Setting things straight.
Okay, I have to be honest here, I may have been overreacting in my angered response to FF4 just a little. See, thing is, what was annoying me most were the battles, which just seemed unfairly hard, but I found out there is a mitigating factor. The game, like most FF's I think, offers a configurable Battle Speed Option, and I, being the impatient freak that I am, set it to the fastest speed.Now this shouldn't be a problem, cos it never has been, it merely means the pace of the battles is upped, and they won't take as long as is the standard.
That's how it works in all the OTHER FF's at least. Not here though.
No, here it means the enemies are 5 times as fast, and you are NOT.
There were basically 3 kinds of situations:
- Back Attack: You are attacked from behind and will get hit by every enemy before you can do anything.
- Surprise Attack: You are attacked from the front and will get hit by every enemy before you can do anything.
- Preemptive Attack: You surprise the enemy and your fastest character can hit once, and the rest have to wait until they are hit by every enemy before they can do anything.
Technically speaking there are also plain battles, but I hardly got those for some reason. They just mean that 3 out of 4 enemies can attack before your fastest character can move. Nice.
So you can understand how INCREDIBLY frustrating this was, so just for the Heck of it, I decided to put the speed back to standard, and suddenly I could actually do something before I was killed.
It seems Square didn't do a very good job of implementing a good battle speed system.
Inexplicably I also got a lot less Back Attacks, Surprise Attacks and Preemptive attacks after that. So I don't know what this means.
Fact remains, you are at all times insanely overpowered by the enemy, new equipment has no noticeable effect and levelling up hardly helps. In fact, I've read that once you hit a certain level, around 70 or something, your status actually starts GOING DOWN. I swear, this is so insane, I can't make this stuff up!
The game just feels like it should have been better, gameplay-wise. One one hand, you see, you have an RPG of a decent size, with a great soundtrack, and above all a great storyboard.
There's so many things happening at every turn, it's really overwhelming, in a good sense of course. The story is rich and rewarding and there really never is a dull moment.
Dungeons are a slightly different affair. They're all pretty much the same, walk from A to B kind of affair, loaded with treasure though, that's nice. No puzzles, no gimmicks, nothing, just pathways. Not too maze-like, just dull and pointless.
But at least there's always some kind of cool event waiting at the end.
Sadly, RPG's are not simply about good stories and a sweeping musical score only. You need to have the gameplay to back it up. Now, there's lots of people who think story and such are more important, but I'm playing a fucking game here. I want to have FUN, and fun is something I'm not having here, with too many frustrating elements.
Not only battles but also the shop and equipment system totally suck. Shops only show who can equip what, nothing more. You can't see how many pieces of a certain item you are carrying or already have equipped which is annoying enough, since you might be buying something you already have on. So first you have to look at all your equipment and memorize it. This would also be easier if you could go into the equipment screen and scroll from one character to the next using the L and R button as is customary in, well, EVERY game on earth, except this one. So you have to go into and out of the equipment screen for EVERY character. Nice.
THEN, even if you're not carrying said item already, you have NO clue whatsoever if it will improve your status or not, until you actually equip it. So if you don't want to waste any money, you'd have to save your game, buy what you want, try it on, then load your game to buy what you actually need. Super.
Furthermore there are no helpful descriptions for magic and skills, you don't know what ANYTHING does until you use it, and even then the effect might not be immediately clear. It's like the creators assumed you are familiar enough with the series that you don't need any explanation. Stupid.
Anyhow, it's finished now, the final Battle with Zeromus was actually comparatively easy, I've had harder fights with sub-bosses, so I can give the final score, which is....a 7.3!
Blame this entirely on the shoddy battles and lousy equipment system, if they had done this better the game would've scored considerably higher, since it has enough pace, secrets, sub-quests etc. to keep it interesting from beginning to end, it's just that the totally annoying game mechanics make it too bothersome.
Too overrated in general.
Onto the next!
posted by Ingen! @ 4:50 PM
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