Final Fantasy – Page 11

That sun won’t shine

This morning, I hit 100 consecutive days of playing Dissidia: Final Fantasy. That, combined with the time I’ve been logging in Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together probably makes my PSP my most often used video game system. If you’d suggested such a fact to me five years ago, I probably would have kicked your teeth in. With words, of course.

Despite my obvious obsession, I still have a lot to accomplish in the game before I feel comfortable moving onto the sequel. My current goal is to earn the “get every character to level 50” accomplishment, which is not so bad with the good guys, but it’s a slow, boring grind to get all the villains up past L30. Once you hit that point though, it’s pretty smooth sailing. Oddly, I never thought that I would feel that a fighting game had too many fighters to choose from.

Now it’s time to party

I was very excited last week when I heard that the Catherine demo was available for my enjoyment. Alas, it was for Gold members only, so I was stuck waiting for it until… Tuesday I think? In any case, it’s available to the general public now, so I downloaded that.

Let me start by saying that I was interested in Catherine before it was cool. Because I’m super hip. The kids over at Talking Time were all abuzz about it when the first trailer was announced, because it seemed to be a Shin Megami Tensei spinoff of some sort. SMT, and the Persona games in particular, are a big thing over there, so a sexy spinoff was big news. Turns out it has little to do with SMT, and is not even branded as part of the series, but after playing it I can see that there are a few similarities.

Catherine is a puzzle game. Technically it is a falling block game, but not in the “match-three” way that falling block games are. In this one, you must climb a tower made of blocks before they fall out from under you. It’s a little more complicated than that, but such is the basic premise of the gameplay. Also, there is a story that plays out in between the tower-climbing. And this is where it parallels SMT, or Persona 3, at least. During the daytime, you walk around and talk to people, affecting your relationships with them as you go. And then at nighttime, it’s tower climb time. This is the same formula that P3 follows, except that in that game there is an RPG instead of puzzles during the night segments. Again, that’s a very basic summary, but it gets my point across.

After playing the demo, I’m not only interested in Catherine because the Talking Time crew told me to be, but mostly because if you ignore the fact that it is not technically a Persona game, it’s a Persona game I can play. I really would like to get into the series, but from what I’ve heard, they seem to have an issue with requiring perfection. Having to memorize enemy weaknesses and switch up your party all the time to take advantage of them is a little more than I want to deal with in a standard RPG. In a tactical RPG? Sure, that’s part of the genre’s charm. But coming off of Final Fantasy XIII, where your characters learn weaknesses and exploit them automatically, having to tweak your characters/party for each encounter? Too much work.

So Catherine here, the other reason I want to get into it is because the social element and story really interest me. Your social interactions appear to have an effect on how the story plays out, even if it just results in whether your character (Vincent) picks the blond (Catherine) or the brunette (Katherine) in the end, it looks like it’ll be a fun ride. Of course, me being me, I’d definitely do everything to rope Vince into marrying his longtime girlfriend. It’s nice to feel like you have that choice, anyway.

I do want to play the full game, but I’m wondering if it’ll be worth the entry price. $60 is an awful lot for someone with so little disposable income to pay for a game about climbing blocks. I’m sure that I’ll enjoy the daytime segments and the story more than enough to justify the price. It’s hard to say whether I’d play it more than once though. Maybe it’d make a good birthday gift? It is only a month and a half away… Then again, I did play Silent Hill: Shattered Memories several times, and that game was even less about gameplay than Catherine is. I suppose it’ll probably boil down to whether I have enough self-control to avoid buying it or not, though I know how guilty I’ll feel if I do. Huh. Listen to me ramble about finances. Not exactly the most entertaining thing to blog about. Point is, the demo is good, but not $60 good.

In a related story, I’m highly considering getting SMT: Devil Survivor Overclocked for 3DS next month. This one is a tactical RPG, so that’s perfect! I love tactical RPGs! Which reminds me, the PSP port of Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together has been sitting on my floor unopened for at least a month now. Probably should put Dissidia down for a while and start hacking away at that.

(At this point, you’re likely trying to reason out exactly why I think I need to buy more video games.)

We cannot afford to be afraid anymore

Portal 2 was on sale for half price last weekend, so guess what I spent the said weekend doing. Not Portal 2, that’s for sure!

Actually, while I spent most of my weekend playing Sanctum and being murdered by Gigantuars in Final Fantasy XIII, I did set aside a couple hours for Portal 2, and I even booted it up for a few test chambers before bed last night. So far, I am not disappointed in the least. Everyone else figured this out months ago, but wow, Portal 2 is awesome. I’ve just finished up Chapter Three, and I am about as anxious to keep going as I am with a good book.

The thing I think I’m most amazed about (so far) is the difficulty level. With Portal I spent at least a few minutes solving each test chamber. Some, like the one near the end where you have to launch yourself from tower to tower took significantly longer, though now that I think about it, that one in particular took a long time because I had trouble executing my solution. I don’t recall many of the puzzles requiring you to make portals on the fly as you bounce around in the air, so that one always sticks out in my mind. The point is, I was certainly not as good at Portal while I was playing Portal as I was once I had finished Portal. Common sense, no?

Portal 2, on the other hand, is a breeze. At least up to Chapter Four. For almost all the test chambers I’ve passed through, it only took a cursory glance at the room and the tools I had to work with before I knew exactly what to do. It the case of one of the last I played, there was a light bridge, a laser and a companion cube. The cube sits on the bridge, blocking the laser which, when unblocked, would raise a platform to the exit. The cube would also have to be placed on a button to open the door. Trouble was, once the cube stops blocking the laser the lift is up and you can’t get to the door. Tiny spoilers ahead, because I’m going to describe the solution.

What you have to do here is get up onto the light bridge and make a portal at the end of it, then another one on the opposite side of the room, so the bridge goes through and creates a second one parallel to the original. You’ll then set the cube on the second bridge, positioned directly above the button. Here, it will also continue to block the laser. Then you run onto the lift, and create a new portal somewhere else, removing the second bridge. The cube will fall on the button, leaving the laser unblocked, making the lift rise and the door open. Victory!

This isn’t even the trickiest puzzle I’ve encountered so far, but it is the only one I actually had to stop and think about for a minute. Solving it did provide a very satisfying sense of discovery, and that’s what I love about both Portal and it’s sequel. I usually don’t have the patience to puzzle out solutions in games, and will often end up on GameFAQs after five minutes or so. Normally I much prefer the sense of progression to figuring out puzzles on my own. But Portal’s puzzles aren’t like those in other games. There are no obtuse puzzles that you need to keep notes for. Trial and error is minimal, and it never takes long to come up with and implement a new solution if your first didn’t pan out. If you’re poking around the rooms, it’s not because you’re looking for clues, it’s because you’re looking for secrets and enjoying the detailed environments. Mind you, I’m still not very far in Portal 2, so there is potential for it to get significantly harder, but this is the trend I’ve seen so far.

Otherwise? The narrative elements have been fantastic up to this point, and I can’t imagine it won’t hold up to the end. I can easily see how Wheatley is supposed to be the new star of the show, but I have to say that I slightly prefer GLaDOS’ abrasive sincerity to his goofiness. After Portal, GLaDOS earned the rank as one of my favourite video game characters, and her Portal 2 appearance (which really shouldn’t be a spoiler to anyone) only serves to help keep her there. Her writing is top-notch, and the fact that she is totally bitter about the first game’s ending is great. I have kind of an idea of how I think things are going to play out, and if it’s even close, I think it’ll serve the character very well. My hypothesis is a little cliche (hero and antihero team up to defeat common enemy), but GLaDOS is a psychopath, so it’s pretty unlikely. And the hook at the end of Chapter Three is eating away at my soul, killing me a little for every minute I’m not playing. Like I said, it’s gripped me like a good book and I can’t wait to dive back into that world and see how things unfold. I might have to completely ignore Stephanie tonight and hammer away at this game. At least get half an hour in. My goal is to be finished by Sunday night, anyway.

You’ve given me some hope

Geez, I’ve been bad at blogging lately. A week and a half off work and not even a crappy filler post? Shameful.

So during said week, there was quite a lot going on (at least for me). My one goal for the week though, was to get to the end of Final Fantasy XIII. It may have been on Monday, I don’t quite remember, but I did beat it. Hooray! There used to be a time when it would have taken maybe two weeks for me to power through to the end of it, and not two and a half months. Hell, even that’s pretty speedy for me these days. I am so not done with the game though, as there are still a good two dozen marks to hunt, and plenty of achievements to earn. Maybe some aren’t so worth the necessary time/grind investment (the one for having every weapon and piece of equipment, for example), but I think it’s a fun enough game that I’ll stick to it for a while at least.

I’ve also been very slowly plucking away at Final Fantasy on my phone whenever I have five minutes to spare. And actually, now that I think about it, I’m currently playing through 5 different FF game. The aforementioned two, as well as Dissidia, Final Fantasy IV DS (wherein I am brickwalled at Rubicante), and Final Fantasy XII (wherein I stalled out again because my PS2 isn’t hooked up). I think I may have a problem. Especially considering that I intend to move into both Dissidia 012 and Final Fantasy II once I finish their predecessors. Can you believe that there was a good four- or five-year period where I was opposed to RPGs?

In other news, Resident Evil: the Mercenaries 3D is exactly as addictive as the Mercs mode in RE5. Only it’s free to play online! Hooray!

Get on your bikes and ride!

First thing to mention today, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I’m working on a new little side project for this summer. The, uh, “field research” is going quite well, and it should be ready to launch on the first of July. I’m thinking that since it’s a wannabe-professional writing project that I should probably hire an editor, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not. We’ll see come the end of the summer.

Also, how great is Link’s Awakening DX? I think it’s pretty awesome, though it is probably the single most obvious piece of evidence that I’m not nearly as patient with my games as I used to be. See, right at the beginning of the game, you can buy a bow from the shop. But it’s 980(?) rupees, which is way more than you can afford at the outset of the quest. But there is a crane minigame that, for the cost of 10 rupees and a little professional insight, you can grind and have that money much faster than you’d acquire it normally. Each play costs 10 rupees and there are two thirty-rupee prizes, so you have a net gain of 40 rupees a run, which means it takes 25 rounds to secure the necessary funds. It takes roughly a minute to grab both rupee prizes, which doesn’t sound so bad, but who wants to grind a crane game for half an hour? So for the first time ever, I’m skipping the bow for now. I’ll wait to come back once I’ve got the cash or the need for the weapon. I seem to remember having more rupees than I’d ever need by the third dungeon, and I don’t recall the bow ever being required to advance. As far as I can remember it’s more of a convenience, which is a far cry from modern Zelda games that have you use it all the time.

Lastly, where my recent Final Fantasy addiction is involved, I think I need to take a break from Dissidia and focus on Final Fantasy XIII. The game (Dissidia, that is) informs me that I’ve played it for forty-something days in a row now. That’s great and all, but at this point I’m mostly just grinding up my characters so that they’re overpowered when I start up Dissidia 012. FFXIII, on the other hand, I am crazy about and need to spend more time with. Over the last few weeks I’ve been powering my way through the “slow” part to the game, but it’s been slow going, getting in maybe one play session a week that lasts more than an hour. I really have no qualms with what I’ve played so far though. Yes, it’s running through enemy-filled hallways to the next cutscene, but I like it that way! Plus, the battles are dynamic enough that I don’t care if I’m just mashing the auto-battle command over and over. Not to mention that the game rewards you for ending battles as quickly as possible, and I love that the game doesn’t keep an average of your battle results. I would hate to open my menu and see a less-than perfect four-star rating there every time, spitting on my pride. Really, I could talk about FFXIII all day long, but this post is long enough already and I’ll save it for another time.

We’ve got a line in the sky

The past 24 hours have both strained and bolstered my love for Nintendo. Not equally, but we’ll get there. For now, let’s just focus on the worst of it, and then end on a positive note.

Yesterday we were promised a system update for the 3DS that enabled, among other things, the eShop. This is a feature that should have been included at the release of the hardware, but I can understand that they wanted to make sure it was as good as it could be, and delays are always better than half-assed product. But then the update was pushed back and back again up to yesterday. And then I got a message saying it would be available in the evening. I waited all damn day, and when did the update go live? 11:40. PM. If not for the fact that I love my system update, I might still be a little bitter about that one.

The eShop, however, is the glorious ship upon which all my hopes and dreams ride. See, ever since before the original Wii (more on that later) launched, I’ve been dreaming of a time where classic GameBoy games would be provided via some sort of download service. And now they are! Yeah, maybe the only ones worth a look are Link’s Awakening DX (still my favourite Zelda ever) and Super Mario Land (debatable), but some day Pokémons in all colours of the rainbow will be available, and maybe more importantly, the Wario Land series. And Donkey Kong ’94! Oh, and the Kirby’s Dream Land and Final Fantasy Legend series! And Metal Gear Solid! …I could go on like this all day. For now I’ll just revel in my favouritest Zelda and the fact that I actually really like Super Mario Land.

And now, about today’s overload of Nintendo goodness. Where to even start? To put it simply, I think the 3DS is about to really come into its own. The first-party lineup alone is more than I need, nevermind the love Capcom’s showing: two Resident Evils and the all-important MegaMan Legends 3. But that Wii U? I am ever so excited about it! With the first Wii, I admit, I was just as skeptical as everyone else, but I have no doubts that Wii U will deliver on every count. USB hard drive compatibility? Check. Awesome new tablet controller? Check. Some decent horsepower? Check. Console that’s an adorable cross of Wii and 360? Check and double check.

Let’s just get one thing straight; I think that the name Wii U is so, so terrible. That is not the name of a game console, that’s the sound a fire truck makes!

But on the plus side, we’re going to have a plethora of great games to play! Think about it this way: Four Swords could get a real revival! And not like I’ll play any of them (Arkham City being the only possible exception), but there are a buttload of “core” games headed to Wii U too, which nearly knocked me off my seat. Anyway, I should go and actually watch that press conference now. Following like five live blogs of it was all well and good, but I’d like to see some of this stuff in action.

You’re mad

Still plugging away at Final Fantasy on my iPhone, not really sure what I should do next, because I got the airship right after Lich, and then went on to get my class changes right away. Thought Pants might be better off with magic. He’s not.

It’s been a long time since I’ve played this game too, and that was the first time. Having gone so far off course on my second playthrough makes me feel really cool because I don’t really think about sequence breaking when I play games. But it’s so easy in Final Fantasy! If you wander around enough (and have a vague idea of what you’re looking for), the game basically cracks right open once you kill Lich and get that canoe.

Oh, and check this out! During my first outing, I played FF1 pretty rigidly, always using my fight commands and saving as much of my black mage’s MP for bosses as I could. Large mobs were annoying and took several rounds to defeat. It was not efficient at all. This time I’ve been wantonly blasting whoever I can with magic, and it turns out that you generally will have enough MP to go around anyway. And then I got the Gauntlets and Healing Rod.

I never realized that items like these were in the game; you can equip them for weak stat bonuses, but really what you want is to use them as items. When using these particular pieces of equipment in battle, they cast thundara and heal respectively. With no MP cost. And they never get used up or go away. So now that Gus can cast thundara every round with no MP drainage, cannon fodder enemies are rendered completely moot. Even nine-monster squads are vanquished in a single turn. I don’t know why the game even bothers to keep sending them out.

I honestly cannot wait to see what other items like this I can find. Something that casts healara would be nice, because while ~50 to the team each turn is more than enough for dungeon crawls, it’s not quite enough to keep up with the bonus dungeon bosses and their unusually strong magic. But then again, I suppose that’s what all my unused MP is for.

I ain’t gonna be easy

I know that when you make a game that revolves around issuing commands that has a touch-only interface, you’re probably gonna have to represent some of those commands with icons. But why, exactly, is the item icon in the iOS version of Final Fantasy a teapot?

I mean, okay, I guess a teapot in general might be classified as an item, but never in the game do you gain a teapot as an item. Your characters never interact with an teapot. There are no enemies shaped like teapots. I don’t even think NPC houses have teapots. I suppose that the teapot is a little less generic than using a bag or maybe a backpack as the item command, but it’s still completely irrelevant.

The teapot doesn’t even represent any items you can carry. Why not make the item icon a potion? That’s likely the most common item subset you’ll be using. Why am I thinking way too hard about this? And where do you go after beating Lich?

Live the rebound

As you might have expected, I’ve been as busy as I can be with video games over the past few months, and honestly, I’ve been playing far more of them than I could have possibly kept up with when I was unemployed and single. So many have become one-week affairs, while others are destined to be played, dropped, and picked up again repeatedly, and others still I haven’t even booted up once. I’d kind of like to get things in order and start finishing a few of them, so I’m going to start a preliminary list of games I’ve been into lately that are fighting for my precious free time. And this list will cover only games that I’ve come in contact with for the first time over the last year. I have so many Gamecube and PS2 games I need to get around to playing, that this list would take forever if I counted all them too. Old stuff I’ll catch up on once the new stuff thins out.

Games I’m playing regularly

Despite all the games I’ve played once or twice and forgotten about, there are many that I continually find time to spend on. Pokémon White is the newest and most obvious example. I’ve been playing the shit out of this one over the month or so it’s been out, and I can’t get enough of it. Those little monsters always find a way to worm their way into my heart. Though admittedly, I would have been even happier with it had it excluded all of the old monsters in favor of the new ones. What are we at, 600 or something now? Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock has been spinning a lot inside of my Xbox, despite the fact that I’ve likely gotten all of the achievements that I can and I’m playing it just for fun instead of progress at this point. Which, actually, is kind of the point, but whatever. I’ve 100%-ed Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, but I still hold out hope that someday they will actually release the DLC we were originally promised to have in February. Being that it’s the only 3DS game I own, Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition is getting plenty of play, but I think this will end up being a once-in-a-while game once I get the “beat arcade with all characters” medal. Dissidia: Final Fantasy is far more fun that it should be, but really, I want to forget about it and go get the sequel. Good thing new games aren’t in my budget.

Games I play sometimes

I’ve begun working my way through Brutal Legend, and while I love it to pieces, it’s getting less play than SSFIV3D, and how does that make sense? Picross 3D, which would have benefited greatly by being held back for 3DS, is not as fun as regular picross. But I’ve been picking away at the puzzles since it came out and am almost finished! I’m sitting at about 350 completed. Final Fantasy IV DS is brutally difficult, and is definitely not the breezy, nostalgic joyride I assumed it would be. But I’m soldiering through it anyway, getting stuck, slowly power-leveling my way though, and then dropping it for weeks at a time. Shadow Complex I could quit anytime, but I only need the Level 50 achievement and sadly, that’s essentially just a time-eating cheevo dressed up in a deceptively fancy hat. Secret of Mana seemed like a great idea for an iPhone game, and it could have been, but I just cannot bear the touch controls. And Donkey Kong Country Returns is such a great game, but it’s soooooo hard. And not great for two-player. I don’t imagine I’ll ever finish Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology even though I pick it up and log a decent number of hours each summer.

Games I played for a week and forgot about

I really wanted to play more of Fallout 3, but it’s so huge! I’ll never finish that monster. Not without power-gaming it for about a month straight, anyway. Final Fantasy XII is the same way, but I do pick that one up for a week or two every few months in a vain effort to make a little progress. I wanted to say my goal was to finish all the mark hunts, but I think I’ll have to settle for all Espers after reading about Yiazmat (he has more than 50 Million HPs).Arc Rise Fantasia is a different story. It’s a fairly fresh JRPG, with a not-entirely-cliche story and a battle system that is both fun and speedy, but the voice acting is so, so awful. It’s not so much that I don’t want to ever finish the game, but it’s enough that I would be okay if I didn’t. Alone in the Dark, the 2008 one, is another mixed bag. It’s got a lot of neat ideas, but gameplay is pretty much balls. It seems like 100%ing the cheevos would be easy if I could struggle my way to the end. Crackdown 2 was fun at first, and I like the in-game help for finding all those orbs, but near the end I gave up because it really just wasn’t as fun as the original, no matter how hard I tried to pretend it was. With Epic Mickey, I knew I was playing more for the atmosphere than the gameplay, but it (the gameplay) was just so mediocre that I’m having trouble pulling myself back in for the good stuff (presentation). Little King’s Story, on the other hand, has fairly good gameplay and presentation, but I can’t play it because I’m at the point where the enemies are actually dangerous, and I can’t bear to send my beloved villagers to their dooms. They all have names! And families! I’m not a monster! And speaking of which, I was completely obsessed with Monster Hunter Tri and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite last summer, but they have dropped completely off my radar, despite the fact that I really want to set aside some time for even one of them.

Games I own but haven’t stared

Why haven’t I played Dead Rising 2 yet? Honestly, it’s because I loved the original so much, I’m afraid the sequel won’t be as good. Loved Case Zero though. Deadly Premonition I got because despite the fact that he said it was awful, Steve’s description of the game (and its easy cheevos) made it sound like a game I wanted to play. So did the Gamespite Quarterly 6 review. The Incredible Hulk (360) will sit on my shelf and collect dust forever. It was better off in the Wal-Mart bargain bin. Technically I’ve beaten New Play Control! Pikmin like a dozen times, but I suppose I should play it at least once to justify the $30 expense. And if you want to pick, I have played the first two levels of Dawn of Mana, but that was so long ago I can’t even remember the experience. Eternal Sonata I hear is not so great, but how can I resist a JRPG that co-stars Frédéric Chopin? By leaving it on the shelf next to The Incredible Hulk, I suppose.

Oh good gravy. And these are just the games that spring to mind. Even if I don’t write an article at all this year, I hope to make use of this webspace to help keep track of how I’m progressing through my backlog of games. I didn’t even consider WiiWare/virtual console games. Or PC games. Or Shantae: Risky’s Revenge! That one really deserves to be finished. Ugh. I’ll have to come up with some sort of system to keep track of what I’m playing and what I need to accomplish in each game. I tried using The Backloggery some time ago, but… I don’t know why I stopped updating it. Maybe because I play too many damn games. Oops.

If I could do it again I’d probably do it the same

I haven’t owned Wii Fit Plus for even six hours yet, and I’m already smitten with it. I haven’t even played any of the new games, which are mostly what I bought it for. You might think that I’ve finally snapped, but wait a couple paragraphs before you pass judgement.

The original Wii Fit was a neat little application that definitely made me want to work out a little and improve my overall health, but it was very directionless. My only real goal, besides making sure to play every once in a while, was to achieve a number of Fit Credits at the end of the day that ended in a 5 or a 0, to keep my tally even. Having to choose a few random exercises a day was not super-motivating, as it didn’t really give me a great idea of what I was even working toward. To that end, my goal of playing every day or two quickly fell flat, and I only picked it up for a handful of days at a time every couple months.

Where Wii Fit Plus really shines is not in all the fancy new screens or games or that wonderful feeling of playing a new game for the first time (though that was really nice!), but rather that it lets you customize a workout of your own that you can easily repeat each day to target specific parts of your body. The game even has a reasonably-sized selection of pre-made workout routines that only take a couple minutes to complete and make it easy to figure out what you want to use the game for. This alone is worth the $20 expansion pack. Also nice is that the game imports all of your Wii Fit data so that you don’t have to start from scratch. This was kind of a no-brainer, but we’ve seen many games omit much more obvious/necessary features.

This is not only great for giving yourself a focused goal, but it also makes the game a million times more convenient. Making a workout routine saves a huge amount of time by not forcing you to navigate the menus every time you do something. Not to mention you don’t have to sit and consider what you want to do next. That was my biggest issue. I could never decide what yoga pose/workout/game I wanted to do once I was finished with my rhythmic boxing.

In other gaming news, I finished Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story last week, and could not have been more satisfied. The battles seem to last a little longer than I’m totally comfortable with, but they never got tedious or boring, as the active battle system forces you to be on your toes and paying attention at all times. And now that I’m done with that, it’s back to burning my way through Final Fantasy VIII, which I think I’ve definitely broken.

Now that I’ve taken the time to really obsess over the mechanics of the game, my characters are much more powerful than they probably should be. When I got the Tonberry King GF on my first run through the game several years ago, it was an extremely long and dangerous process, but this time it was… really easy. The King, with his hundreds of thousands of HPs, stood against me for over half an hour last time, but this time I struck him down in about ten minutes. Funny what a few years and a lot of experimentation with the junction system can do for you. Of course, this miraculous victory was also a product of hours of grinding to max out my strongest magics and earning enemy cards which I could refine into useful and/or rare items. But I totally broke it and now the game is mine to simply coast to the end of. Also, that’s exactly why I wanted to replay the game in the first place, so yeah. I’m awesome.