Dancing Dead
Another one bites the dust!That's right, after an intense weekend of gaming, Final Fantasy VI has lost the endurance contest and has admitted defeat at the hands of the mighty INGEN!
MUHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAETC.!!!
I was like, okay, Kefka is a breeze, so I went into the battle pretty confidently and reached the final phase whereupon he threw Ultima at me and killed me stonedead.
Slight disappointment there.
Didn't get the chance to do that the second time though. HAH! And that was even AFTER he replaced my best two characters with two other losers.
Clown.
So, onto the verdict.
Well, what can I say that hasn't already been said by everyone else on the planet?
What unblown trumpet is there left?
THIS is a Superb game. This is screaming quality embodied in a small gray cartridge, or in this case, PSX CD-ROM. It has bloody EVERYTHING. Great story, fantastic music, fun dungeons, loads of characters, loads of skills and magic, variety, I mean, geez, you name it, this game has motherfucking got it.
What it DOESN'T have though, is rabies, which is kind of a shame, since there IS a dog in it. Missed opportunity there, Square!
And, oh yes, the dog's name is Interceptor. I mean, how friggin' COOL is that. And his owner is a Ninja. I told you this game has EVERYTHING.
For once, Square decided to look back at the previous installments of the series, and they must've gone "Shit, this sure is a load of crap! why on earth did people buy this crap? It's crap I tellz ya!"
"Calm down, mr. Sakaguchi, time for your Hi-Potion!"
"Oh yeah, that's the stuff. Come to papa!"
And in a rare moment of soberness he decided to throw out EVERYTHING that was annoying about the prequels, leaving only the title screens, basically.
No, wait, leaving only FF5's Title screen, and instill the rest of the game with pure golden goodness! Damn, this game is FUN. Filled with classic moments from beginning to end. If you haven't played this, you haven't played real Final Fantasy.
In fact, you're probably one of those band-wagon gamers that decided to play FF7 because everyone said it was cool, and are now a self-proclaimed square-expert even though you think 7 stands for 1. Asshole.
"But is there nothing you frown upon then, oh wise one?"
Shut up! Oh, no, wait: Yes!
You see, this game has 14 characters. 14! Count 'em, they're all there.
Up till now, Final Fantasy games have only had a small amount of characters, and you were always stuck with the same party, because the story demanded it. There was no exchanging characters at your wish.
Now there's nothing wrong with having a lot of characters, but it does pose some problems. i.e. You can't spend your time keeping everyone at high levels. It's simply too much work. Your party can hold 4 people at a time, and it is more than likely that you'll be spending the majority of the game with the same characters, i.e. those that have been in your party from the beginning basically.
Also, the balance seems to be rather unfair. Whenever I play this game, I ALWAYS end up playing with the same party, simply because some characters have considerably better abilities than others. This is a shame, cos it puts all those other characters to waste.
Square must've noticed this cos they pull a real dirty stunt towards the end. Something I absolutely HATE in games with so many characters: they FORCE you to split your group to navigate some dungeons. So you HAVE to work with all those weak characters that you haven't been levelling up, and really, I don't think it's fair to demand the gamer to keep up with ALL 14 characters. It's too damn time-consuming.
Now, one of these dungeons is optional, and you only have to take two groups, so you can still spread your strong characters and have good parties, but for the final dungeon (Yes, the FINAL one, the one you can't AVOID) you have to split everyone into 3 groups. 3! That's 12 of the 14 you have!
Needless, to say, you'll get your ass kicked more than once. I took the easy, but time-consuming way out, by just having my strong party do all routes by Teleporting back and forth, but I just wish Square hadn't forced us to do this.
As good an idea as it is, and as much fun as the Final Dungeon can actually be, I still don't think it's very nice to demand such a thing of a gamer, who just wants to see the ending of what is otherwise a superb game.
Still, that's only a minor gripe I guess.
So, what's the final score? A 10-!!
Yes, that's a '-' (minus) there. I already explained why, the other reason is that I KNOW of myself that I like Final Fantasy 7 just a tad better, and there has to be a way for me to express that, right? ;)
And I don't like it quite as much as Chrono Trigger either, which I did give a 10, but I'll get to that later.
Smart people will also be able to guess what is the likely outcome of my imminent playthrough of Final Fantasy VII :)
Midgar, here I come!
posted by Ingen! @ 3:05 PM
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