Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Square Enix RPG Crash Course Part II: Final Fantasy IV

Published on May 23, 2009 in Uncategorized and video games. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

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I read somewhere once of the Final Fantasy games being compared to the excitement of managing a spreadsheet, what with all the nested menus, inventories, equipping, and stats. Well I can definitely identify with that characterization, but I think that is also what I like about, at least, this Final Fantasy. The pace of the game is pretty relaxing. I like just clicking through all my characters, equipping, and unequipping things, and managing items. I was able to really take my time. The style worked excellently on the DS. There were plenty of opportunities to save the game, and it was easy to open it up and play it for just a short amount of time. I should repeat again, this is my first proper Final Fantasy game, the only other being FF Tactics Advance. This is part two of my Square Enix RPG crash-course, the first being The World Ends With You.

This being my first Final Fantasy, it was nice to be able to finally get introduced into the universe after it being such a big part of video game culture over the years. My first impression was the effort it seems the game put forth in trying to convince me that I was experiencing something epic. It didn’t feel so epic though. It felt like a fantasy themed soap opera. Its not an epic opera anyway, more of a melodramatic adventure. All these things weren’t troublesome to me though, more just amusing. The real tone of the game is set by the mechanics of managing a party of characters, and managing them in turn-based battle. That is what was appealing about the game.

The party, represented by a single character, wanders a map of the world, a really high-level generic view. Mostly only the towns, caves, and any battle screen have a more detailed view of your environment. The 3D polygonal characters were very nice, along with the cut scenes. I like when cut scenes use the in-game graphics to unfold, and not fancy unrelated cinematics, like the intro to this game uses. The voices were hilarious, especially Edward the Bard, Prince of Damcyan. The music was nice, definitely more epic than the drama unfolding in the game.

My sense of the scale of the adventure though  can’t be competely honest, because I only finished a little more than 1/3 of the game. The area I hit a brick wall in was the chapter To Pilfer an Airship in the Castle Baron. I made it to the boss Baigan, with snakes for arms, and I tried and tried but could not beat him. One of the complaints I have of the game is the boss difficulty. While understanding that bosses are inherently to be more difficult to beat than your average bad guy, the discrepancy between even the most difficult regular enemies and the bosses in the game was HUGE. It got to the point while fighting bosses, that I figured there couldn’t be very many DIFFERENT ways to beat them. I would try many different tactics, and then it would begin to cease to be fun to me. That is what happened with Baigan. I fought him so many times, that even if I did eventually best him, the trouble wouldn’t have been worth it.

As it is, I finished with this party:

  • Cecil as a Paladin, Level 19
  • Porom,  Level 25
  • Palom, Level 25
  • Tellah, Level 25
  • Yang, Level 25

I don’t know, maybe I’ll pick it up again this Winter and beat Baigan. Its definitely a quality game.

Square Enix RPG Crash Course Part I: The World Ends With You

Published on May 20, 2009 in video games. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

I’m pretty much a Square Enix newbie. The only other Square Enix game I had played beside these three is Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on the Gameboy Advance, which I really enjoyed, but definitely is not a mainline Final Fantasy adventure. All three of these games were new to me despite two of them originally being Super Nintendo games. I was so fully content playing Zelda, Mario, Donkey Kong, and Starfox on that platform that I didn’t really get into RPGs. In fact, I never really got into RPGs much at all, so playing these was like a crash-course in traditional RPGs. The crash-course consisting of  The World Ends With You, Final Fantasy IV, and Chrono Trigger, all on the Nintendo DS.

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The first up of the three is also the newest, in terms of original release date and sensibilities. As the cover art indicates, there are all kinds of hip, young, and urban characters in it that are all angsty and self-absorbed. The setting of the game is meant to be a real-life section of Tokyo, Japan.

Despite having traditional RPG elements like leveling up your characters and equipping stat-boosting items via tedious menus, this game actually offers something unique that I see as the sole positive feature of the game: the battles. Where the other two games here have you battle by selecting a menu item, this game requires some skilled hand-eye coordination. The battles take place on both the top and bottom screens of the DS, and require you to battle simultaneously on both fronts. One character battles on the top, and one character battles on the bottom. The top character is controlled by timed directional presses of the d-pad, and the bottom character is controlled with very specific motions of the stylus.  Unfortunately the stylus motions seemed to function a little sketchy for me.

Your character collects pins (like the kind you’d wear on leather jacket, or on an apron at Applebees). These pins are your constantly growing assortment of combat moves. One pin may make ice shoot up from the ground, and in order to perform that move, a quick slice upward of the stylus makes that happen. But, seeing as there are over 300 pins available in the game, the gestures you need to make with the stylus begin to get increasingly intricate. The problem then is that the stylus controls don’t feel adequately precise, not to mention the small canvas in which you need to make them. I ended up falling back on the most simple slashing ones that were available to make sure that I could consistently keep up with the pace of battle on both screens.

So now that I’m done bashing what I feel is the sole positive feature of the game, let me talk about some of the things I don’t like. The art is horrible, its like commercial graffiti. It feels like Pepsi is trying to convince me it can be hip and urban too! The enemies seem to be a collection of really ugly tribal tattoo designs, and there is an emphasis in the game on fashion. You have to travel to different fashion boutiques in the area, and get snobby elitist attitudes delivered to you by the clerks and shopkeepers in them. Unfortunately you have to keep visiting them to purchase, not shields, and armor, but the newest tangerine flip flops and late Spring sun hat to boost your stats and also to buy your pins(weapons). Not to single out the shopkeepers here though, because the main teenage characters that you control are just as ridiculous, and make you want to beat the shit out of them. There is also some kind of hot dog and hamburger eating procedure to level you up. The music in the game is interesting, moreso than the game itself, and I enjoyed listening to it.

To sum up, its great to pick this game up and try out the battle mechanic for its hectic and simultaneous dual-screen action, but too annoying in all the other respects to really get into. Just go get the soundtrack.