled approach. The hard drive on the PS2? Xbox360? PC? Unfortunately, though FFX was simple and easy to access on the PS2, FFXI involved jumping through a lot of hoops to be playable on the PS2. The Xbox360 version is better about this, but didn't come along til later. The best approach is going to be the PC and even that came with being unwindowable for a long time without third party software. Simply put? The initial approach of FFXI was disjointed and near the beginning it was a 'pure' and 'innocent' but awkward experience due to a lot of game mechanics that probably seemed like decent ideas on paper but were beyond poorly executed.
I use those terms because the game in and of itself isn't necessarily bad once you get used to it. At the beginning, a lack of experience with how to deal with the MMO scene is abundant and many of those errors have long since been fixed. Ask anyone who's been playing the game since around the launch time and still plays now, they'll tell you that leveling up is roughly a hundred times easier. With all that in mind, this review is somewhat a tough subject and for that, FFXI as a whole is going to be considered from the earlier days to the current build. Also, to get it clear and out of the way, FFXI is not a free game, there is a monthly subscription and it's not too bad: around 10 dollars + 1 for each character per month and you will likely only ever want one or two characters.
"In ages past, a sentient jewel, enormous and beautiful, banished the darkness"
Aesthetic wise, FFXI is quite a pretty game. From environments to character models, despite being from around 2002, the game is quite a treat to look at. There aren't many flashy cg scenes like FFX, but it does have a lot of polish and a robust and solid appeal of its own. Scenery in the game is particularly well done and oftentimes you'll explore a new area just to see more of what it has to offer even if you can't use a specific thing yet or even if it is just decoration. The endgame areas are also visually impressive, living up to previous FF titles for their uniqueness and "We're not just killing imps in the forest" anymore feel.
The soundtrack keeps up with this pace too. Though certain areas in game are lacking a musical score whatsoever, it is almost always appropriate. An isolated desert beach doesn't play some awkward tropical theme; a ruined temple in the middle of the jungle is quiet while the wind howls through its murky depths. For these it can be forgiven, especially considering the rest of the music in the game is spot-on. Particularly the boss fights are always accompanied by appropriately hair-raising music that carries the perfect weight of anxiousness, nervousness, and epic feel. When you fight Ifrit for the first time, you're definitely worried. The one immense shortcoming here is the standard battle music. In a game where a lot of grinding (even in current updates) is required, you'll have heard this music a lot before you're even level 37 and bear in mind the max level is 75 and you have to level your jobs separately (switching between them). With so much grinding, the music eventually gets turned off when in regular battles.
Character models are, while a little drab at times, rather well designed: you can play as a human (called Hume), a tall and knightly Elvaan, a short but brilliant Tarutaru, the muscled and bulky Galka, or the lithe catgirl Mithra. Each race is 'animated' in a set of emotes that players have access to most of and can use as they see fit along with different poses and movements. Adding in the various jobs, equipment, and even weapon choices amongst the same jobs and it is highly possible to see three Elvaan Warriors standing next to each other who look nothing alike aside from their race. This allows players to maintain some semblance of an identity of their own; though the endgame gear will eventually enforce a similar appearance as some pieces are flat out better than others.
FFXI is a game that has aged well, the graphics haven't improved, but they were made in such a way that even nowadays they aren't hard to look at nor are they disgracefully outdated, they still possess that same rugged beauty and simplicity that created a believably appealing world. Monsters too follow a unique design and have numerous animations for their various attacks. Unfortunately, once you've seen a monster once, congratulations, you've now seen 99% of that monster type in the game barring the occasional unique or "notorious monster" of its kind with a palette swap. FFXI takes the old FF standby to an extreme. Monsters may behave differently or learn new moves, but the name is the only thing that will change. Also, without menacing new monsters, usually the stronger something is the bigger it is... which starts to get comical when the goblins go from coming up to your waist to standing taller than you. The newer expansions and updates have retread a few of these monsters with new outfits and designs, but all in all it just isn't enough. You kill one manticore, you've fought all of them with the exception of one that you won't fight very often.
In short, FFXI's style works for it, and is actually consistent with previous FF titles of reusing the same monster again and again. The environments are appropriately scaled to continue growing more grandiose or daunting (for the most part). Unfortunately, this isn't always necessarily a good thing and sometimes FFXI outright screws it up. Some of the more dangerous areas in the game look like a beach area you visited at lower levels. At least change the sand to red to make it a 'bloodsand' area. Something, ANYTHING to make it more threatening and daunting other than just changing the layout, putting in a different set of monsters, and ramping up their difficulty. Between that and unchanging monster appearances, it can be a little frustrating to die to a bee that looks no different from one you fought and slaughtered at level 1. How much stronger can it really be if it is identical except maybe a bit bigger and fought in an area that looks exactly the same as where you fought the first one?
"Its many colored light filled the world with life and brought forth mighty gods."
Now for the biggest gripe of FFXI: the gameplay. Without a doubt this is the worst part of FFXI. You hit engage, move into range, and then you power up the PSP or DS and entertain yourself while you fight the monster. Though this isn't as bad if you're a mage job or something like that, it is still just as monotonous; it just requires more attention than other jobs. Combat is mostly uninvolved excluding the rare instances where your job is crucial to the strategy: a redmage using chainspell to stunlock an enemy; a paladin kiting a monster; a samurai using their skillchains. All of it boils down to engaging and waiting. Essentially a simplified version of the "ATB" and "Fight" menu buttons that take care of themselves until you do something else. All the timers are invisible to the player without third party software. In short, combat is a detached experience, which in an MMO is a tough thing since traveling and the story are also somewhat detached.
Another main problem is that healing yourself through resting is an unusually long process. At higher levels, without a mage of some kind (as MP heals much more quickly than HP), a player can expect to rest for easily 5-10 minutes to regain full HP. This, combined with resting removing TP (Tactical Points) which are used to perform powerful Weapon Skills (think miniature limit breaks) makes resting and solo adventuring rather difficult and frustrating. Square Enix has fixed much of this, but the problems are still there, just less painful.
Adding to the confusion is the fact that monster difficulty scales unpredictably at times. The scale is: "Too weak to be worthwhile" which is a monster a player will have no trouble killing and will gain no experience from; "Easy Prey" a player should be able to kill it easy enough and will gain some meager experience; "Decent Challenge" a player will have to use some resources, but can defeat it and get decent experience; "Even Match" it will take most of what you've got but gives rather good experience; and that's where it stops being reasonable. Past that, you are forced to contend with "Tough", "Very Tough", and "Incredibly Tough" in that order. Make no mistake, a "Tough" monster is easier when compared to an "Incredibly Tough" monster but is still likely going to be able to beat you, or at the very least will be a tough fight. Finally the category of "Impossible to gauge!" is reserved for unique monsters and boss fights. It truly means its name, by the way, as some level 10 monsters can read as "Impossible to gauge!" to a level 75 adventurer. Again, Square Enix has made some efforts to fix this, but it still isn't spot on, and engaging a "Tough" monster without at least one other person helping is usually asking for trouble.
Traveling is slow business until you're a bit farther in the game. This makes sense from a story standpoint, but not from a gameplay and 'fun' standpoint which any developer should consider first and 'story' and 'reasonable' second (EX: God of War cast reason pretty fairly out the window by putting mythological figures very far out of 'accurate' place but I'll be damned if they didn't lead to fun fights). A classic example from FFXI: a new adventurer can't ride an airship. It makes sense, but isn't fun when you realize getting from city to city can take maybe a good hour of travel.
Travel and combat have been improved in later version updates and expansions, but still not to the point where they aren't a boring monotony in comparison to some of the things you'll see in WoW or Guild Wars or even in a game like Diablo II where you're directly involved in moving around and fighting. Unfortunately, this is a classic case of "too little, too late" because anyone already playing is likely going to keep playing and anyone who tried it before isn't going to renew their subscriptions or repurchase the game over a tiny bit of effort towards improving but not utterly revamping a system that all together doesn't quite shape up to be great.
The class/job system is something that works surprisingly well, the player chooses a main job and then later is given the option to put a subjob underneath it. The subjob is always half (rounded down) the level of the main job, but it is still a major contributor to the play style of the job. A level 75 Dark Knight subbed with 37 Thief will focus a lot more on attacking an enemy from behind and transferring his 'enmity' (the value that determines which player a monster attacks) onto others by using Thief abilities and is able to use his Dark Knight abilities without worry of reprisal and danger to himself. A level 75 Dark Knight subbed with 37 Samurai, however, will focus on churning out as many of their weaponskills as possible as those are the abilities that Samurai aids in while using their Dark Knight abilities to boost the damage higher and higher, hoping to defeat a monster more quickly.
Simply put, the variety of jobs and then the combinations available through subjobs makes for a fair variety of playing styles if the player is willing to level up 'sub jobs' to be usable under the 'main job'. The skill system also favors using more than one job as skills improve as they are used. A Dark Knight can master things such as scythe and great sword skill easily, but will struggle with something such as parrying and evasion. Leveling up Thief or Ninja remedies this problem as they are experts at evasion and parrying. Jobs are also synergistic in their gear to some extent. A Dark Knight can expect to be able to level Warrior and make use of a lot of the same armor. A Scholar, Blackmage, and Summoner will all find they share the use of "Elemental Staves" for their own various reasons. It isn't much, but it is better than nothing.
The ability to master multiple classes is also a very handy thing. Players do not need to create additional characters and complete various missions or tasks a over and over again to retain all their 'access' and items. Simply change the job and begin leveling that one. With that, it is possible to have only one character, but fully enjoy every aspect of FFXI's classes.
In the end, however, a lot of the actual nitty gritty of FFXI winds up feeling like a chore without even much to disguise the fact that you're paying someone else for a second job. For all its merit, the job and skill systems are still little more than glorified and convenient grinds. Fortunately, this is spread out across numerous different ways to get viable loot and rewards as well as different areas and ways a player can choose to level themselves up. Even after 75 (the maximum level) a job can gain 'merit points' which are used to unlock unique endgame abilities and benefits which allows even a player with only one job to dedicate themselves to it and become even better at it. All in all, does help to provide at least a variety to the chore of gameplay that the combat and traveling enforce with the rigorous leveling that the game demands.
There is, however, the other immensely crippling blow to FFXI's would-be fans when it comes to gameplay. You need a group for nearly everything; which is of course a classic Final Fantasy element (always having a 'party') taken and abused. While this isn't as bad as it was in the earlier days, it is still an immutable fact. Players will need to assemble groups of other players to achieve their goals. With the rewards of the majority of these group events being gear and with only a few pieces of gear dropping from events, this leads to a great deal of worrisome conflict and sacrifice. For the most part if the player joins a guild (called a Linkshell) they'll be covered as the guilds will monitor who should get what based on their merit and helpfulness. This doesn't remove the possibility of that "grab and run" lootwhore, but it does diminish it somewhat. It also does little to again hide the fact that you're going to need to commit time and effort to really get what you're after.
This is of course, not going into the field of crafting or the situation of Gil (money); which, despite popular belief, is not as difficult as naysayers would have people believe. It does suffer from the tedium that the whole game is afflicted by, but it is engaging and plausible in its own right. The big problem will be covered later.
"Bathed in that light, the world entered an age of bliss. Until, after a time, the gods fell into slumber."
The story of FFXI's Vana'diel is the main selling point, or rather, the stories of Vana'diel. With five storylines available to you right from the start and each expansion adding new ones without even counting the storyline that accompanies the artifact armor of each class (the prelude to endgame with that class), there is a lot of story to take in... but are they any good? The answer is a resounding 'yes'. The 'starting' stories of the nations of San d'Oria, Windurst, and Bastok, as well as the origins of the Shadowlord who tried to destroy civilization twenty years ago are all great tales in and of themselves and the game has no qualms letting the player experience all of them. Some storylines even build off of each other or branch together from separate storylines to weave grand tales. Each one has interesting characters, moments of climax and moments of despair. One of the more powerful scenes in gaming comes at the end of the Shadowlord's story which is also the beginning of the Rise of the Zilart story.
It is also no exaggeration to say that the storyline battles are the best in the game. Nowhere else do you fight Alexander or the Ark Angel Crystal Warriors. Even a fight with something like Bahamut is only 'repeatable' or a second form available AFTER a storyline. The only downside to the stories in their entirety is the way that the player's character usually has little involvement. The entire Rise of the Zilart storyline has the character as little more than an observer even though they are the ones who have to do all the fights and legwork. It's somewhat disjointed and jarring, but it allows for the story to remain seamless without needing wildly different dialogue paths dependent on race, nation, and class. A minor complaint all together when considering the epic and enthralling stories being told.
Finally, as if completing a story was not rewarding in and of itself for the delightful endings, all of the expansions offer quite useful equipment for their completion. Though this may make the stories seem forced, they are almost completely optional. A few things such as an airship pass, require only minimal effort (halfway into the 'opening' storyline) and the player will retain the major necessities and conveniences for playing. With later updates, even some of the harder and more tedious battles have been made more available. Originally exclusive (cannot be traded or sold/purchased) storyline items were opened for sale, allowing far more convenient means of winning some of the more frustrating fights. Which furthed easing the progression of storyline for players interested in that.
"That world was called... Vana'diel."
The main problem with FFXI is that it is designed with a critical flaw to MMORPGs. It is not friendly to the beginner or new player. Starting the game with barely any money, money itself being a difficult thing to obtain until you understand what items to farm and/or invest your money into crafting, is a brutal and harsh 'introduction'. Losing EXP and possibly levels from fights with monsters that the game tells you are "Tough" when it means "This will likely kill you if you aren't completely ready" mercilessly abuses a new and inexperienced player. With a game that is already unfriendly towards new players, the other critical catch is what kind of players a person meets when they begin. A lootwhore, picking a 'less popular' job (a whitemage or paladin is more important than a thief when simply grinding) for experience parties, not being able to find groups to do events or storylines, and even luck with item drops can quickly ruin a players opinion of this game. With so much dependent on the players, and no safety net for what kind of players one might deal with, FFXI comes out the gate with a truly unwelcoming first step.
With so much riding on first impressions, FFXI does absolutely nothing to shield a player from the utterly brutal early-levels grind ahead of them nor does it do anything to hook them in besides give a meager and sparing glimpse of the brilliant storylines it hides inside its cloak. This unwelcoming approach has been alleviated in recent updates, which must only be attributed to 'experience' as Square Enix becomes more familiar with what it takes to make an MMORPG into a hit. This is even more legitimate a claim with their creation of FFXIV, a game that for all the world appears to be little more than a polished and HD version of FFXI. Essentially a "We're starting out right this time" version, near as can be told as barely any changes have even been made to the races aside from names and a few appearance tweaks.
Final Fantasy XI is a game that is miserly about its rewards and overzealous in its reluctance to let players grasp the full splendor it fiercely guards while trying to advertise. The worst part is that, underneath it all, there is the making of a great game here. Square Enix has polished it and revised it sufficiently that if the version available now was available from the start, the game would've met with far greater success. As things stand now, however, the would-be players and consumers who have been wronged by it are already put off by it. They will not return to a game that was unforgiving and unflinchingly denied them enjoyment while having the audacity to charge them a monthly fee. They shun the game that demanded much while promising little and rightly so as Square Enix was (and still is) slow and unresponsive towards its player-base.
For those that stuck with the game and persevered or were lucky enough to find good friends and trusty allies: the rewards were solid in both story and adventure. The stories and adventures only last up until they are completed for a first time. There just isn't enough to really keep players excited. It becomes a glorified gear hunt and grind fest if a player isn't in it for a story or adventure they have yet to complete.
There is a lot that isn't mentioned in this review; after all, it is tough to encompass everything about a game that has been constantly evolving, growing, and changing for roughly 8 years now. Overall the main points are there though. FFXI is a game with potential that it fails to live up to. It barely even manages to live up to its own good parts. If you can tough it out to get to the stories, you won't be disappointed, they can be quite moving and epic. Unfortunately, due to the lackluster 'in-between' of new discoveries and new stories and the punishing early-game content, most won't see them.
FFXI is a mixed experience at best. There's fun, good times, good friends, and great things there. There's just so much bad in with the good as well as the ESRB puts it: "Online Interactions Not Rated" also playing into things, that FFXI gets a 4/10 as its final score. Maybe FFXIV will be better, but that's a rough gamble. Anyone put off by FFXI won't be too keen on looking into FFXIV. Other plays have played one Square Enix MMORPG already, and if the previews are any hint, it's just the same stuff all over again which makes the receptive audience of FFXIV smaller than the one FFXI's previews started with.
Not proofread or grammar checked. My apologies.
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