Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
In between frantic bouts of racing I've started playing Jak and Daxter, cos only all racing and no action make Ingen a dull boy. Which is not to say that Gran Turismo 3 is a dull game, absolutely not,
au contraire even, but I've never been much of a racing fan, so I need some distraction.
Distraction comes in the shape of Jak and his side-kick Daxter who set out on a whirlwind adventure to get rid of a bunch of monsters and collect a bunch of Powercells to change Daxter back into his normal, human shape, and at the same time perhaps finding out why the Warp Gates have been closed and the Sages seem to have disappeared.
Cue a lot of running and jumping about and collecting loads of items in Mario 64/anything by Rare fashion.
This game was made by Naughty Dog, the people behind the Crash Bandicoot series, who still seem to have remained outside of the attention of terrorist attacks for some unfathomable reason.
This game is pretty short, so I'll probably finish this in a couple of days, no sweat.
In other news, I gots myself a new TV! Yay! It's a Samsung, like its forefather, only one that doesn't suck so much. Granted, I have already spent 5 hours trying to figure out how the Hell I can receive any channels on this thing, to no avail, but at least the scart socket works. And since this is a modern TV I don't need no stupid PAL/NTSC converters to be able to play in color anymore, and I can even use my GC Scart Cable to play all my European games in Color and at a better resolution for a change. Great. That's why I needed it in the first place.
And NOW, I'm going to download porn. Good.
For he's a Jolly Good Fellow
I almost forgot in the midst of things, but yesterday, 3 days before my own birthday, was the one-year anniversary of this Project! Yay!
That's right, July 28th 2004 was the first day I popped in Alone in the Dark to embark on a quest that would absorb most of my free time for the rest of my life until now. I had been toying around with the idea for some time at that point, but I finally decided on that prodigial date that something had to be done.
A lot has happened in that one year, and I'm not just talking about games. Life hasn't been very nice to me, but I've just spit it in the face and tore up the tyres of its car. Asshole.
Unfortunately, I didn't get this blog until much later, when I was already deep into my quest, which is why I'm offering those backlogs for your reading enjoyment. Aren't I nice?
So far I've played around 66 games, so if that is any measure to go by, I will take another 2 to 3 years to finish, which will of course all see new releases and must-have games, so it's likely to last even longer. It's a good thing to know that I will be having something to do, even if I graduate and become unemployed, like most of my graduated friends.
Let me have a short celebrational look then, at which experiences have stood out the most.
- Baten Kaitos: man, I LOVED this game. It's fantastic. The graphics are gorgeous, the music is great, the battle system is fun, it's a great RPG, and it's a GC exclusive! It has become clear to me at least that the GC is a far bigger success and a machine that one should own, than the N64 which I'm still not too excited about. It had its share of great games, but very few were as impressive and timelessly fun as the GC. Sure there was Ocarina of Time, but that was released on GC as well, so you don't necessarily require an N64 for that.
It's still sad to see the GC doing relatively poorly, but I think it did better than the N64, or at least it should do, thanks to games like this. The N64, in its entire life-span didn't have a single good old-school RPG, and I need at least one for a machine to be a success.
- BioHazard 1 (GC) and 2. The first one sports THE best and most beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds I've ever seen, to this date, better even than Biohazard 0, and the second is simply the most fun Survival Horror around. That is, in these 66 games I've played ;)
- Also, since I'm talking most memorable, and not best or most fun exclusively, I need to mention Brave Fencer Musashiden as being one of the most frustrating and annoying games in existence. What Square were thinking here is beyond me, but someone really needs to be shot for making a piece of sadism like that. It made Satan cry, and I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of flashes of it in Clockwork Orange.
- For some reason Boken Sword and Beyond Good and Evil, still regularly pop into my mind as being a lot more fun than I credited them for. Especially Broken Sword was a great experience, and one of the better adventure stories I've seen.
- I simply MUST point out that, even after all this years, Castlevania Symphony of the Night is not only a great game, but has one of the best soundtracks in existence. A lot of the critically acclaimed soundtracks in PSX games have aged, not so gracefully. I was listening to some Xenogears music the other day, and it struck me as mediocre and generic. I don't even like most of the tracks anymore, which cannot be said for SotN, it remains outstanding.
- And then there's the whole bunch of Square RPG's I've played. They all score great, even though I've played some of them SO many times that it's hard to get really excited about them anymore. It surprises me that the Final Fantasy series has been receiving a lot of criticism since they came to, well FF8, but I honestly think they've been better on the PSX than most of the prequels, excepting 6.
I guess the new ones are shunned because they became too popular. Suddenly FF was something the masses enjoyed, and that HAS had its influences on the look and nature of the series, but that's really not a bad thing, since they're still very solid fun RPG's. Die-hard fans of the first hour suddenly turned away only because it was mainstream now, and started disliking it purely because of its widespread success.
Rather stupid if you ask me, and at least as non-sensical as fanboys who like the games purely because they say Square of Final Fantasy on the box.
I say, play these games objectively, and you'll find that they are professionally made Huge games produced by a company that knows what it's doing and has been doing for years, and knows how to make a beautiful, fun RPG.
And that's about all that has really sprung out. There've been moments of great joy, and there've been moments of extreme frustration and hair-pulling (you should compare the amount of hear on my head in the beginning and now; it would make a nice hair-growth commercial if you turn them around), but I've been confident in the fact that I was doing something totally insane and wasting my time, like no other person has even done before me. And that feels good.
Here's to another year!
Gremlins 2
D'oh!
Here I was, telling you to expect lots of updates on tuesday, and wouldn't you know, NO friggin' update the following day. I knew saying things like that would be tempting fate. Damn Poetic Justice.
Anyway, what I wanted to say, is that I bought yet ANOTHER game recently, being Metroid Prime 2 Echoes for GC, so add another one to that list of 230 or something, I'm becoming increasingly weak at numbers.
But that's not why I'm here for you today, my brethren, NO!
It is yet another game that has been finished, Gremlins 2 on NES.
In this game you play as Gizmo, that cute little furry Mogwai, and you have to dispose of all kinds of baddies, like bats, mice, Gremlins, and of course GIANT TOMATOES. Screw Gremlins, Enormous Vegetables, THAT's what scares
me.
Anyway, if you've seen the movie back in the late 80's you'll know the story, cos the game follows it very closely, being the intricate piece of media that it is.
The story is unfolded in cut-scenes that actually, believe it or not, had some very decent animation for that time, and you get to see how Gizmo gives birth to a couple more Mogwai, which will of course in no time become Gremlins by eating something after midnight (one of the cleverest morals in any Hollywood movie to date. Don't try this at home kids!).
So it's up to you to kill everything in your path, like the mass of furry Death that you are, by using a variety of weapons like match-sticks, paperclips, crossbows, and, yes, TOMATO BOMBS. Geez, did the creators have some kind of fetish or something?
"You know what this game needs, Bob?"
"What's that Sir?"
"More Goddamn Tomatoes, now GET TO IT, I'm getting hungry."
The game is an action-platformer with a top-down perspective, in a similar vein to the lovely Pocky and Rocky games of yore, but with a lot more platform hopping, and less frantic action.
The levels are of a decent size, with some side routes for good measure. Also, there's a shop run by that old Asian geezer from the movie, who sells you handy items like extra lives, health restoration power-ups and BALLOONS, which are oddly Tomato-shaped if you ask me.
You can only buy one item at a time though, and then the shop is gone. This happens a lot with businesses run by Chinese people.
In all, I actually rather enjoyed this game. It was definitely pretty good for its time, even has some catchy tunes, and I think it was pretty popular as well, especially considering it's a movie-to-game adaptation which are usually crap.
In fact, this is probably one of the best movie tie-ins in the history of video games, which is kinda sad.
This seems to be one of the easiest to obtain NES games in this day, most stores that still sell old second-handjunk will have this game, I've found, which probably means it sold really well. I give this game an 8.0, because you have to look at everything in its right time-frame, and I really think this was one of the better games around on NES at that point. Nice one.
Um. New update tomorrow?
Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec
Moving right along, we've hit what may possibly be Number 66 in this long line of insanity, although I lost real count a long time ago. The day after tomorrow I will be having an anniversary post, since it will then be exactly One Whole Year ago that I decided to start this whole deranged quest.
Until that time, boys and girls, let me tell you about number 66 in line, Gran Turismo 3, A Spec no less.
Those few of you who know me will probably wonder why on earth I bought this, cos I'm no racing fan by any means, except for surreal and irrealistic games such as Mario Kart and Wipeout. And yet, I bought Gran Turismo, one of the most realistic and high-maintenance Racing Games ever.
Why? Because it looks yummy! Well, that's not the sole reason, I also bought it becaues I firmly believe that this is a good game, no matter how much I suck at it (and that is an indescribable amount), and I owe it to the world of Video Games to become good at this. It is the only game in existence where any of my friends can kick my ass with their hands tied behind their back, looking the other way, in another room.
One might wonder how far I can take this. The principle of this project is to finish every game I've got, and finally give it a rating to place it in the grand scheme of things, but as I understand, this game will not be easy to actually complete.
I'll be damned if I'm going to play this until I've acquired all 250 cars or so, and I DEFINITELY won't be playing for 100%.
The criteria I have set for finishing a game is that I play until I get to the end credits (not the opening credits, which would admittedly have sped things up significantly), and from what good ole' GameFAQs tells me, the ending sequence can be viewed by finishing the Gran Turismo Full Championship on Beginner Mode, which is the easiest mode available, so I really should try to achieve that much, or that little as you would have it.
This will be my goal for this game, one that is ambitious enough from my point of view, but I won't spend all of my time on this, since I can only take so much. I will be continuing the rest of the project on the side.
On a related note, the scart socket on my TV is getting crappier every day, it has come to the point where I simply can't get a decent image with my PS2 Scart Cable anymore. I've been thinking it's about high time I bought a new TV anyway, since I've had this one for, oh, nigh-on 10 years now. I don't have that much money to spend (which is one of the reason I'm playing through all my old games in the first place), but I've already laid my eyes on a very nice Samsung TV (my current TV is Samsung as well, and apart from the Scart socket has never given me any trouble) for around 180 Euro, and it got very good reviews on the Internet, so I'll probably be getting that.
What is it with Scart Sockets and Sucking by the way? My parents have this brand-spanking new expensive Sony TV, and even THAT has an iffy scart socket. Are they so hard to make?
Anyway, I'll probably be making plenty of updates the coming few days, so stay tuned if you want to be bored out of your mind! At no extra costs!
You should all thank me.
Grandia Xtreme
XTREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEME!
Sorry, just felt like doing that.
Grandia Xtreme, being the sequel in name, but not in story, to Grandia II. And let me be frank from the start, I'll be assed if I'm going to play this game again. Hell no. It sucks. As it so happens, I've played and finished this game not too long before I started this project, and I really don't feel like playing it again, so I'm just going to skip it. The scars are still to deep. Don't get me wrong, I
did try yesterday, but I started convulsing and retching like mad, so I decided it would be in the best interest of my physical health to stop playing.
The sequel to Grandia II indeed. The name of Grandia is crying, as they would say in Japanese, cos this is a load of tripe unworthy of the series. First of all, this game was released 2 YEARS after Grandia II, and on a much more powerful console, yet it still uses the same graphic engine, albeit with brighter colors and sharper images. They've even rehashed almost all of the enemies from Grandia II, without changeing ANYTHING.
Hell, even the main character Evan looks like an EXACT clone of Rude from Grandia II, it's incredibly cheap. The game seriously looks like it's running off a Dreamcast with a better color pallette, having the same polygon count and everything, it's just a bit faster.
The Xtreme in the title I suppose stands for the fact that this game mainly focuses on combat and dungeon crawling. The combat system remains largely unchanged from Grandia II, with some slight tweaks to improve it, and it remains very very good, but the Dungeons SUCK.
For one thing, they're really HUGE, which would be nice if they knew how to keep your attention, but as it is, the dungeons aren't any more interesting than those in Grandia II, with the added disadvantage of being 5 times larger AND HAVING NO SAVE POINTS. Seriously.
Occasionally you'll find a "Geo-gate" which you can use to warp back to town to rest and shop, and equip any new found skills and mana-eggs (used for magic), because you can't even fucking equip them in the menu screen, you have to do that at a shop.
You can only save and restore in the town. Every mana egg has a set amount of MP, which cannot be restored by any means, except for going back to town and sleeping.
Typically, there'll be about one save point per dungeon, which is about half-way through, meaning that there will be NO saving before bosses, unless you want to track all the way back to the geo-gate before tackling a boss. It's just as well that if you should choose to do that, enemies will not respawn, but it's still way too much trouble.
On the up-side, there's a huge variety of skills, and mana-eggs can be fused to create even more powerful attacks; also personal techniques can be combined for combo attacks, in Chrono Trigger fashion, which adds a lot more fun to the already superb battle system, but the rest of the game is so tedious and annoying!
Grandia II knew to compensate it's few shortcomings by having a decent story and likeable characters and voice-acting, but none of those are present in this game.
The story is boring and uninteresting, it merely serves as a coat-rack for the stupid dungeons, characters are unlikeable and have no real affinity to each other, voice-acting is dull, and there are no FMV magic sequences anymore, meaning that magic effect are quite boring now too.
There is absolutely NO reason why you would want to play this game if you've played Grandia II, unless you're so infatuated with the Battle system that you simply can never get enough, which is actually understandable.
Other Grandia fans will probably only be insulted and want to steer well clear of this. If you've never played a Grandia before, you don't know how it should be, so this might provide some light entertainment, again, mainly because of the insanely good battle system, otherwise, you won't want to wade through this piece of muck.
A 6.5, grudgingly, mostly because of it's rich ancestry.
I have serious doubts about Grandia III now...
Zealous
Sooooooooooooooooooo. Grandia II is finished.
It wasn't quite as long as I seem to remember though. I think it took me around 40 hours to beat the first time, this time it was 'only' 27 or so.
But it was all still good.
I remember I really liked this game back in, oh, 2000, the battle system was great, the soundtrack rocked, the graphics were very pretty and the story was pretty good too. And my opinion has remained unchanged.
The Battle system IS great. Battles are started by touching enemy symbols in the field, no random encounters, and you fight in a round arena, where your and the enemy's position is based on whether you have a preemptive attack or are surprise attacked etc. At the bottom of the screen is one long gauge showing icons indicating every enemy and ally, these icons move slowly towards a point of action, where you can decide what you want to do, the rest of the gauge is colored red, and shows how long it will take for the action to be actually performed. Powerful magic will take long, simple attacks are quick. By using Critical hits and certain skills, you can cancel enemies charging up for an attack, and they can do likewise. When you select an enemy you can see their HP and who they will be attacking and how. This allows for the utmost of strategic planning and using your brain to best deal with every situation. In short, it rules, it's quick, fun and clever.
Also, and this is something I have never seen in any other game, it uses FMV for a lot of the magic attacks. Not just real-time sequences, but actual CG which blends in with the graphics, maybe slightly unnaturally, but there's no slowdown whatsoever and it looks pretty. Why has Square never done this?
The soundtrack is superb. Great Rocking battle tunes, great synthesized pop-music for town themes and some piano and strings for the serious and sad bits. Very balanced and extremely varied. Noriyuki Iwadare rules.
The Graphics are nice and colorful, very fantasy-esque, although the Dreamcast Pallette is rather dark at times. FMV is a bit messy, and is not nearly as impressive as what Square, Namco or Capcom, to name a few, managed to pull off on PSX.
The story is nice. Your classic Benign God versus Evil Demon type of affair, although some cool plot-twist wait at the end, which would offer a very nice look on religion if you were to apply it to reality, if you were so inclined. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the whole God vs. Satan thing has a similar background in the real world. The story does get a bit sappy towards the end, and terribly preachy about friendship and compassion and having a heart etc, so you might want to keep some Thunderdome CD's at hand.
Dungeons are a straight-forward affair. There are always some switches to be pulled, or devices to be triggered, LOTS of treasure to be found, and plenty of enemies, but never too much. Practically every area has a save point where you can also heal for free, so there is very little stress in this game, and it's all about having fun.
Some would say it is too easy, and it is very easy indeed, but I've never been bothered by things like that. As long as it's fun and stays interesting, the difficulty doesn't matter. As long as it's not too friggin' hard. I hate that.
You don't get a map in dungeons, but you DO get a compass, showing you where you have to go, and how far away you're from your destination. I was slightly put off by this in the beginning, but before long I started appreciating the compass a lot more than any simple map, because it is always immediately clear what your target is.
The only
real problem is that the game is simply too linear. There is NO backtracking whatsoever, and there isn't even any side-tracking. No side- or subquests, only 2 minigames in the ENTIRE game, and they're both really short, stupid and pointless. And NOTHING to be plundered in villages.
Now, isn't part of the fun of RPG's to run into a new hovel, pillage everything in sight, maybe rape some women, barge into people's houses, steal their stuff, give 'em lip if anyone dares say anything about it, and then just leave as if nothing ever happened? Sure it is, and this game doesn't offer anything. It has some really stupid idle environment animations, like chairs or bottles being knocked over when you run past, but that novelty wears off really really soon, and before long you just wish there was some item hidden in that cupboard, or a weapon in that cabinet, but to no avail.
Add to that the fact that this is a Classic-style Old-school, been there done that, walk the beaten path kind of RPG and you have an idea of how much you'll be able to enjoy this. Once again, aside of the linearity and lack of hidden stuff, there is absolutely nothing really wrong with this game at all, the battle system is interesting enough to keep your attention to the end, the dungeons are just enough fun too, so you've got a good, albeit standard, RPG on your hands.
It lacks the variety and vastness of the later Final Fantasy's, but it's never anywhere near as annoying as the earlier ones, so I give this an 8.5 on all accounts.
Definite must-play for RPG fans, but casual gamers will probably fail to see the attraction. I'd like some more of this please, so I'm anxiously awaiting Grandia III, but before that we will be having a look at Grandia Xtreme on PS2.
Stay tuned!
Backlog: Broken Sword
The Shadow of the Templars, no less.
This is the first game in the infamous Broken Sword Trilogy, until they make a fourth game. In this game you play George Stobbard, an American Tourist who's having a nice holiday in Paris until the cafe he hangs out at explodes.
George, being of the Aggressive American kind, vows to destroy the world, starting with the people who spilled his coffee so violently, and then probably moving on to muslims, if those aren't in fact the same people.
Well, okay, that's not
exactly how it goes but it was pretty close.
This game is what people call a "point'n'clicker", which meant that initially I was pointing at the screen waiting for something to click until I read the instruction manual.
I played this game on my PSX, and I do not have a mouse, and I can tell you that using a controller for this kind of game can be rather tiresome, since the movement is so slow. You can speed the cursor up by holding the square button down, which helps, but it's not ideal. If you've got the PSX Mouse (tm) this would be a good time to use it.
Let me start off by saying that PnC's are not very action-packed. All you do is read lines and solve puzzles and click your mouse a LOT. If you can stand hours and hours of this, you're in for a real treat.
Cos the fact of the matter is, this game is really really good. It looks absolutely astonishing, beautifully detailed, colorful environments, great animation, a majestic orchestral soundtrack (for as far as there IS any music, which is, hardly ever) and a great sense of humor.
Voice acting varies from iffy to very good. The main character George is definitely the highlight of the game, which is just as well, since you spend the entire game with him. He's got a great voice, very relaxed, but also nice and sarcastic at times.
The game starts out in Paris, but you get to travel to other European countries, so the game is rife with ethnic humor and such. One of my favorites was this short bit of conversation between George who's trying to rent the room next to the room the bad guy is residing and the Effeminate Maitre d' of an expensive Hotel going something like this:
George:"I'd like room 315, please"
Maitre:"I'm sorry Sir, but it's already been rented out"
George:"Rats!"
Maitre:"No Sir, Dutch"
Hur Hur Hur. Hur.
But the humor is actually good in the rest of the game though, and the story is really interesting and full of plot twists and surprises. And they've actually done their homework cos it's full of biblical references and folk-tales and stuff.
The Knights Templar play an important role in the story, which is interesting too.
I've read the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which was total rubbish by the way, thank you for asking, and it touched upon the same subject only not nearly as interestingly. Most of it looked liked it was ripped of from this game actually, even though it probably wasn't, including the French girl at the main character's side whom he ultimately falls in love with. Dan Brown sucks, and his books should be burned, did I mention that already?
I have two major gripes with this game though. You really need hawk-eye vision, and the Highest Defition TV possible. I think this game was made for PC, or something that DOES have a high resolution, unlike a TV, and they decided later that maybe it would do well on consoles too. Sometimes you need to pick up or use items that are nearly impossible to see. Many was the time I got stuck, having no clue what to do, simply because I didn't spot one off-color pixel. On a PC it's probably more visible, but on a TV, no. And I was playing with a rather good quality Scart Cable, too, imagine if you've only got those little yellow plugs that suck, you won't be able to see anything.
Secondly, untypically, there are a couple of moments where speed is essential to survive, because, yes, you can die in this game, which is an aspect of PnC's I don't particularly welcome. A couple of puzzles depend on how quickly you can move your mouse to a safe spot, or react to dangerous circumstances, but you never know when these are coming. You might be breaking your brain over how to solve a weird puzzle, when the solution turns out to be you just have to be faster in moving your cursor somewhere else, which is really stupid. This is not an action game, so don't try to disguise it as one.
Maybe the creators thought that this kind of game was lacking in action too much too.
Otherwise, most puzzles are pretty logical, and you'll feel better for solving them and advancing in the game. There's a great variety of environments, and the story is pretty cool, with some explosions and murders thrown in for good measure.
Make no mistake, I LOVE this game, but it is bothered by the points I mentioned above, and by the fact that you're just reading and pointing and clicking all the time, which is an innate problem to this kind of game, and it depends on your own patience if this can entertain you long enough.
So I give this an 8.3, but with a strong recommendation for anyone who likes this kind of game, cos it won't disappoint.
What is wisdom?
You know, I kinda look upon this blog as being a kind of diary, only not so gay because it's
on a computer, so occasionally I would like to venture off the beaten path of Video Games and take you into the wild and zany existence that is my life, to talk about some things that annoy me and generally suck, like foreigners and democracy.
So today I went to the dentist. Yes, the
dentist, otherwise known as He Who Makes Shitloads of Money off Other People's Pain. I think they call him George in America.
I was going for a routine check-up, but I had the feeling something was wrong, because the space between some previously filled teeth was and is kinda sensitive.
Turned out though, it wasn't so bad. The one on the left seems perfectly fine, and it's just a matter of sensitive gums or something.
The other filling seems to have some kind of bubble in it, inexplicably, but the Dentist was quick to point out, that is only a minor thing and with a small procedure that should take no more than 30 minutes, that can be fixed.
I'll have to wait until October 3rd though, cos the guy is so motherbitching Popular.
In his defence, his office is probably one of the best dentistry place thingies in this whole country, which is actually saying something.
The fun was only just starting though. You see, I have a wisdom tooth rearing its ugly head in the back of my mouth, which is why I propose people call it a Distance Tooth from now on, cos it doesn't matter anyway.
Now the damn thing has been there for YEARS already, I know of its existence, but we made a pact, agreeing that if he would stay low and mind his own business, that I wouldn't have to drag him out by his ass in a very slow and painfull operation.
We have been living in this harmony for nigh on 5 or 6 years now, and he has never even given so much as a small yelp. He's very docile and obedient, and he can do tricks if you ask him nicely.
The dentist though, she figured (yes, it was a she in this case, but the guy who runs the office is a he, as guys tend to be, but he's so filthily rich that he can go on a holiday for 364 days a year, and only come running into the office one day a year to claim the money in the register.) that it
might come through, and it
might start hurting or developing cavaties, so we'd best take it out now, whilst it's still not suspecting anything, and whilst the procedure would still be most excruciatingly painful.
I told her to go fuck herself, only I forgot to move my mouth and vocal chords, but that is not really my problem. She said that next time I'm there, she'll give me a reference for the surgeon or whatever, and I already have a nice comfortable place reserved for it in my trash can.
But that is still not the end of it though, boys and girls, oh no.
You see, a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I had some trouble with my teeth.
Normally, people have their milk teeth, or whatever they're called in English, which are replaced with nice mature full-grown teeth at a young age, and nobody complains.
But if you're a freak of nature, like me, you have ANOTHER fucking pair of front teeth, waiting in line behind the second, firmly established pair. "Well, we can't have that, and I need a yaucht" the Dentist thought, so he removed the extra pair of teeth, or mesiodens, as they were apparently known, in one of the worst days of my life.
Now, don't get me wrong, the guy is a great dentist, and he made sure there was no pain whatsoever by injecting me with enough anaesthetics to floor a small elephant, but, even without pain, there's something indescribably nasty about a guy digging away at your palate with pliers and corkscrews and everything and JERKING out two firmly lodged teeth that have no intention of going anywhere, in a very length operation. And no amount of drugs can take away the taste of gallons of blood.
Cos I'm a MOTHERFUCKING BLEEDER. Well you'd be too.
All the while, I was watching the tasteful clock he has suspended in his operating room, shaped like a tooth, with a small drill for an hour hand, a mirror for a minute hand, and something really nasty with a big hook on the end for a second hand. I love the Dentist's.
So, as I was saying, it looked like yet ANOTHER superfluous tooth is trying to rear it's ugly mug, this time somewhere in the front-left, although it might be something else. She took a picture, and she'll tell me what it is next time I see her.
I CAN'T WAIT, CAN YOU BOYS AND GIRLS!?
I was considering just walking up to a Huge Negro and telling him I saw his mother with another monkey, but I was afraid he might miss the exact spot, so I decided not to.
I'd better get myself out of the country fast.
Grandia II
On with the show, folks.
After the incredibly lengthy Final Fantasy series, it is time for yet another Bulky RPG, Grandia II, being the sequel to Grandia, which I never played, but is still on my to do list if I can ever get hold of it.
This is one of my very few Dreamcast Games, and I think I actually bought a Dreamcast keeping in mind that this game was going to be released soon. The REAL reason I bought a Dreamcast is Marvel vs. Capcom 2 of course. Like most consoles, a Capcom game got me to buy my first Sega machine.
Anyway, in this game you play Rude, and since nomen est omen and everything, he's kind of a blunt guy, and a Geohound at that. If you don't know what a Geohound is, you haven't played this game, obviously, cos it doesn't actually really exist.
A Geohound is basically a kind of Jack-of-all-Trades, whom people can hire to do all kinds of tasks.
In this case, the story start by Rude having to safely guide a Choir Girl to an important Ritual in a tower in the middle of a dangerous forest.
Of course, things go hideously wrong, and the girl, Elena, gets possessed by the Evil Spirit of Valmar, an ancient demon who lost the battle with the benevolent God Granas aeons ago and has since been sealed away.
Now, I don't know why Benevolent Gods always have the tendency to 'seal up' their eternal adversaries instead of just REALLY doing away with them, but there you go, this once again goes to show that Gods, especially the good ones, are really bloody stupid.
So cue dungeon crawling, monster bashing, village roaming etc. and you have another lengthy RPG on your hands. Currently 6 hours into the game, I would have posted the introductionary blurb yesterday, but the Internet exploded over at our house, and we spent all day cleaning up all the bits and bytes.
More on this as it happens, stay tuned, and be the FIRST to read about it! AREN'T YOU SPECIAL!?
Shoe in
Geez, am I glad it's finally over! YES!
THE F IS FINISHED! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I think the biggest hurdle has been tackled with the Final Fantasy series, despite the fact that I have a gazillion games starting with 'S', at least they're not all the same series. Except for Super Mario, but who can get enough of our cute and cuddly little plumber? In fact, right after playing Super Mario Bros 3, we decided to get our own plumber at home, only it turned out he wasn't toilet trained and he kept biting people, so we had to put him to sleep.
He sure was hairy though!
So, as it turned out, Final Fantasy X-2 wasn't that much of an afterthought after all, since it still took me 30 hours to complete it, at 95%. To be honest though, it really depends on how much you WANT to get out of the game. I was playing this with my trusty Ultimania Guide at my side, and if you have that, you can squeeze every drop of gameplay out of it to try and get 100%, but if you don't, and if you know nothing about how this game works, it's easy to finish this within 20 hours tops, at least that's what it took me the first time, and miss out on a lot of optional stuff.
You see, the game has a rather unique way of build up. I think the ENORMOUS success of Final Fantasy XI had something to do with it, cos it kinda feels like Square was trying to bring MMORPG kind of gameplay to your home in a not so Massive Offline form, for only one player. The game is divided into 5 story-levels, and each story level has missions for you to find and complete to earn stuff. Most of these are optional though, and easy to miss if you don't visit every area every time on every story level. You only need to finish certain missions to advance in the story, so it's really easy to just breeze through this game in no time, but you'll be in trouble near the end.
You earn percentages by witnessing events and dialogue, so ofttimes, you just have to go to an area to talk to someone to earn some extra obscure points, so if you don't know what to do, you can basically forget reaching 100%. Even if you do find everything, the last 5% or so depend on your defeating extremely tough bosses so you might not want to bother. It seems you get one extra scene during the ending if you have 100%, I don't know its contents, so I couldn't say if it is worth the bother, but if you don't care much about the story, you won't want to bother.
Besides if you liked the story in FFX, you probably don't want to see how they put it all to complete waste in this game.
Again, like MMORPG's you get jobs to learn abilities, and there's a great variety, Thieves, Black Mages, Samurai, Berserkers, Item Shooters, you name it. It's not really necessary to bother with any of them though, I've been pretty much playing the first half of the game with the standard jobs you start in, and then I switched to Gamblers for the rest of the game, cos they get double experience and they have a high critical hit rate. The whole game is pretty easy, with the exception of the final optional missions, but you shouldn't bother anyway.
Also, it's a shame you can't customize your character by combining abilities from different jobs, which is a feature that WAS present in Final Fantasy V and Tactics, and indeed, in most Job-based RPG's, I'd wager.
The Battle system has shifted back to using Time Gauges again, which seems a shame after the ingenious system FFX introduced, but I have to admit, these battles are frigging FAST. Blink your eyes for a second and one of your characters might be wiped out completely.
It takes a while to get used to how fast these battles go, but once you're adjusted they work very well. It seems rather stupid therefor that the menu's are rather slow. They decide to make things flashy with lots of bright lights and special effects and starlets and thingies in the menu system, which can mess up the responsiveness of the cursor every now and then. It's no major deal, but it is something I noticed a couple of times, and it's annoying.
Another unusual change comes in the form of the Jump function you can use in dungeons etc. It's actually really stupid. They decided that Yuna needed the ability to Jump onto platforms and stuff, but it's really completely useless. You don't need to time or aim. You just keep the X button pressed, and if there's a particular place where you can jump, Yuna'll jump automatically. Greatest. Addition. Ever.
Grumbling aside, it is obvious that an experienced and technically proficient team has been working on this game, cos it's solid as a rock. It wouldn't be a Square RPG if it wasn't good fun to some extent, the Graphics are gorgeous, as usual (not a real surprise since they used about 80% of the environments of FFX. The new stuff is very impressive though), and the FMV is mind-blowing, great facial animation (when they bother to use it), superb motion capturing, the works.
As for the soundtrack, it's been widely criticized for, well, not being Uematsu probably. Don't expect any (melo)dramatic music, and don't expect any of the Ambient drivel from FFX either. Let's face it, all three composers did a lousy job on FFX, so how can it be much worse? Well, 'FFX-2' some would answer, and I'm probably the only one on this planet to disagree. People tend to dislike it because it's more of a pop soundtrack, to suite the High Bubblegum Factor of the game, but I actually think Noriko Matsueda does a better job at creating suitable BGM for the environments found in FFX than its predecessor's composers.
Samples!
I'll show you Hell!Besaid IsleCalm PlainsAnyway, if you don't mind a game that can be really really girlish and puerile at times, and that's even retrospectively insulting to the prequel, you have a very decent game on your hands. Very unusual for a Final Fantasy, but in now way a bad game at all. Stupid and unnecessary story? Yes. Solid gameplay and fun factor? Well, yes, but to a lesser degree than most FF's. Dungeons are kinda boring and straightforward, and battles don't offer much challenge or strategy, but it's decent enough in its own right.
An 8.0, ladies and gentlemen. Aren't we all happy?
Now, leave me alone, I need some more sugar.
And 2 more
I sincerely apologize for the INCREDIBLE lack of updates recently, but I've been kinda busy, believe it or not. Or as busy as anyone who has the time to start a project like this can logically be, actually.
I haven't had that much time to play, what with me totally wasting my time on working on my thesis and sh*t. I have no clue why I'm giving that priority over something as important as playing video games, especially when we're talking about intelligent stuff like Final Fantasy X-2. I WILL finish it soon though, believe me, I will kill if I have to.
I did use some of my leisure time to buy yet TWO more games! Gasp! Shock and Horror!
They are: Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes and Prince of Persia Warrior Within, both for Gamecube. I've been warned about the latter, but since I greatly enjoyed Sands of Time, I figured, as long as all the puzzle stuff is in there, It'll be good.
I picked both these games up at a not-so-local video store, where they were selling their rental GC games for about 15 Euro a piece, because noone was interested in renting them. I wanted to check the disks before I bought them, because I am terribly suspicious of second-hand games in the west, what with most people's tendency to use their games as beer coasters, but I was pleasantly surprised to see my own reflection, undisturbed by scratches or coffee stains. Or as pleasantly surprised as one can be when one has a face like oneself. These games had obviously hardly ever been touched.
It pains me to see how poorly the GC seems to be doing, and it revolts me even more to see what DOES arouse the general gaming public in this country. If it's got a ball or a skateboard in it, it seems pretty much everything is instant gold over here which makes me long back to the good old days of yore, when gaming was mostly a Japanese affair and we got REAL quality games, unsettlingly weird as though they may have been at times.
Anyway, I'll wait playing these games until I hit their respective letters, since I'm in no particular hurry to play either of these, I just thought I'd buy them cos the price was right. I have a strong urge to buy something REALLY new though, cos I haven't bought a brand spanking NEW game (as in, recently released) since, oh, Resident Evil 4 back in January.'
After Final Fantasy X-2, Grandia II is up. I was hoping Final Fantasy XII would be released when I finished the series, but it seems the Japanese government is denying its existence. Fortunately though, August 4th will see the Japanese release of Grandia III, which might be interesting, if I can get it for a decent price. Also, July 28th is Shadow Hearts 3, September 14th is Advent Children, and November something is Twilight Princess. I think I'll get through this year okay.
Gaming Life is Good.
Origins
Somewhere in the not too distant past, there must have been a conversation going a little bit like this:
"Excuse me sir, could I have a word with you?"
"What?"
"You see, sir, the fans are getting restless. They haven't had a Final Fantasy game for....oh.....more than a year now, and they're starting to show nasty signs of deprivation. It's been almost 2 years since Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy XI didn't do too well last year...."
"We did a Final Fantasy XI?"
"Quite, sir. but that was over a year ago and we need something new now, lest the fans start losing faith in us. We've already fed them some wild stories about Final Fantasy XII but they're getting anxious."
"HAH! They still believe they're getting a Final Fantasy XII!? Sheep! Little do they suspect that Final Fantasy XII will be my next fully rendered CG movie, starring Justin Timberlake as the young and strappy Vahn, who rebels against the Empire alongside the Emperor's Daughter in a classic Romeo and Juliet story! Did we get Britney Spears to sign yet?"
"She's on maternity leave sir, but we're getting one of the Chipmunks to fill in for her"
"ALVIIIIIIIN!"
"Exactly."
"Man, this thing is gonna be better than....Spirits Within even! I'm brilliant! Are they still not on to the fact that we haven't actually shown them any 'in-game footage' after 5 years?"
"Seems not sir."
"Weak genes, that's what I say. So can't we give them a new expansion pack or something?"
"I'm afraid they won't buy that sir"
"Nice choice of words there. Um. Can't we rerelease Final Fantasy I and II again for some as yet unexplored console? Neo Geo? 3DO?
Jaguar?"
"I've taken the liberty of contacting Mr. Kutaragi of Sony to ask him about the PSP, but he said the machine was perfectly alright as it was, and any inefficiencies were completely deliberate and the customer will just have to accept their perfect little piece of genious as it is"
"Crazy little man. Uhhh......Crystal Chronicles 2?"
"Please don't swear in my presence, sir"
"Sorry. NO WAIT! I'VE GOT IT! YOU CAN TELL IT'S A GREAT IDEA CAUSE I'VE PRESSED THE CAPS LOCK BUTTON! Why don't we........MAKE A SEQUEL TO FINAL FANTASY X?"
"What!? But sir, as a rule, we never make any straight sequels in the Final Fantasy series. The punters won't stand for it!"
"Screw them! If they'll swallow Driving Emotion Type S, they'll accept this too!"
"Well, actually, sir....."
"It's obvious in any case that Final Fantasy X was so insanely good that we'll never be able to live up to its expectations anymore, quite like Final Fantasy VII, and we're going to fuck that up with a gazillion sequels too! And we can just use ALL the same backgrounds and monsters!"
"Sir, you are insulting the intelligence of the average gamer"
"Hahah, they'll be too busy playing Tony Hawk to notice! But I know how we can cover this up nicely. In Final Fantasy X, we established a great story with believable characters and a cool bitter-sweet ending with the tears and the parting and the blahblah, LET'S FUCK IT UP! First, the point of the game will be to find back that dude from FFX, who disappears at the end, even though it was clear at that time that that was NOT going to happen. Secondly, we'll turn young Yuna, the brave but shy daughter of Braska, becoming a Grand Summoner in her father's footsteps, to provide a short-lasting but significant relief for the sin-ridden planet, INTO A SPICE-GIRL, no wait, A CHARLIE'S ANGEL, yes that's better, in a skimpy outfit, and we'll make her a dancer/singer! AND WE NEED GUNS! LOTS OF GUNS! I want Eidos to be on the phone with a lawsuit within one week!"
"You.....can't be serious?"
"Sure I am! I want it done RIGHT NOW. And be sure to add The Bubblegum Factor. And charge them full-price!"
And that is how Final Fantasy X-2 was born. Or perhaps more accurately, excreted.
I'm getting a little bit ahead of things, cos I'm not finished yet, about half way there, but I just had to share this little bit of historical insight with you.
Man, what a total cop-out this game is. It's Japanese commercialism made flesh. Or made aluminum or whatever it is. In fact, it offered me a nice refreshing Coca Cola (tm) just now. Tasty!
Almost there my friends!
Final Fantasy X-2
Good, now let this be the last one, you hear?
Final Fantasy X-2 (that's pronounced 'ten-two', and don't you forget it!), being the completely unnecessary sequel to Final Fantasy X, which was already complete and didn't really need a sequel to fuck things up retrospectively. Advent Children anyone?
But I'm getting ahead of things, cos this is only just the introduction. Fortunately I'm going into this game completely unbiased, eh? ;)
So, A couple of years or so after Final Fantasy X, Yuna, The Mighty Summoneress decides that a world without Huge Evil Watery Monsters is kinda boring, so she sets out on another Whirlwind adventure. Or a slight breeze at least.
One day, Rikku, her former guard/present cousin finds a Sphere containing images of someone looking suspiciously like Tidus (although he's constantly referred to as 'him') and Yuna goes looking for him, because surely he's still alive, because that would make SO MUCH sense, knowing what we do from FFX. I swear, if they're going to revive Sephiroth or Aeris, I will personally rain Holy Hell on Square-Enix's Headquarters. But I digress yet again.
The characters from the prequel only make cameo's, since we have an all-girl cast now, and since Lulu is pregnant with Wakka's baby (LUCKY BASTARD!) her place in the party is taken by Paine, whose last name HAS to be Indyas, and who basically shares her personality with Lulu, since that's much easier than being original.
Anyhow, this game is not nearly as long as any of its predecessors, so I expect to finish this relatively soon. It's the very first and only real sequel game in the Final Fantasy Universe, and they can stop doing it now as far as I'm concerned.
But I'm again revealing my prejudice, let's just get this over with.
Yu-Ri-Pa.....READY!
Sin City
Phew! That's the last Big Final Fantasy over with! Now all that is left is the after-dinner mint that is Final Fantasy X-2, and I can move on to the letter G, which means Grandia II, another 40+ hour RPG. D'oh!
But man, I think I've already reached the summit, cos, Hot Damn, Final Fantasy X is FANTASTIC. Seriously. More games should be like this. I have to admit that, having played it so many times already, the beginning is kinda stale, but no matter how often you play it, the more you progress the better it becomes.
Despite the fact that the game is pretty linear from beginning to end there's a SHITLOAD of stuff to do, really. It's easy to spend hours and hours on the dozens of subgames and subquests, and you'll always be rewarded handsomely.
But what sets this game apart from the rest of the series, which was already not too shabby, is the incredibly well worked out Battle System. ALL games should be like this. Gone is the stupid Active Time Battle Gauge Thingummy, there is no more waiting for bars to fill, like on so many saturday nights where I live.
Instead, we get a small column on the right of the screen, indicating who gets the move when for the next 15 turns or so, and should you wish, the order can be changed using speeding up or slowing down special attacks. This is incredibly effective, cos it makes the battles run smooth and quick. No more waiting, whilst adversely giving you enough time to think, cos as long as you do nothing, noone moves.
Also party members can be exchange on the fly during battle, giving you a great opportunity of keeping everyone on the edge, instead of letting characters lag behind because they can't come along. This works out awesomely, for your party is really well balanced. They all have their own specialties that are necessary for specific monsters and situations. Tidus is a Time Mage with average offense, speed and defense, Yuna is a summoner and White Mage, Lulu is a Black Mage, Rikku is a Thief, Auron is a Knight, Wakka is what in previous FF's would have been called a Hunter I guess, with great accuracy and some status attacks, and Kimahri is turned into an allrounder whom you can form into anything you want. His Overdrive makes him prone to Blue Magic though.
And that is where the Brilliance of the Sphere Board system comes into play. Every character starts in his or her own area (although I've been told the International Version puts them all in the same place, with different branch routes to choose from) and becomes what the game requires, but after that you are free to do whatever you want, and you can customize your characters to your heart's content. Of all the times I've played this game, my party never turned out the same in the end, and it's a great blast no matter what.
Then there's the presentation aspect of things, which is also near-flawless. The graphics still look luscious to this date, and the FMV is unparalleled.
Voice acting is SUPERB, and let there be no mistake that the Japanese version is far superior to the Western one, with great humor, adlibbing and emotion, and....uh....Kimahri. Halfway through the game I was like "Okay, you can shut up again now!" but that's the sole exception. Seymour especially, is GREAT, putting down a cool Badguy voice that is weirdly kick-ass as well as polite and respectable at the same time.
And Wakka is THE BEST piece of voice acting in any video game EVER. Screw that stupid Jamaican accent they gave him in America.
Amazingly, the story is NOT messed up for once, despite the game's look reminding us of Final Fantasy 8 so much. It is a beautiful and believable story of love (done right for a change) in a world that has gone to misery, with racial issues, and a good dose of Religion vs. Common Sense problems thrown in for good measure.
The Bitter-sweet ending with its partings and its reunions rounds the story off beautifully and perhaps causes a tear here and there. If you're gay. Which I'm not. Honest.
But a Video Game wouldn't be a Video Game, sadly, if there wasn't something to complain about. Perfection being impossible to achieve, even in polygons.
For one thing, the Equipment system. Although it works well on the outside, limited as though your equipment may be, you get Gazillions of weapons and armor throughout the game, all of them having useful specs or abilities, so you tend to hang on to many of them incase you're gonna need that 'protect from silence' ability sometime.
Since you have to deal with so many items, and the game lets you carry A LOT, a Sort option would be mandatory I say, but it's not in here. Selling stuff will cause huge gaps in your inventory, making it look untidy, and hard to see if you already have a similar piece of equipment somewhere else. A very simple sort function, that IS present in the normal item screen, would have done wonders, but alas.
And I'll be frank, the Soundtrack is a HUGE dissappointment. Uematsu seems to have thrown his towel into the ring, and gives up a lot of space for Hamauzu and Nakano. Hamauzu is decent, although he doesn't seem to realise that there are other instruments on this planet beside pianos, and Nakano is just plain bad, with his nondescript wannabe-ambient tripe, and his non-ambient stuff is even worse. Easily the worst in the series.
Other than that, this is one of the best games EVER MADE in the History of Mankind, let there be no doubt. It's long, but doesn't get boring for one second, the Boss Battles are ingenious and really fun, because they all have a gimmick of some sort, or require a certain tactic for you to find out, giving it a kind of puzzle element, and they are really the highlight of the game. If that is possibly next to so many other bright lights.
In other words, this is a modern Day classic, showing that the Genre doesn't need to be trite and unchangeing, as long as you put your mind to it. I for one, cannot wait for FFXII to see what Magic awaits us there, Square have at least shown me that they still got it, although this was already 4 years ago.
I can't really give this anything less than a 10.
But I did find a couple of nice tracks for you, which are the least bad so to speak, they're all by Uematsu, unsurprisingly, and the last one is the Orchestrated Ending Theme, which I normally wouldn't provide as a sample, cos it's not representative of the rest, but there simply is not enough good stuff in here for 3 good samples:
Silence Before the StormAuron's ThemeEnding Theme時々でいいから、いなくなった人々のことを、思い出してくださいね
What's in a name?
I have a confession to make.
It seems that, after carefully scrutinizing my Alphabetic List and some of my game Boxes, I haven't been terribly accurate in the whole "looking at the name and placing it in the right alphabetical order" thing.
If you've read the rules, and don't try to pretend you haven't, I CAN SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING, you'll know that this whole project is based on the names of my games, as they appear on the box or the cartridge/CD's.
This means that I adhere to the Japanese names for the Japanese games, and THAT's where I've been a little inconsistent, or to be more accurate,
asleep.
I noticed already that where I put Battle Arena Toshinden, the Japanese version is actually just called Toshinden, so it should have been at the end somewhere.
And what I called Donkey Kong Country is actually Super Donkey Kong in Japanese, also placing it way towards the back, in the far too crowded letter S.
Now I know you're all probably panicking, going around shouting "OHMYGOD, WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN TO THE PROJECT!? IS THIS PLANET DOOMED!? IS LIFE AS WE KNOW IT GOING TO END!? WILL I HAVE TO CANCEL MY LIBRARY MEMBERSHIP!? IS THAT AN ALIEN SPACESHIP COMING OUT OF THE ASPHALT!?"
Yes, it is, and it's been there for over a million years, but don't worry, cos I have a good feeling the aliens will be too stupid to have done the minimal amount of research to find out if maybe the human race doesn't carry some very common germs that are terminally lethal to them.
So I'm going to turn a blind eye, as they say, and pretend as if NOTHING has happened, American Government Stylee, but I'll make sure it won't happen again, officer.
That having been said having....uh, I've made a couple of changes to the Alphabetic List to prevent the same thing from happening again. Don't worry, this time I've checked everything, and it's 100% accurate.
Unless it will turn out that I'm wrong again afterwards.
So please note that, as of today:
- Legend of Mana has been moved to Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana
- Zelda no Densetsu has been moved (back again) to Legend of Zelda, since apparently, waddayaknow, they DO actually say Legend of Zelda on the Japanese boxes.
- Golden Sun is now Ogon no Taiyo.
- Rainbow Bell Adventures = TWINBEE Rainbow Bell Adventures
- I've messed up the whole order of Super Mario games, and I'm still not sure if it makes sense now, and I've also moved Yoshi's Island from Y to S, since it says Super Mario: Yoshi's Island. Yay!
My, isn't this interesting?
Remember, my young whippersnappers, this is all in the good name of science, not completely unlike shooting incredibly expensive pieces of equipment into large lumps of Rock. Now, on with the show.
Almost finished Final Fantasy X, rounding up all the extra stuff now, before going into Sin. Yes, INTO SIN, so I'll probably finish this tomorrow. Good.
Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter
Man, I'm one stubborn son of a bitch.
I guess I figured, since Breath of Fire IV was by accident so good, it could only get better from there on, and V would rule again too, despite the 3 lousy prequels! Right! RIGHT!?!
Dammit I was wrong again. Fuck Breath of Fire, FUCK IT RIGHT IN THE EAR!
This was incidentally one of the most frequent quotes made by me whilst playing this game. GOD, is it hard. It's hard as Reinforced Steel Nails in Extra Strong Concrete, with scars and one eye missing. It's hard as something extremely HARD. HARD.
But it's not easy! That's what makes it hard. Capcom have decided to throw the entire series out of the window and do something totally completely new cos Originality is A Good Thing. Is it really? NO.
I prefer good old tried-and-tested, run-off-the-mill, thirteen-in-a-dozen repeat-a-thons anytime over "It's got to be good cos noone's done it before!". 9 out of 10 times it ends in disaster.
In Breath of Fire V, also known as Breath of Fire 5, you play Ryu, who *sigh* can turn into some dragon like creature, which explains the name Bob. And this is where this game goes haywire already. Instead of getting multiple Dragon forms to choose from, you only have ONE shape this time, which admittedly is incredibly strong, but there's one very serious downside to using it, and I'll get to that in a moment.
You're a member of some kind of organisation or other, and it's basically your job to explore the subterranean world mankind has been living in for some time now, and to kill any monsters you might run into and if possible, find a way out to the surface. As a result the whole game takes place in dark dusty corridors and underground labs and energy facilities and the like. This does manage to create a very brooding and suffocating atmosphere which helps the game a lot.
You will occasionally run into doors that are closed which tell you that your D-rate is too low, and you can't go through. The D-rate is apparently something everyone has in this world, and it more or less defines your importance, so the higher your D-rate, the more doors you can open etc. Your D-Rate only rises when you finish the game though, so these extra areas are solely put in for replay value, which is also nice.
Whilst exploring the many hallways you will frequently run into enemies, which are totally visible all the time, so no random encounters. As soon as you hit an enemy, or it attacks you, the battle sequence will start on the spot, and any enemies in the immediate vicinity will join in, very much like Chrono Trigger. You also get some field items like bombs and traps to deal damage before the battle starts, or temporarily stun the enemy, which is nice. During battle though, you are free to run around within the arena, but you have a certain amount of attack points to keep in mind, determining how many movements you can perform within one battle turn, it all makes the battles very strategic and active yaddah yaddah, let's get to the SUCKY PART.
Cos SUCK it does, in some ways, and more than one. It Sucks like a Transylvanian Vacuum Cleaner moonlighting as a Thai Prostitute. Without teeth. You see, Capcom thought of all of the above, and they had a very decent game on their hands, but that wasn't enough! Oh no, they needed something
more bless their little hearts, I imagine the meeting going something like this:
Exec A: "Good, I think that about wraps things up, does anyone have anything else to say?"
Exec B, whom I belief to be Satan: "Wait a minute, I have this one last idea to throw in at the last minute and fuck up the entire experience!"
A: "Well, by all means,
share"
B: "I was thinking, what we got now is pretty good, but we need something to piss the player off. We need something so that the player, no matter how much fun he is having, needs to be aware of something really annoying in the background that'll fuck everything up royally. How's that sound?"
A: "But we already have the insanely hard, overpowered bosses, what more do we need?"
B: "One Magic Word: Time Restriction"
A: "Actually, that's tw...."
B: "And not just for one single event! No! FOR THE ENTIRE GAME!"
A: "That's INSANE! Nobody'll but that! We'll be out of business in no time, and rightly so!"
B: "Still, we're doing this, cos I have the last word in this matter and I'm a money sucking asshole."
A: "You know, that sounds pretty useful, I wish I had one of those."
So, they gave Ryu the Dragon Meter or whatever the little piece of Pixellated Hell is called, which slowly but surely increases until it hits 100%. And the damn thing is constantly moving up, even if you just stand around doing nothing. Use your Dragon Power though, and the thing'll SOAR upwards like nobody's business, putting a huge restraint on using your special powers, which would be a nice strategic element if bosses weren't TOTALLY FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to defeat without them.
"But Almighty Ingen, what happens when the meter hits 100%? PLEASE TELL US!" Let me tell you, my pretty ones. You DIE. You DIE like a little doggy thrown off a 50 story office building. By a Catapult. And it's Game Over FOR EVER. You HAVE to start over FROM THE BEGINNING. Which brings me to the Scenario Overlay System, or SOL. Yes, SOL.
This allows you to take your best equipment and money back to the start of the game and try again. You lose all your Experience though. On later playthroughs, you will get some new events and learn more about the story, so Capcom really did all of this on purpose, which sucks. You'd better keep, like, 50 separate save files or something, or you might be screwed along the way.
No wait, that WOULD be an option, if you weren't restricted in saving as well. You need save tokens to save, always a GREAT idea in an RPG, and you hardly get ANY of them throughout the game, especially towards the end. You can make one temporary save anytime you want though, and it'll still be there even after turning off the machine, but if you die then, you'll be fucked as well. Yes, the fuckings are plenty in this game, it's like an American Campus, only without the alcohol.
There is one way to mess with the game though, as I found out on www.gamefaqs.com, and it allows you to use money and party experience without
actually consuming it, so you can keep using it over and over again to gain some easy levels, which helps.
It's really stupid to have to use a bug to make the game bearable though.
Yet, despite all that, I gave this game a 7.0, because I appreciate it's originality, the battle system is fun, and it has some replay value, if you can bear to play the game again. This game definitely isn't for everyone though, it's Breath of Fire for MEN, and men who don't have anything better to do with their time at that. Not for the casual gamer, that's for sure, but if you're looking for an extreme challenge, you will find plenty here to enjoy. Very much like a steaming pile of Dung actually, in that respect.
So the question is, will there ever be a Breath of Fire VI, and if so, am I going to buy it? Well, only time will tell, so you'd better stay tuned kids, and eat your spinach. Now clear off!
Breath of Fire IV
I tellz ya, I just couldn't get enough of this wonderful series, so I went ahead and bought ANOTHER one, despite the foul taste left behind by 2 and 3. Why? Why, indeed.
Because I'm an RPG nut, most likely, or because I had money and time to spare at that time. And because I'm a relentless believer in Capcom, no matter how much crap they throw at me.
BUT! Every once in awhile the people behind a particular series screw up, and do something totally different from the previous instalments, and actually make something that is REALLY REALLY good. That, my friends, is Breath of Fire IV.
I was amazed myself, at how much I loved this game. But then, what's not to like? EVERYTHING that bugged me about the prequels has been fixed. The difficulty is more balanced, the encount rate is toned down, the story is more interesting and the music is great too. But above all else, what I liked about this game, is the tremendously tranquil atmosphere it breathes. No "OMG! WE HAVE TO GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, KILL THE EVIL ZOLBROD AND SAVE THE PLANET!", but instead you get a wonderfully laid-back, deep, mythological story, taking place in a rustic Middle-East/Ancient China-like environment without any explosions and big School buildings duelling out in mid-air.
Once again, as the staple of the series, you play as Ryu, the spikey blue-haired boy, who can change into a Dragon at will. This time though, you also get to play as his Alter Ego Fo Lu, an ancient Dragon God that has been revived for some reason or other. What I love about this villian is that he too stays so calm throughout the story. No insane random killings and big Meteors and whatnot, just this very relaxed guy, in no particular hurry. And the fact that you actually get to play as him, shows that he has problems of his own, people trying to kill him, but also people who help him when he's hurt, and he DOES get hurt. He's a weak and vulnerable person, as opposed to all those invincible Demi-Gods you tend to get everywhere else.
The Battle system is also great. Your entire party consists of 6 people, who are with you at ALL times. No changing parties or anything, everyone is always there, which is good, because some characters have field abilities, like cutting grass, pushing crates and banging agains walls (I like that last one). And this feature extends into the battle scenes as well. All your party members are THERE at all times, but you only have to worry about 3 people fighting at the same time. If one of them gets hurt too much, just immediately exchange with someone waiting in the back. It's similar to Final Fantasy X, offering ready exchange of party members, but it's different in that the members not on screen, are still actually there.
Occasionally, someone in the back will perform Auxiliary skills, like support attacks, or random healings, depending on what Master they are studing under.
Add to that the fact, that dungeons are a lot more fun this time, no stupid mazes, but plenty of nice gimmicks and puzzles, and that this game has a plethora of subgames, which not only earn you items, but actually help making your Dragon Forms stronger, and you've got yourself a total winner.
In short, a very well-worked out RPG, for the gourmet player, offering a unique peaceful way of story-telling, that actually allows you to see it all from the other guy's point of view too. I love it. A 9.0
