#so of course i also got to play a bunch of square enix games including KH

[ceasarslegion]

Just finished kingdom hearts 2 in my series replay and got such a vivid flashback of sitting cross legged on my bedroom floor as a little kid holding my ps2 controller and watching the credits roll on my CRT tv

[goombasa]

Thoughts on the Super Mario RPG Remake

So hey, guess what I got for Christmas?

Okay, so, to give a bit of context to this, the original Legend of the Seven Stars on the Super Nintendo is one of my favorite games of all time. I played it backwards and forward and I've probably played through it start to finish more than any other game on the SNES. I love the world it created, and felt like one of the first big proper expansions to Mario's universe, rather than just being an incidental new place where the game was taking place. I love the new characters we were introduced to, particularly Geno and Mallow, and I was always disappointed that we never saw them again. I mean, I get WHY we didn't, the game was made by Squaresoft pre-Enix merger, and as such, most, if not all of the game's original characters were the property of Square and not Nintendo.

Oh, and of course I love the fact that this would be the impetus for other Mario-themed RPGs down the line, including Paper Mario, its sequel, the Thousand-Year Door, and the Mario and Luigi series… not that either of those series are in particularly good shape these days. But this was the start of it all.

So imagine my surprise when Nintendo announced during the Nintendo Direct in June of 2023 that there was a remake of this game in the works for the Switch, AND that it was going to be released later that same year, just in time for the Holidays!

I never thought it was going to happen, but it was happening. One of my most favorite games of all time, was getting remade, from the ground up, and brought properly into the third edition! Holy crap! AND GENO AND MALLOW WERE COMING BACK, BABY!

But… the more that I thought about it, the more my excitement died down. How would the gameplay hold up? Were they going to change a bunch of stuff about the game? Would they add a bunch of superfluous fluff? Who was even making it? It wasn't made by Nintendo or Square-Enix, but by a third party called ArtePiazza, a studio that up until this game came along, I hadn't actually heard of before. I was worried, and that worry was only exacerbated by how much this game meant to me personally.

Thankfully, all my worry was for nothing. This is not only a very faithful remake that makes changes only in what I personally consider the right places, but also a reminder of how much these older games tended to be better about respecting a player's time.

And now I'm gonna talk about it all.

The Developer

As it turns out, ArtePiazza has a long history of working with Square Enix, and were actually the primary developer behind a lot of the remakes of classic Dragon Quest games, as well as the CG designs and scenario designs in others, so they definitely know what they're doing when it comes to RPG remakes. It's not really surprising that I hadn't heard of them before, as they were more a background studio that offered assistance rather than main development.

This isn't the first remake they've been responsible for, like I mentioned, and I definitely think they did a great job with it, but I kind of wish I knew a bit more about the studio as a whole now, but information on them is a little bit on the sparse side, aside from the list of projects they've worked on which mostly consists of the Dragon Quest series, and a small handful of other RPGs here and there.

The Story

Hokay, so, this is a Mario game, but it's an RPG. That basically means that you have a very typical RPG setup, and at no point does it feel like the game is treating itself very seriously. I say that as a positive, because the story is paper thin here, basically an excuse to have Mario and friends go all over the place in this weird and wonderful world that has been created here.

The story itself wasn't really changed at all from the original. It is as close to the original as possible while at the same time altering some of the weird mid-90's quirks of the script. Most of the changes are minor, like removing the Bruce Lee name drop just before the Bowyer fight, and a few of the names of certain characters and enemies were changed. The only one that I kind of wish they hadn't changed was Mack, the first commandert of Smithy's forces that you fight in the game. His name was changed to Claymorton in the remake, which does make sense, it's still a pun on his weapon of choice, but in the original, he was known as Mack. You know, as in Mack the Knife? Pun on the song? Because he's a sword, but still… kind of a knife?

Okay, I get why they changed it.

Point being, if you are a fan of the original, nothing here is going to ruin any sort of memories you have of the story, simple as it is. Whatever changes they made are negligible and it retains the same flow, and most of the sillier moments are preserved perfectly here in the remake.

The Characters

Like the story, there's not a huge amount of characterization here, so if you were expecting the remake to suddenly give more depth to anything here, you're going to be disappointed.

At the same time though, none of these characters really needed much in terms of depth. Their designs and personalities are more than enough to carry the game. The villains barely get much of an introduction in this game, simply showing up at designated points to be the antagonist for that particular chapter of the story, and yet every single one of them has such a striking design and an interesting personality (for the most part; the aforementioned Claymorton is about as generic as it gets, save for his design and pogo-sword gimmick) that I don't think ‘depth’ is every really an issue. Entertaining is probably the best way to describe the characters here. Even the most minor of characters manage to leave enough of an impression that you are never going to mistake one person for another as you journey across the Mushroom Kingdom here.

This is something that carries over beyond Smithy and his gang to the one-off minor villains you run into, like the fame-hungry Punchnello, the underwater pirate Johnny, and of course the completely detached from reality Booster and his Amusement Tower.

Also, you fight a sentient wedding cake at one point, and the ending to that fight is legitimately hilarious.

And then there are the playable characters. Mario is given more of a mischevious bent in this game, and I was really surprised to see that they kept in some of the less flattering moments for our hero. There's a point where Mario's ready to just deck a child in the face for basically saying he isn't as good as Geno. And there are the many moments where Mario, rather than just recapping past events to other characters will just mime his way through what's happened, basically playing every character at once, and it's fantastic. This was one of the first times in the series where Mario had a lot of character beyond just being a heroic jump man and I think it did a very good job at conveying that character.

Also, you can make Mario say some real mean things to people in this game and just be a dick, which doesn't really have any sort of consequence, as most of the ‘yes/no’ questions, you do have to eventually agree in order to progress, so there's generally no reason NOT to make Mario talk negatively at least once or twice, just to see the other character's reactions to him just flat out refusing to be a hero for once.

Princess Peach is how she always is. She spends the first good chunk of the game in her usual role as a damsel in distress, and even after she joins the party, she doesn't really get a chance to shine on her own. Mechanically she's one of the most important party members, but in terms of personality, she really doesn't stand out much once she joins your party. I kind of feel like she had more dialogue before she was rescued than after. It's not a terrible portrayal, but you can definitely tell that this was written during a time when Peach's role was mostly to be the damsel, and the fact that she was part of the main party was enough to celebrate, whereas steps have been taken in future games to give her a bit more personality, and to make her a more active element in the story. It's especially noticeable when you compare Peach to Bowser's portrayal.

Bowser is fantastic in this game. This was the first time Bowser was shown to be anything more than just a big, evil brute in the games. Back in 1996 this was pretty unprecedented, and it really made Bowser into the more endearing, well-loved semi-villain that he is today. Like, yeah, Bowser is evil, but at the same time, he's also a bit of a dork with self-confidence issues who thinks he's way smarter than he is, and it's just… it's just so great. It's to the point where, even in RPGs where he is the main villain, Bowser is just as much comedy relief as he is an antagonist. It's the same here. After defeating him early in the story and then slowly watching his forces dwindle down to nothing as he tries in vain to defeat smithy on his own, Bowser is just a delightful curmudgeon to have on the team… even if, in terms of mechanics, he was actually the character I ended up using the least throughout my playthrough.

But then there are the newcomers, Geno and Mallow. I love them both, from an aesthetic point of view. Mallow, being a little cloud creature does fit right into the Mario world without issue. Geno's a bit more unique looking, but his role as the guardian of the Star Road fits right in with the occasional character guarding a super powerful area or relic or long lost power source that seems to crop up, even in the regular platformers now and then. And as they aren't really Mario characters, at least not in terms of the main canon, the writers did have a bit more freedom with these two, though not a huge amount was done with that freedom. Geno is about as static as Mario, Bowser, and Peach, though he's certainly a talkative character. I never really got much of a vibe for his personality though, as much as I enjoyed his design. Mallow is unique amongst the main cast of the game in that he's really the only one of the five that has something resembling a character arc. Orphaned as a child, wanting to find his real parents, and learning to be more confident as a result. It's really simple, much like most other subplots in the game, what few there are, but it does give his character more agency in the plot beyond the shared goal of wanting to stop Smithy from taking over the world.

Speaking of Smithy, can I just say how much I love the idea behind him. He's an alien blacksmith who literally forges the enemies that you fight, making sentient weapons that are completely loyal to me. It's an intriguing idea for a villain and I kinda love it. It almost makes me a bit disappointed that he just exists to be a villain. We don't know anything about him, what he does, where he comes from, whether or not he's done this to other worlds and so forth; Like I said before, we don't really need all that stuff for this to be a great game and an enjoyable story, but the fact that I'm not disappointed and yet I'm still asking these questions about the villain does tell me that I think he's at least an interesting force, especially with how much he's built up over the course of the story before you finally confront him. He might be one of my favorite Mario villains just for his concept alone, and that extends to his minions, all of whom are based around various weapons, their names a pun on the weapon they're based on. It's great stuff.

What the characters lack in depth or complexity, they more than make up for by just being absolutely off-the-wall strange, and I am here for it.

The World

Exploring the world in this game is a pretty straightforward experience. Folks tell you where to go and what to do, and then you do it. You pretty much will never find yourself wondering what you're supposed to do next, and that's without the need of a waypoint or a radar or even anything to really remind you of what you should be doing, though the remake does give you a handy journal function to remind you of recent events and any interesting information that you've gleaned from talking to people.

While the original didn't have any journal or fast travel functions in it, moving around the map was fairly snappy (actually much snappier than in the remake) and the areas and dungeons were small enough that revisiting them for whatever reason never felt like much of a chore. However, adding in modern sensitibilities and accessibility options for the convenience of the player is something that I will always welcome, especially since they slowed down traveling on the map quite a bit for the remake.

But that's about the only thing that feels like it's been made slower. Mario no longer needs a button held down in order to run on the overworld, running is just his standard mode of movement in this remake, and his speed is a very happy medium between his walk and run speeds from the original, and it works perfectly for getting around quickly enough and avoiding enemy encounters, not that you'll really want to, as combat is really fun, but I'll get into that later. Platforming also feels better in this version as well. The original wasn't bad perse, but the sprite-based isometric layout of the game combined with the strange ascent and descent speed of the jump could make platforming a bit tricky. And yes, the game does have platforming, usually in optional mini-games

While the areas themselves are small and even somewhat linear in their layout, the isometric layout of everything does make exploring worthwhile, and of course there are always hidden treasure chests and enemies to keep a lookout for. There are even invisible treasure chests scattered all over the world, with a particular NPC in the game that will even tell you how many hidden treasures in the world you haven't found yet, how nice of them! You can find a bunch of stuff just by talking to the individuals and poking around in every nook and cranny, whether it's directions to a hidden treasure room in the forest maze, a challenge to hit a certain number of consecutive bounces using your jump attacks, or hitting a button in Booster Tower that opens up a completely new screen in the previous area. And that's to say nothing about the rush that you get when you grab an invincibility star and just plow through a ton of enemies in the overworld.

And you get Experience Points for it!

The Combat

The combat is fantastic, from all angles, and is probably the part of the game that was both the most heavily altered, and the the most improved in this remake. And make no mistake, it was already pretty solid to begin with. The timed hits mechanic, where you can push a button to either increase the strength of an attack or defend yourself against an incoming attack or spell and potentially eliminate all damages if your input is timed well enough.

However, the old game, for as good as it was, could be somewhat vague about what you could and could not block, and also what the timing was for certain attacks. It also limited you to only using three out of the five characters at a time and you couldn't change characters mid-fight. Also, Mario always has to be in your party, so party composition couldn't be super varied. The remake addresses most of these issues, and in pretty decent ways.

First off, if an attack is unblockable, it will say so in the corner when the attack name is announced. Then, whenever an attack is used against you, or you use an attack, an exclamation point will apear above the character's head, letting you know when you should be hitting the A button. While decent timing will get you a small bonus to damage or defense, if you perfectly time the button press you'll either completely eliminate any damage you take (defending) or you'll dish out extra damage AND cause a small shockwave that will cause a small amount of damage to all other enemies (attacking). It's a smart system, and encourages you to learn the tells for both your enemies and allies. to maximize your offense and defense.

Oh, and that exclamation point? It doesn't stick around all the time. After you've successfully gotten a few perfect hits and blocks, the indicator will stop appearing. However, if you start missing the timing frequently on the same attacks, it will come back to help coach you into properly hitting that sweet spot. Depending on your team composition, you'll also get bonuses to certain stats if you manage to keep a combo chain going of successful attack and defense. And speaking as such a big fan of the original, I actually needed that help getting the timing down. With the new 3D models, the animations are far smoother, and also a lot quicker too, leading to the timing feeling a lot trickier. This game also has a lot more attacks that can be blocked with a button press, and I'm not sure if they could always be blocked in the original, or if the timing was just that strange. To be fair, the timing on these particular magical attacks (Diamond Saw, Bolt, Storm), they're really tricky to get down, even with that helpful little indicator.

The ability to switch in party members from idle during battle is also more of a boon than I thought it would be. In the original game, you were stuck in combat with whatever characters you had in your party, and generally I never switched out specific party members, save for some very specific fights. I'd almost always go with Mario, Bowser, and Peach, and end up leaving Geno and Mallow behind. It isn't like the game ever forces you to use them again anyway. But in the remake, you can swap out a character without wasting their turn, something that becomes very useful for characters afflicted with status ailments or knocked out, or when you just want to experiment with other characters' abilities against certain foes.

And by far, the biggest quality of life improvement to the game's battle mechanics were with its special weapons. The system itself remains unchanged, you have a pool of flower points that is shared by all your characters that they use to utilize their special attacks. In the original game, these were, by a large, kind of useless, at least in my opinion. Apart from some specific fights, all I would use special attacks for was for Peach's healing abilities (which makes her super powerful in this game, she can basically keep everyone hale and hearty all on her own so long as you don't let her get KOed). It is true that plenty of enemies in the game have weaknesses to elemental attacks that party members have in their special attacks (Mario's fireballs, Mallow's thunderbolts and snowy powers, and so forth… also Mario's jump attacks count as their own element too), but there was very little indication about whether or not using a special attack on an enemy was actually affecting them any better than your regular attacks. Add in the fact that powering up the special attacks required more involved button inputs (pressing the D-pad in a clockwise rotation, rapidly pressing the attack button, holding it down and releasing it at a certain point, etc.) and sometimes I just wasn't sure if I was even using them right.

The remake on the other hand, gives you plenty of ways to know just what would be best to use against your enemies. First, when you use Mallow's Thought Peek ability (Psychopass in the original game), you not only get the enemy's remaining HP total, but also a list of everything they're weak against, including status ailments as well, which can also encourage you to use all those items and spells that inflict statuses on your enemies rather than just having those collect dust. When you use an attack that hits an enemy's weakness, or a resistance, it will TELL you that, letting you know that, yes, you are doing something right. And those special attack inputs I mentioned before? The game gives you a visual cue that not only makes it very clear what you're supposed to do, but gives you visual feedback on how well you performed the action, so you're always sure exactly how well you're performing them.

I don't want to say that the original was terrible in this aspect, but the original never really made special attacks feel like a necessary piece of the puzzle beyond healing abilities, and some early game fights that benefited from Mallow's screen-hitting attacks. It was balanced in such a way that using your regular attacks was still perfectly optimal. In the remake, not only was I more often switching out party members to change up my strategies during fights, but I was using special attacks a heck of a lot more often because I could be sure that it was something that would be effective this time around, which in turn made both Mallow and Geno feel much more helpful overall. This is actually the reason why I ended up using Bowser much less than I did on the SNES version, as he is a useful tank, but I found Geno's status as a glass canon and Mallow's ability to cover and reveal multiple weaknesses to be a lot more useful compared to Bowser's interesting but underutilized ability to inflict a lot of status ailments. Combat just doesn't last long enough to make status ailments useful to use.

I would even go as far as to say combat overall feels much faster  than the original. Not that it was slow before, but the animations just feel much snappier and more fluid and the lack of really needing to think too hard about what you're doing from turn to turn means that most regular fights are going to be over within three turns. The game's balance is just perfect in this regard, especially if you're new to RPGs. Speaking of which…

Breezy Mode

Look, the original Mario RPG was not hard. At all. And that was by design. It was built to be an RPG for people who didn't play RPGs but were familiar with Mario as a series. Combat was simple, the numbers were kept small, the level cap was very low, and the timed hit button presses kept people engaged and alert during combat, rather than just encouraging them to mash the attack button the whole time to get through the fights quicker. You're never confused on where to go, the few puzzles the game throws at you are very easy to figure out and dungeons are relatively small, quick affairs with only the occasional gimmick to spice up a boss fight here and there, such as Bowyer's ability to lock down a button.

I've gone on record in this post saying that accessibility options are a good thing, and I mean that. More options and more difficulty settings will always be a good thing, and there, it is no different. I just personally find it funny when a game that is already built to be easy and accessible goes even further and gives you an option to make the game even easier. It's a good thing, to be sure, and it's especially helpful for those struggling with the timed button presses. Heck, if that was all this mode did, it would have been a perfect accessibility option in general, but it also decreases the EXP needed to level up, and decreases the overall battle difficulty, lowers the HP for all enemies and bosses while still keeping the story the same. They took an introductory RPG and made it even easier to get into for anyone who is even remotely curious about the genre, and with how many RPG series are transitioning into more active combat systems and leaving the old turn based systems behind, I think this is a great way to introduce the concept of how these older RPGs functioned to people who just didn't grow up with this era of games.

The Post-Game

So, this is basically the biggest thing that was added to the game. As faithful as the remake is, one thing I'm very glad to see being added is a little bit of post-game content. There's not a lot of it, but it is there, and I felt compelled to talk about it.

The original game had no post-game. At all. In fact, there wasn't even anything after the credits, which was the style at the time. Games would usually just end, and stay on their THE END screen until you reset or turned off the console. Here though, after beating the main story, you unlock a brand new questline that will take you back to past locations to rebattle harder versions of bosses you fought during the main story, like Booster, Punchnello, and Johnny, and these fights do something very interesting: they really dial up the gimmicks. I mentioned before that gimmick fights weren't really all that prevalent in the main game. I mentioned Bowyer, but off the top of my head, there are also the two fights against Belome where he'll either eat one of your party members (the first fight) or clone your party members to fight alongside him (the second fight), and the second phase in Johnny's fight which turns into a one-on-one duel with Mario. However, each of these extra fights dials up the gimmickery quite a bit, to the point where they can feel somewhat like puzzle fights, as each one has to be fought in a very particular way.

You fight Booster, and if you let him finish his work, he'll drive a train into your body, dealing max damage to everyone on screen, basically guaranteeing a party wipe if you don't interrupt him and take out the snifsters, who are going to be encouraging him the whole time. You fight Jinx, who will instantly KO a party member if you fail to land a properly timed attack. You fight Punchnello, who has built up his defenses so high that the only way he can be hurt is by turning his bombs around towards him. There's even a rematch with Johnny that is once again a one-on-one with Mario, but this time you can't even use items, meaning that surviving the fight is going to be down to learning how to defend properly against all of Johnny's attacks. All of them CAN be blocked, but he has some pretty annoying timing for all of his attacks.

This all culminates in a rematch with the game's hidden superboss, a Final Fantasy inspired villain known as Culex. You fight him in his original 2D form during the story if you find the key to his door, but during the rematch, he has achieved a perfect 3D form, and man oh man, is he a challenge, well worth it if you're craving something that's actually pretty difficult in a game meant to be more welcoming to new players.

What I like about these fights is that they are essentially tests to see how well you've mastered the game's timed hit mechanics, and it makes you feel good for properly mastering them. Even if you're at or near max level (which is pretty easy to do in even a casual playthrough), these bosses will challenge you. You even get some new equipment for each of the extra bosses, usually super-powerful golden weapons for party members that didn't really have an ‘ultimate’ weapon the way that Mario and Peach did (the Lazy Shell and the Frying Pan respectively). You don't really have a reason to use these weapons since at this point you've basically done everything else in the game at this point, but the fact that there is a tengible reward for doing this post game stuff is always fun. And your ultimate reward for beating all the extra bosses and then defeating Culex? You gain the ability to fight Culex as much as you want, and see how fast you can beat them. It's not the greatest reward, but the fact that the developers went out of their way to include something to do after the credits roll in a game that initially just ended after that? I think that's really cool, especially considering just how much tougher these fights are compared to everything else in the game. It's just nice to see something that challenges you and your knowledge of the game's mechanics beyond what is usually required during a basic playthrough.

The Future

If I haven't made it clear at this point, this is a fantastic game. The original is a fantastic game, and it isn't often that I find a remake that can stand toe to toe toe to toe with the original, and while there are differences between the two, they mostly balance each other out. Both can be played and enjoyed easily, and while the remake does have a lot of very helpful quality of life improvements, the original version's more deliberate timing with its more limited animations still makes it very fun to play, it's just a different feeling.

I hope this game continues to sell well, and my biggest wish is that this means that the future for classic style RPGs will continue to be strong, or maybe we'll see some more new Mario RPGs that are quick, snappy and simple like this one, rather than these strange pseudo-RPGs that the Paper Mario series has turned into, or the drawn out, boring slogs that the Mario and Luigi games became.

But between this remake, and the upcoming remake of The Thousand Year Door that's supposed to be coming out some time this year, I have hopes that Nintendo is using these to guage interest for another original Mario RPG game.

I'm also hopeful that we might be seeing Geno and Mallow in games beyond the one they originated from. I'm not going to pretend that I know the details of whatever agreement Nintendo and Square Enix reached to make this remake a reality, but I'm hoping there was enough wiggle room for Nintendo to actually do something with the characters and concepts contained therein. At the very least, maybe Mallow and Geno will be able to appear in games outside of their origin in a form that's a bit more than just a glorified PNG, or a little background element cameo. Again, because I don't know the details of the agreement between Square and Nintendo for these characters, I can't be sure if this is just really wishful thinking on my part (game publishers are notoriously controlling over the IP that they own, with Nintendo being cited as the biggest example when it comes to their characters), but hey, I never thought we'd ever get a remake of this game, let alone one as polished and fun as this.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this post, it ended up a lot longer than I actually meant it to be, I just couldn't help myself and needed to gush as much as possible about a remake of a game that I have held dear to my heart since childhood, and I hope that this is a sign of more RPGs of this nature from Nintendo, or featuring Nintendo characters.

Who knows, with all of these remakes, remasters, re-releases, and smaller scope games that are coming out for the Switch as of late, this might be the year that we get some ideas about what Nintendo's next console is going to be, and what sort of games might be on it. That might be something to talk about down the line.

[yeonchi]

Obscure Gems - Kingdom of Paradise

Aside from Dynasty Warriors, there was another game that influenced my childhood years. Americans may know it as Kingdom of Paradise, Europeans may know it as Key of Heaven, and Asians may know it as Tenchi no Mon (天地の門/天地之門).

This is a pretty old game as it was originally released in July 2005 with a sequel being released in October 2006. While the first game received a localisation, the second one, sadly, did not. As a result, while I have played both games, I have a better understanding of the first one than the second (despite me being able to extract the game’s texts from within the ISO, don’t ask how I managed to do it).

I remember when my family bought a PSP and my uncle had it downgraded (upgrading would have been better if you look at it from a present-day perspective) so we could play games from the Memory Stick. This, along with the first Dynasty Warriors PSP game, Lumines and Ape Escape On The Loose, were some of the first games that we got thanks to my uncle. I remember my dad was so obsessed with this game (and Lumines, besides not letting me play on it because school) that he would end up hogging it because he had to defeat the bosses, which were, in his eyes, hard to defeat. I did make another save for myself and after initially giving up when my first boss was too hard to fight, I eventually managed to clear the game altogether. Looking at gameplay videos of it now, I noticed that fighting the bosses was easier than I had thought, or maybe it’s because they got gud.

About the developers

This game was created by Climax Entertainment, who were also famous for the Runabout series, Steal Princess, Dinosaur King and Element Hunters. Sorry, who were those guys again? Oh wait, they’re a bunch of nobodies in today’s words.

Climax Entertainment was founded in April 1990, developing games for Sega consoles. In 1994, some members split and joined with former members of Telenet Japan to form Matrix Software, known for joining with other companies to create games, such as Square Enix for the Final Fantasy series.

Sadly, Climax Entertainment never grew significantly and they eventually fell off the grid by 2015. Apparently, by following an archived page from a source on their Wikipedia page, it was because the company went bankrupt. Oh well, let’s move on.

The game itself

The game is set on a fictitious feudal Chinese-inspired continent named Ouka, which is split into five territories ruled by each of the five clans, namely the Eastern Seiryu, Northern Genbu, Western Byakko, Southern Suzaku and Central Kirin. The main character is Shinbu, a former Seiryu disciple and aspiring swordsmaster who was expelled from his clan after learning their Chi Arts before his master thought he was ready. When Sui Lin, another Seiryu disciple, manages to escape from their temple after it was (apparently) ransacked by the Central Kirin, she encounters Shinbu and tells him that his master was killed and that they need to rebuild their clan. Upon hearing of this, Shinbu’s adoptive father, Seidatsu, gives him the Ginmei Sword, which originally belonged to his father, and the first piece of the San’yuan that he was obsessed with reviving. From there, he sets off on an adventure around Ouka and discovers secrets about the clans and his family.

As you journey around Ouka, you can fight enemies and monsters along the way. Using the Ginmei Sword, you can unleash various types of bugei, made by equipping kenpu into bugei scrolls, or create your own bugei with the freestyle scrolls you can collect. Additionally, you can use the Chi Arts and unleash attacks that can clear enemies in one hit (you’ll have to spam it sooner or later). Enemies have a stronger or weaker resistance to a certain clan’s kenpu or Chi Arts based on the five Wuxing phases. While you can overcome enemies that way, you can also chain kenpu together in a generating cycle to deal more damage. You can learn all five clans’ Chi Arts as you play the game, though the caveat is that you learn the final one just before you fight the final boss, so the time you spend mastering it before you fight the final boss just seems very protracted, particularly if you’re at the maximum level by that point.

The background context of the game’s story arcs revolves around the Seima-Ouka Great War, which occurred 300 years prior to the start of the game. Invaders from the neighbouring continent of Seima came to Ouka and waged war with the five clans, but they were defeated. While there were some that managed to escape with the army, some of Seimans surrendered and remained on Ouka, where they suffered discrimination following the war. Their currency, the taichi, was widely used there as a result. The San’yuan had been burned during the war because the Seima feared its power.

Looking at the English and Chinese scripts, I could spot some differences between them and personally, I prefer the Chinese script better as it is closer to the original Japanese script. Alone, both scripts are good, but after having seen both versions, some parts of the English script doesn’t make sense in review.

Some of the mysteries of the game are basically explained in one line without deeper context. Certain characters aren’t as prominent as you may think they are. In the end, after you defeat the final boss, you get an opportunity to play the game again with the True San’yuan bugei, harder enemies and a carryover of the Chi Arts you learnt. There was a rumour on 2ch about another bugei you could get after clearing the game five times, but that, of course, is fake news.

About the sequel

The sequel takes place 25 years after the events of the first game and is set on the continent of Seima, the instigator of the Great War. Its capital is named Seimabolm and is split into three districts based on caste. Translating the names in the game is going to be an absolute nightmare because it was never localised to the West, but I’ll do whatever I can. If you want to see gameplays of this game, you’ll have to find them on Nico Nico Douga or Bilibili (for the Chinese version).

The main character is Liju Roh, a glorified military officer who went missing for a year when he was 5 years old and came back with no memory of what happened during that year. At the start of the game, he was accused of attempting to assassinate their empress and sentenced to execution by Gikyo Altai alongside another female, Maltamil Chiena. Suddenly, Altai’s sister, Shunka, jumps down to defend Roh and they manage to escape to the third district along with Chiena. As a result, they are forced to work as mercenaries in Chiena’s agency in order to hide from the imperial troops. Roh’s mission is to fulfil his late father’s request to stop Ejen Zern, a man who Roh saw as a brother, from performing the Great Judgement a second time; the first time it happened, a big fireball hit Seima and halved the population, cutting the island into the shape of a crescent moon and creating the Banko Sea.

In this game, you can have a companion travelling with you (usually Shunka for most of the game). As Roh, you can use three weapons, a sword, a spear, or gauntlets, and set kenpu and bugei accordingly. Some kenpu are performed slowly while others are performed quickly, which can cause gaps in your fighting. Other companions you travel with can use only one of those weapons, while Shunka fights with spirit discs and spirit dancing. Yes, spirit dancing, and that’s a plot point in the game. I find the dancing movesets ineffective when fighting enemies, but there are missions where you will need to use Shunka to perform a dance.

Unlike the first game where the story advances as you travel, the story in this game advances after you complete a number of missions from the agency. These include defeating enemies and monsters, buying or collecting things or even writing messages on noticeboards. Some missions are a pain to complete, such as with the collecting missions where you need to harvest a certain part from a machine or animal and they don’t instantly drop it upon defeat. As a result, it would take you forever to collect the amount required so you can complete the mission. There are also small flying drones that you can fight in underground tunnels and they are a bit hard to fight if your kenpu doesn’t make you swing your sword or spear up or down.

The travelling companions in the game (including the ones that appear after you’ve cleared the game) have significant relevance to the story, except for a drunkard monk named Sutta Monda who becomes your companion after you complete a mission that involves fighting him outside the agency for being drunk.

After you clear the game, you can just do missions ad infinitum, whereas in the previous game, you could play the game again and again. At least replaying old storylines or sparring with your companions could have been additional options.

If you haven’t noticed this by now, Shinbu or anyone else in the first game is not featured, though there are homages scattered in the script. One particular homage is that Seima is apparently planning a second invasion of Ouka, but Roh believes that stopping the Great Judgement is more important than stopping the former.

Summary

For its time, Kingdom of Paradise is an amazing game, whether it be the battle mechanics, the graphics or the story, though for the story, I prefer the first one better because I can understand it better after much analysis (which was also helped by that game being localised). While the second game does have its good points, it’s a bit more complicated than the first game and the missions can seem a bit of a drag to do.

Some people would probably say that the two games have potential to be expanded upon and I would say that I agree, though instead of expanding the games’ universe, I adapted it into my universe for my personal project. I adapted the first game into two 15-episode arcs, then after struggling to decide whether or not to do it, adapted some parts of the second game into a two-parter. I’ll elaborate on my adaptation at a later date.

Sadly though, Climax Entertainment is dead and the games never left much of a legacy to be admired. The only way its legacy can stay alive is within the hearts of the people who played those games, particularly the people who were inspired by it.

[ignis-scientia-estrogen-brigade]

~ISEB in Japan: A Photo Journal~

If you’ve been following me on Twitter lately, you’ll know that I’ve been traveling through parts of Japan the last couple of weeks with my Ignis Play Arts Kai figure in tow. I posted a few pictures over there during the duration of my trip, but those barely scratched the surface of everything I got to do while in Japan. So I thought I’d put together a blog post of my journey while it was still fresh in my mind, featuring everyone’s favorite strategist in what I’ve been dubbing my Great Final Fantasy XV Adventure of 2019!

[Image-heavy content + commentary under the cut]

A brief backstory: I’ve wanted to go to Japan my entire adult life. For years, I’ve watched friends make the trek while I’ve been stuck at home with a severe case of FOMO. The only thing that ever stopped me from going was money (or a lack thereof), so I made the decision last summer to buckle down and sock away every dime I made to make it happen. My only concern before hopping on the plane was that I had missed the wave of FFXV popularity by about a year, but I would quickly learn that—other than not getting to eat any of Ignis’ recipes at the Square Enix Cafe—I had little to worry about.

Literally the only reason I brought my Play Arts Kai figure was so I could take this picture of Ignis at the Citadel (a.k.a. the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building), which was the very first place I stopped at on my first full day in Tokyo. The building + the surrounding plaza, while not 100% accurate, is a fairly impressive facsimile of the one in the game. It’s located in Shinjuku, which also boasts a lot of similarities to Insomnia. Having finished Episode Ardyn mere hours before jetting off on my trip, it felt like I had stepped off the plane and right into the game!

There just so happened to be an Animate right near the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, so I popped in to get a feel for what kind of FFXV merch I’d be able to find two years after the game’s release and a year after its height of popularity. Turns out, there was quite a lot of swag to be found! Truth be told, I’ve never been one to chase down official merchandise (unfortunately my job doesn’t really afford that luxury), but I gave myself special permission while on vacation to buy anything I wanted. So I did! Including everything you see above. ^^;;

The next thing I did was take the train to Ginza to meet Lyle/@landscape-gonna  (@landscape_gonna on Twitter), and I simply cannot say enough nice things about her. If you don’t know who she is, there’s a 99.9% chance you’ve seen at least one of her Ignis costumes, and they are A. M. A. Z. I. N. G. We had chatted a bit previously on Twitter before I went full-on stan mode, asking her if she'd be willing to meet up with me (a total stranger) to have lunch and talk Ignis and Final Fantasy. Not only did she say yes, but she gifted me with copies of her incredible cosplay zines and was not the least embarrassed when I busted out my Play Kai Arts figure in the middle of a busy Japanese dessert restaurant haha.

See? Zero embarrassment here.

We even did Noct’s ultimate pose! In public!

I can’t begin to articulate how special meeting Lyle was for me—being brought together from opposite sides of the world to share in our love for Ignis/FFXV is a memory I will cherish my entire life. So Lyle, if you are reading this: どうもありがとうございます ! ٩( ᐛ )( ᐖ )۶

Lyle wasn't the only friend I had in Japan. Another friend of mine, Asuka (who happens to be well-versed in anime/video game culture), volunteered to be my guide through Ikebukuro/Otome Road the next day. Quick otaku lesson: Kbooks is a chain of stores that specializes in the resale of licensed merchandise. For example, if you missed out on some of the limited availability items from the Movic and the Square Enix Cafe collaborations, you might be able to find them at a Kbooks. Otome Road in particular has something like seven different Kbook shops in a 3-block radius, each one specializing in different products (sports anime, idols, cosplay, etc). I, of course, beelined for the video game shop...

...which is where I found this fucking thing:

I’m not gonna lie, I almost bought it. I just didn’t know what I would do with it besides scare the living daylights out of people when they least expected it lol.

Yoooo Adam I found ya boi in Ikebukuro

We popped into the cosplay Kbooks shop since it was right across the street and I found an Ignis costume for sale! Please enjoy this picture of me pretending to come up with a new recipeh (since this is likely the closest I’ll ever come to cosplaying as Ignis).

One of the things Asuka introduced me to was Hanami (picnic under the cherry blossoms, basically). I had timed my trip to coincide with the blooming of the sakura, and the experience of being in Japan during that time was indescribable. I took a bajillion pictures of the sakura while I was there and unfortunately none of my photos ever quite captured the beauty and magic of them in person, but here’s a lil’ pic of a tree in bloom at Yoyogi Park (with the Movic Ignis charm I bought at Kbooks earlier that day).

Another item on my Japan checklist was to stay at a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) in Hakone, a town famous for its onsen/hot springs. Nothing in Hakone is cheap (at least, not during peak sakura season), and I had spent an absurd amount of money on a night at one particular ryokan with a private bath (shy husband haha). The private bath could only be reserved in 30-minute increments, and by the time we finally rolled into Hakone the bath we wanted only had one slot available for the rest of the night. So what did I do?

If you said, “Waste the first 15 minutes of your 30-minute, super-expensive onsen experience taking the perfect Ignis-in-a-hot-springs photo” then you would be absolutely correct lol.

I actually wasn’t planning on taking a bunch of photos of my Ignis figure on this trip, but after my husband tucked Ignis into my futon while I was in the bathroom, documenting my trip vicariously through Ignis ended up taking on a life of its own. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I popped back over to Tokyo after my stay in Hakone, which is when I finally got to make the Great Nerd Pilgrimage™ to the Square Enix Cafe! Had the FFXV collab been going on while I was there, I might’ve forked over the cash to eat at the cafe, but I opted to skip out on lunch so I could spend more money in their shop. They still had a small collection of FFXV merch...

...including this acrylic Ignis stand that I wanted but thought I would never own after failing to find it at Kbooks earlier in the week. Huzzah!

Also, I just feel the need to let everyone know that this is what the outside of the Square Enix Cafe in Tokyo looks like lmao.

Our next stop was Kyoto, which we arrived in on Gladio’s birthday (April 2nd). Unfortunately I didn’t have time to draw anything for his b-day, but we did stop for a Nissin Cup Noodle in honor of Gladio!

One of the most memorable moments of my trip was when this boating incident happened, and it requires a little bit of backstory. On my first full day in Kyoto, I attempted to field two of the most popular tourist destinations in Kyoto: the bamboo forest in Arashiyama, and the Fushimi Inari Shrine. Both places have their beauty and historical significance, and I suspect during the off-season are inspiring sites to behold. In my case, both places were absolutely swarming with tourists, which really put a damper on my enjoyment of them. Defeated, I followed a local canal back toward my hotel, which is where I spotted a miniature boat enthusiast controlling a boat that looked eerily similar to the Royal Vessel. I pulled my Ignis figure out with the intention of simply taking a photo of the boat in the background; when the man saw me holding my figure and fumbling with my phone, he flagged me over and gestured for me to put Ignis in the boat. I wish I had documented how it all went down a little better, but as I was literally wheezing with laughter, the above was the best I could capture.

One of the more off-the-cuff decision I made was to dress in kimono for a day while in Gion (Kyoto). As the cherry blossoms were at their height during my stay there, you couldn’t sneeze without hitting someone who was dressed traditionally for the numerous festivals that were taking place throughout the city. As a white foreigner, I initially had reservations about wearing a kimono (for fear of cultural appropriation), but I did everything I could to be as respectful and reverent whilst wearing the garb (and the rental shop was certainly happy for the patronage). It was an amazing experience and I would definitely do it again!

Speaking of being respectful, I made it a point not to take pictures of Ignis while visiting any shrines (because nothing screams ‘douchey American’ quite like whipping out an action figure on sacred grounds), hence why I don’t have pictures of any of the major shrines we visited in this post. I did, however, spot this miniature shrine arch in an alleyway, and thought it would be okay for my equally miniature strategist to pay his respects.

Literally, a tiny shrine in an alleyway. I suppose even alleys have their deities!

Osaka is about 20 minutes away from Kyoto by train, and since I had already traveled all the way out to Kyoto, I went the extra few miles to stop by the Square Enix Cafe in Osaka. They actually had a smaller selection of FFXV merch than the one in Tokyo and I didn’t end up buying anything, but I would’ve never stopped wondering if I had missed out on something if I hadn’t gone and seen it for myself!

My last day in Kyoto was a week into my trip, and I still had five days left to go. After walking ~10 miles every day (no joke, I have the GPS screenshots to prove it!), I was really starting to feel the grind. I’m sure Ignis was also desperate for an Ebony after being lugged around in the bottom of my purse for a week lol.

Back on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo!

Weeeeeee (ﾉ^ヮ^)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

Said hi to Fuji-san!

Stopped for a delicious matcha parfait! (Shout-out to my husband who never once got annoyed with me whenever I busted out my figure in public spaces lol)

This was without a doubt the craziest and most unexpected find of any of my merch runs. I had gone to the video game Kbooks in Ikebukuro earlier in the week and had sifted through all their Ignis merch with a fine-toothed comb. This particular Movic charm was one I had been on the lookout for, but it was a rare pull even when they were readily available a year ago, and the only Ignis charm I came across in my first trip to Kbooks was the normal Ignis one (see my Hanami pic). I had no real reason to return to Ikebukuro after I got back from Kyoto, but on a whim I went one last time and BAM—this guy was hanging out there in his lil’ baggie, just waiting for me to get my grubby little hands on him. Jackpot!

All in all, I spent way too much money and I couldn’t be happier for it. The only thing I couldn’t find for the life of me was the Ignis cologne by Movic, but after searching through several Animates and Kbooks, I began to suspect it might be an online-exclusive item that wasn’t available in stores. (Which was probably a good thing for me cause I was already stretching my budget to the limit by this point haha.)

On my last night in Japan, I went back to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building—only this time I went at night when it was all lit up! I also went up to the observation deck on the 45th floor (something I didn’t know you could do the first time I was there) and enjoyed a fantastic view of nighttime Insomnia Tokyo. It was the perfect bookend to a perfect trip, and my heart is absolutely overflowing right now with love for both Japan and Final Fantasy XV!

[nadziejastar]

What’s the relationship with Disney like? Disney’s attitude to games has changed in recent years to become focused on mobile and social games. Have you noticed their attitude change much?

The relationship with Disney has [remained] the same. Actually the contact person at Disney is still the same person from Kingdom Hearts 1, and Disney has given us lots of requests in terms of the Kingdom Hearts franchise and they did mention some smaller titles for other platforms, but our common, most important goal was to [complete] Kingdom Hearts 3. So it’s the same.

Oh, for sure. I get sad when I see Nomura’s old interviews. The above quote is from June 2013. He was so much more upbeat. KH3 actually had a plot back then, too. Sora would look for the ‘Key to Return Hearts’.  

Disney has changed tremendously since 2006. Obviously Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, totally different style of animation. How your relationship with Disney and its properties evolved over the past 10 years or so in the context of Kingdom Hearts? Tetsuya Nomura: I can say that it has actually been increasingly difficult to get approvals from Disney. That's mainly because in the past Kingdom Hearts titles, the creator wasn't around anymore or the team that used to create those titles wasn't there anymore. There was just this one person that we would just have to go to and they would approve it and we'd be fine and good to go. But because we've been featuring recent titles, they still have existing teams for existing creators that are still working in Disney and still working on a certain title. That feedback process just has been a little bit more difficult than before. And each team would have a different set of rules and guidelines and they would say different things, or they would look at different things. It's just been a little different that how it used to be because Kingdom Hearts is a bigger title than it was before. I think that whenever we would bring our previous titles, a lot of people at Disney, and this is my assumption, but I do assume that they probably didn't know what Kingdom Hearts was. They'd go, "What's Kingdom Hearts? I have no idea." But now that it's become a bigger title, a lot more people have been involved in than before. In that sense the relationship with Disney has changed quite a bit. Emotional changes I don't really know if there has been any changes emotionally for me. But at least physically I can say those were the changes that we had with Disney.

After Versus XIII got cancelled, he became a lot more negative in his interviews. This is from June 2018. Five years later. Around the same time as Versus XIII, BBSV2 got cancelled. And also his relationship with Disney changed. So in a way, even KH3 was kinda taken from him, like Versus XIII was. Nomura was trying to dodge the subject of his emotional changes toward the KH series, but there obviously were some.

You've grown up as a person and as a designer alongside the players and it's been so long since the last Kingdom Hearts was released. How has your perspective on making the game changed over time? Do you still have that passion for it? Or is it just like you feel more of a responsibility to people to make it and end it?

I'm getting older now, so my body really can't take all that difficulty anymore. When I was younger I was definitely more aggressive and I was the one pulling everyone forward, but now there's a lot more energetic staff around me who are more aggressive, so I feel like I'm more like a sage now. Like I'm in the sidelines just telling people what to do. The Kingdom Hearts series has become a huge title nowadays and back then it was more like I was making it secretively in the corner, but now that a lot more people are involved I do feel that it's not my title anymore, it's everyone's title. And just talking about all this … It actually kind of makes me really sad.

This is another interview from June 2018. He said that with all the people involved, KH3 wasn’t really his title anymore and it made him really sad. At this year’s E3, Kitase said that the FF7 Remake was the first game in a long time that Nomura has been really heavily involved with. So, it sounds like Nomura wasn’t as heavily involved with KH3 as he was with past KH games.

Kingdom Hearts means a lot of things to a lot of people. For some, it represents their childhood or it's a story about friendship. What does Kingdom Hearts mean for you?

It's probably the title that represents who I am. When I was a starting as a developer, like I wasn't an industry veteran yet, when I was creating Final Fantasy titles with Mr. Sakaguchi, the father of Final Fantasy, and at that time, he said that Final Fantasy is a game that has everything in it. I don't think that there are that many people left in Square Enix that have actually worked with him on Final Fantasy. Of course, Final Fantasy is still continuing on--they still are committing to push out titles. But when I started creating Kingdom Hearts, that was when I kind of had this time away from Final Fantasy. And of course, I am working on a Final Fantasy title right now, but it was at a time when I was not working on a Final Fantasy title, and I really wanted to realize what Sakaguchi-san said about Final Fantasy, that it is a game that incorporates everything, to Kingdom Hearts. So I brought that idea to Kingdom Hearts. Currently looking at the newer Final Fantasy titles, to be honest, I don't think it really incorporates that idea of having everything. So I think that Kingdom Hearts, to me, is a game that has everything in it.

Nomura actually said that Versus XIII was more of his preference than KH. He enjoyed working on it because it was a break from the super happy, always positive KH universe. 

Nomura: "Kingdom Hearts is not too realistic, but I do want my players to grasp a sense of reality from it as well. For example, I'm sure you had friends when you were young, a good group of friends, but as you grow older things change and it doesn't always stay the same." 

And I think that’s why Lea is (was?) my favorite KH character. Versus XIII was a “fantasy based on reality”. I got the sense that Nomura used Lea/Axel to inject a lot of himself and his preference for realism into KH, since he was so different from other KH characters. He was an adult with a dark backstory. He and his best friend were human lab rats. His best friend later became a sociopath and is possessed. But he longs for the times when they were innocent and happy. Axel was very complicated. I DID get that sense of realism Nomura wanted to convey in his character. That’s why I loved him so much. There was such genuineness in his dialogue.

But I think what Nomura was doing with him and Saïx was so subtle it went over most people’s heads and they couldn’t appreciate it. It sucks because the subtlety made it even better. He basically lived inside the world of his memories. But he hid all of that from everyone (even the player) by smiling. Because he knew happy-go-lucky kids like Roxas and Xion wouldn’t be able to understand him. He was the most realistic and human character for me. He had a dark backstory, but he was still charming, intelligent, and funny. He had many layers. It was devastating to see him get dumbed-down and turned into a caricature of himself in KH3. Flat comic relief whose dark backstory was totally stripped from him. Just like that...poof. Gone. Now it’s all about Retcon X.

October 2014

“If I had to pick, I am a person more on the dark side like Xehanort and co., I harness the burning anger in my heart into what I create,” “Kingdom Hearts 3 current development explodes very much in this sense.”

When I first saw this quote, I had no idea what Nomura meant by channeling his anger into KH3. After playing KH3, I finally understood. That’s why there was so much breaking the fourth wall. Axel was Nomura’s mouthpiece. He was basically acknowledging that the story was crap, like during the scene where he reunited with Ventus and was commenting about how stupid the whole situation was. That B.S. ending? The result of Nomura’s depression. Things aren’t the same anymore. They’ve changed. The whole game just felt like it was phoned in. Nobody who actually cared about the story would do what they did with Kairi and also Lea and Isa’s backstory. KH3 was just so depressing for me because of that. Reading Nomura’s interviews just made it sadder.

2018 Famitsu interview

Tetsuya Nomura's cats were included. He speaks of how his cats cheered him up when he was depressed and how they inspire his work on Kingdom Hearts 3. -The reason he got these cats: Our family really loved cats and dogs, so we always had them in the house. For this reason, when I got a little depressed I was recommended to get cats.

I was really looking forward to Versus XIII when it was announced. Everything about it just sounded so cool. The story was supposed to be the saddest FF, but it would still have fun and humor in it. It was going to be like a road-trip. Noctis’s family was involved in organized crime, like the Yakuza. I still remember the tagline that was a quote from Hamlet. “For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Nomura said Noctis wasn’t going to be super serious like Squall. He was shy and awkward. Somnus is still an awesome song. The Noctis in the above picture just felt totally different from the Noctis in FFXV. They give off a completely different vibe. 

After I beat KH3, I was so disappointed with it, I started looking for a bunch of info on Versus XIII, since that game’s cancellation obviously influenced KH3 so much. I have seen a lot of stuff from people who claim to have leaked info about Versus XIII. I find this particular leak to be credible since the person correctly leaked the plot of FFXV six months in advance:

The game centered about death, ghosts and hallucination/dreams. Noctis killed the female protagonist before the game started but he didn't remember. Ardyn was Noctis ancestor and he was responsible of the crystals disappearing over time (the only one left was Lucis crystal). Regis died in front of Noctis because his bodyguards betrayed him. The protagonists had to leave the capital because their nation lost the war.

The game didn't focus on summons that much (they still existed) and instead there were actual gods which didn't appear physically. One of the gods was the main antagonist of the first FF game. Each nation was inspired by a different capital of the world. The empire was using ghosts as weapons. Ravus wanted to kill Noctis for having killed her sister. The game ended in another dimension which was supposed to be their version of the after-life.

This sounds a lot like what Nomura would do with a story, and is consistent with the info and trailers about Versus. I think I remember one where people were being turned into ghosts/monsters. The goddess Etro was supposed to be worshiped in Lucis. And I remember one of the things that interested me most about Versus XIII was that Noctis was able to see some light in the sky that others couldn’t, and it was due to having had a near-death experience as a child. That sounded SO cool.

I can believe the whole Stella being a ghost thing, because Tabata said they had to create Luna because Stella just wouldn’t make sense in the new story. The dreams/hallucinations part sounds cool to me, but is probably thought of as being “too weird” for a mainstream game. Also, the fact that the game ended in the after-life stood out for me. KH3 already had something similar with the Realm of Sleep. But they tried to connect it more with the after-life, even though Nomura previously said there was “no concept of death” in KH. This made me think he was still hung up on Versus while making The Final World. 

I definitely think that the original Versus XIII would have been a much more interesting game, since Nomura was SO passionate about it. The script was finished, too. It was jsut scrapped. The voice actor of Noctis, Suzuki Tatsuhisa, mentioned during the release date live stream that he still has the Versus scripts at home that he reads on his days off. And he said he couldn’t figure out how to move from the Versus Noctis to XV Noctis and struggled to find middle ground. 

He said he had a hard time getting into the character towards the end of the game, so he had to re-do his lines from the middle of the story again a few times to get it right. The fact that he still reads the Versus scripts tells me that he was really disappointed when Versus became XV. It sounds like he enjoyed what Nomura/Nojima wrote a LOT more and had a hard time masking his displeasure.

I stand behind what Sakaguchi said about big budget games development: it’s not worth it anymore. But they are also very disorganized. The staff -200 souls- had to work when the story still wasn’t completely defined. In fact, this story kept changing every 3 months and the definitive delivery date for the game was for the end of 2014. ---Roberto Ferrari

Sadly, the big budget style of production seems to be at the root of why Square Enix’s console games have been so soulless. KH is not for everybody, but it was a series that was made with passion. I actually enjoyed the handheld KH games more than KH3 because they felt like Nomura was able to do what he wanted creatively, instead of feeling like it was made to appease a focus group. I would give up the super fancy graphics in a heartbeat to get KH0.5 and the original vision Nomura had for KH3.

[gamearamamegathons]

Dragon Quest Marathon: Updated Play Order

Circe here! I was poking around info on the Dragon Quest series to make sure I was on track with the current play order, and I stumbled upon something that made me rethink my approach. An interesting fact about the Dragon Quest series is that Enix/Square-Enix is really only the publisher, there have always been other devs behind the games.

I considered Mystery Dungeon in particular to be its own distinct series which merely crosses over with other popular game series, so it shouldn’t be included in the marathon. But, as it turns out, the developers behind Mystery Dungeon, Chunsoft, are the same devs who made the first five Dragon Quest games, and the Mystery Dungeon series started as a direct spinoff of Dragon Quest. So it becomes a lot harder to merely ignore it.

The bad news is that I already skipped over the first Mystery Dungeon game, so if I wanna pick it up now I’ll have to go backwards chronologically to play it. But that’s not a big deal. The larger concern is that Mystery Dungeon is a roguelike series, and could prove to be quite difficult to complete. But we’ll see how it goes. I’m interested in adding the Mystery Dungeon games back into my list, and in the process I revisited Dragon Quest series as a whole to revise my play order. This time I used Wikipedia’s list, which turns out to be considerably more complete than the one I originally used from the Dragon Quest wiki. I’ve also decided that rather than leaving a bunch of games off the list that I might not be able to play, I’m going to defer figuring out if I can acquire the games until I get to the point where I’m going to play them. It could be a good couple years before I work my way through the list, so it seems premature to say that I’m not going to be able to get them.

That said, there are a few things I’m cutting. All mobile games are off the list, because it would be a massive pain to get them and make sure they work correctly, especially since there’s been no official US release for any of them and it’s much harder to circumvent that for mobile games than for old SNES games. Kenshin Dragon Quest is still off the list, because I can’t imagine paying a premium to import a silly TV game. Dragon Quest X is still off the list because I’m pretty sure there’s literally no way for me to play it, being an MMO that also never got a US release. Two spinoff series also got the cut; Itadaki Street, a computer board game series a la Mario Party that has had virtually no US releases and doesn’t really seem to have much to do with Dragon Quest; and Monster Battle Road, which largely consists of arcade games involving physical cards, which of course would be quite impossible for me to play.

Thus, without further ado, this is the official play order as it currently stands:

Dragon Quest [COMPLETE] Dragon Quest II [COMPLETE] Dragon Quest III [COMPLETE] Dragon Quest IV [COMPLETE] Dragon Quest V [COMPLETE] Dragon Quest VI [IN PROGRESS] Torneko no Daibōken: Fushigi no Dungeon Dragon Quest Monsters Torneko: The Last Hope Dragon Quest VII Dragon Quest Monsters 2 Dragon Quest Characters: Torneko no Daibōken 3: Fushigi no Dungeon Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart Slime MoriMori Dragon Quest: Shōgeki no Shippo Dan Dragon Quest VIII Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime Dragon Quest: Shōnen Yangus to Fushigi no Dungeon Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors Dragon Quest Wars Dragon Quest IX Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 Slime MoriMori Dragon Quest 3: Taikaizoku to Shippo Dan Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below Dragon Quest Builders Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3 Dragon Quest Heroes II Dragon Quest XI Dragon Quest Builders 2

[glapplebloom]

Last week I had a heavy focus on Microsoft. This week, the more likely to be part of Smash Brothers.

Shantae

This Half Genie has been heavily associated with Nintendo for the longest, I was surprised to find out she wasn’t one of them. With her varying movelist she can provide a lot of fun as a playable character.

What Music Would They Bring: Tons from multiple games. And I dare say unique compared to the other franchises?

What Stage Would They Bring: I’m thinking Desert or Scuttle Town.

Do they have anything in Smash: She has two Spirits: Herself and Risky Boots. And

What are their chances: I still like her chances. Just because you have a spirit doesn’t mean your chances are gone. After all many of the playable cast can also be found in stickers. Why should Shantae not be considered just because art from one of her games is in Smash?

Rayman

Ubisoft and Nintendo have been having a close relation with each other. Nintendo allowed them to use Mario for a crossover and Star Fox for their Star Link game. Not to mention Rabbid Peach being in their Just Dance Game. I'm surprised he hasn’t been in the game yet.

What Music Would They Bring: Just Dance songs? I’m kidding, but I bet they got a bunch of games to draw from.

What Stage Would They Bring: That swamp could be fun.

Do they have anything in Smash: In 4 he was a Trophy, the second (behind CommanderVideo) to be in Smash without having anything else in it. Also in Ultimate he’s a spirit.

What are their chances: This is the year I believe an Ubisoft character will be included in Smash Brothers. But I sadly see the Rabbids entering before Rayman.

An Undertale Representative

Like it or not, Undertale is a big deal. Its been ported everywhere and even the “Sequel” Deltarune is coming to the Switch. It is one of the biggest indy games out there and with Shovel Knight and Shantae in the Ultimate games, there is room for the first Indy Representative.

What Music Would They Bring: I’m just foaming at the mouth on the idea Megalovania being in Smash. Not to mention a bunch of other songs from Undertale and Deltarune.

What Stage Would They Bring: It probably would represent whatever character they pick. Or maybe a travel through.

Do they have anything in Smash: Nope

What are their chances: Despite loving the idea, I highly doubt it. I mean Frisk would be the first choice since main characters are usually picked first but how would you make a move list for him?

Scorpion

Mortal Kombat is a very violent game. So violent you can’t even buy a Japanese Version due to their grading system. Despite that, it has appeared on numerous Nintendo Consoles, including the upcomming Mortal Kombat 11 for the Switch. Would be neat to see the SF/MK rivalry up close. And it won’t be like they haven’t toned down the violence before.

What Music Would They Bring: Maybe its just me, but I wouldn’t mind seeing the Mortal Kombat Album be included. But of course they have plenty of music.

What Stage Would They Bring: Part of me wants to bring in the Pit. Either pit would do. Or maybe Shao Kahn’s Arena could be fun. Have an excuse to bring in Shao Kahn as a Boss Character too.

Do they have anything in Smash: Nada

What are their chances: While it would be neat, and Mortal Kombat has been toned down before, I don’t see it happening. Maybe they fear this would increase the game’s rating. 

Crash And/Or Spyro

Crash and Spyro are back thanks to their remakes. They both have appeared on Nintendo Consoles. And their official crossovers are on the Game Boy Advance. Not to mention Nintendo did allow Bowser and DK to be in the Skylanders game. So that means Activision and Nintendo have had a relationship before.

What Music Would They Bring: So many, but one song comes to my mind...

What Stage Would They Bring: Would be nice to have a jungle theme that isn’t DK. Or a location from Avalar. 

Do they have anything in Smash: Nada

What are their chances: I see them being pretty high. They were indeed rivals for Nintendo like Sonic was. Would be cool to see either or even both in Smash Brothers.

Lara Croft

The Survivor. The Legend. The Classic. Lara Croft is a gaming icon. And with Square owning the license, this could be their second representative into Smash. One that could donate a lot more than two music tracks.

What Music Would They Bring: That said, I have no clue. Pretty sure they have some tunes to use.

What Stage Would They Bring: She’s a Globe Trotter. Her potential on stage to bring is limitless.

Do they have anything in Smash: Besides fellow Square Enix Character Cloud, no.

What are their chances: It depends on why Final Fantasy has very little representation. If its because there are outside factors beyond Square’s control, then probably good. I see one other guy who would be more liked to be picked, but I think she has a better chance. But if it is because Square is stingy, then maybe not her.

Geno

People want him. Sakurai wants him. And it would be good to see Super Mario RPG return back home.

What Music Would They Bring: Obviously Geno’s Forest Maze. Not this version though.

What Stage Would They Bring: As mentioned, Geno’s Forest Maze could be a good stage to bring.

Do they have anything in Smash: Two spirits: himself and Mallow. He has also been a costume in the 4 version.

What are their chances: Again, this depends if Square is being stingy or not. This could be the year Geno finally becomes playable. Or it could be another year he isn’t here.

Sora

Rounding up the three possible reps of Square, Sora would be a likely choice. The Kingdom Hearts series have been major and have appeared on Nintendo Consoles before. Of the three, he is the biggest name among them. And he doesn’t need to bring in anything Disney either.

What Music Would They Bring: A bunch. My personal favorite would be the theme song from Kingdom Hearts 2.

What Stage Would They Bring: Traverse Town would be cool.

Do they have anything in Smash: Nothing other than a fellow Square Rep.

What are their chances: This I have to say, even if Square wasn’t stingy, would be the long shot. Apparently Disney owns Sora, but due to respect of the creator Nomura they don’t use him outside Kingdom Hearts. It could be possible only if Nomura wants him in Smash.

Heihachi

Behind Pacman, Heihachi is Namco’s go to guy for Crossovers. And Namco is heavily helping Nintendo with Smash Brothers

What Music Would They Bring: Pretty sure he got a good number of tracks. And if not, other Namco properties.

What Stage Would They Bring: While he could bring some Tekken stages, I could see him bringing in the Pacman Stage from Smash 3DS instead.

Do they have anything in Smash: In 4 he has a costume. In Ultimate, he shows up in Pacman’s taunt.

What are their chances: If Namco gets a second representative, I can see it being Heihachi. I doubt he really died in Tekken 7.

A Yakuza Representative...

This comes as a surprise to me too. While Sega is heavily known for Sonic, their A Team is working on the Yakuza series (they’re known as Sega CS1 while Sonic Team is under CS2). And while Joker is Sega owned since they own Atlus, having someone from the Yakuza series would show that this is Sega’s true bread and butter.

What Music Would They Bring: While I have never played the games, I’m sure there are plenty of choices.

What Stage Would They Bring: Its a big city. Pretty sure they’ll have stuff.

Do they have anything in Smash: Other than Sonic, nothing.

What are their chances: Sega could use a second representative that isn’t shared with Nintendo (Bayonetta). And of their franchises, Yakuza is their biggest and brightest. And its not like not having a game on the system stopped others.

[gamerzcourt]

Playing Games On Your Phone Is Good, ActuallyPlaying Games On Your Phone Is Good, Actuallyvideo games

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Playing Games On Your Phone Is Good, ActuallyPlaying Games On Your Phone Is Good, Actuallyvideo games

I’m a handheld video game enthusiast. I’m sure of this, because people in the office make fun of how much I use and love the PlayStation Vita (hi, CNET!). The first console I owned was a Game Boy, and I’ve owned and loved every Nintendo and Sony portable released since (even the PocketStation). I have a long commute, so I always have a dedicated gaming device in my backpack. But lately, I’ve been spending an exceptional amount of time on a platform I had previously written off: an iPhone.

Now that your eyes have rolled, I want to clarify that I’m not talking about the kinds of games you might traditionally associate with being “phone games,” though I do love those–I’ve played far more than a healthy amount of Marvel Puzzle Quest, and I love playing the cool stuff that crops up in the bespoke iOS scene: Florence, Reigns, Threes, 80 Days, and anything by Zach Gage. Instead, my recent revelation involves the kinds of video games that I would have previously preferred to play on a home console or PC.

Florence is pretty cool. You should play Florence.

Here’s an obvious statement: There’s never been a better time to be a handheld gamer. The 3DS is filled with great, unique first-party Nintendo titles. If you like Japanese RPGs, 2D platformers, and revisiting the finest titles in the original PlayStation library, the Vita is incredibly good, I promise (that OLED screen! That d-pad!). And of course, the Nintendo Switch is a fantastic hybrid console that redefined what kinds of games I could expect from a portable system.

Now, thanks to my phone, I’m getting that same Switch-style buzz once again. I recently took a vacation, and as usual, I packed my three portable consoles to entertain me during periods of extended downtime. The thing is, you can’t always prepare for when or where extended downtime happens. For one reason or another, there were a few times where I felt like playing a video game, didn’t have a console on me, and eventually was content to see what was on my phone so I could stop looking at the ocean or whatever for 15 minutes.

Tired of what I already had installed, I browsed the App Store for anything that caught my eye, and a free demo of Sid Meier’s Civilization VI was what did it. I’d been thinking about picking it up again on Switch, and was now morbidly curious to see how it ran on an iPhone. As it turns out, pretty well. It was visually impressive enough to pop on the small screen, ran smoothly with a smartly adjusted UI, and didn’t appear to have any feature concessions compared to the PC version. It was also the perfect game to play on a portable device: slow-paced and turn-based.

Civ VI on an iPhone–it’s better than you think, but still a little pricey.

That experience was a turning point for me, and I learned a bunch of things at that moment. One: 30 bucks is too much money to pay for a second copy of Civ VI, especially when it doesn’t have the expansions. Two: Phones are capable of surprising technical performance. Three: The best console is the one you have with you. Four: The convenience of being able to download games wherever is very good. Five: I don’t have five things.

I’m very aware that all the people I see playing PUBG and Fortnite on the train, as well as the entirety of China, are eager to tell me how late to the party I am. But ever since then, I feel like I’ve reconfigured the part of my brain that decides what kind of games would be more suitable as a PC, console, or handheld experience. For certain titles, I’ve managed to overcome the mental hurdle that stops me from tackling my pile of shame with a newfound curiosity that wants to see how differently they play on a phone.

I really enjoy playing short, focused games. But I’ve missed out on a bunch because I’ve always believed that I needed to dedicate a good chunk of time in front of a monitor in order to get through one, and often by the time I get home from work, all I want to do is play more Tetris 99 or, you know, spend time with my family. But ever since I got over myself, I’ve managed to play and finish a bunch of 2018 games I’d put on hold in a week’s worth of public transit rides–games like Donut County, The Stillness of the Wind, and The Gardens Between. I recently picked up Whispers Of A Machine after resolving myself to the fact that I was never going to find the time to sit down at a PC to play it, and as it turns out, my phone is perfect for the point-and-click adventure games I love so much. These more technically conservative titles also perform virtually like-for-like with their desktop versions, which helped eliminate my fears of opting for a “lesser” experience.

Even more graphically demanding titles can impress: I already own two different versions of challenging puzzler The Witness, but never found the courage to finish it. I then bought it for my phone, and I was surprised by how decent it looked. More importantly, I found myself building a different kind of relationship with it–one that I hope will finally help me see the end. If I’m stuck on a particularly hard puzzle, I can easily put it away and mull over it while I do something else. And, because it loads right where you left off, I can take another quick stab at it while I wait for a coffee.

The Witness–I’m not going to let Jonathan Blow defeat me.

However, I’m not completely abandoning my other handhelds–Persona Q2 and Cadence of Hyrule just came out, after all. I’ll absolutely chase after any game that gets me excited, but I’m finding that the convenience of form factor also plays a big part in what I now choose to pull out. If it’s standing room only on my train, or I want to lie sideways in bed, I’m less hesitant to pull out a Switch. The Switch is great, but it’s a little too big in these instances. It really isn’t a big deal to pull out a phone. Certain games, like The Gardens Between, Elder Scrolls Blades, and various Dragon Quest ports, have the option to be played with one hand in portrait mode, which I am incredibly thankful for.

The relatively lower price points for the iOS versions of games (unless you’re 2K or Square Enix) takes the sting out of having to buy some of these titles for the second time. I’m happy to throw down a few bucks to give myself a portable version of something I know I liked, but want to find more avenues to play. The convenience of being able to download the games over a cellular network instantly helps, too. I had a sudden hankering to play a good tactical strategy game on the way to work the other day, so I redownloaded XCOM: Enemy Within on iOS. It’s not as good as XCOM 2: War Of The Chosen, but it was available and ready to be downloaded as soon as I had that impulse. I saw GameSpot’s Tamoor Hussain tweet about Pocket Cities, so I gave that a try (I liked it). While I was walking, I heard Giant Bomb talk about Brawl Stars on a podcast, so I downloaded that too (I didn’t like it). Everyone is still talking about The Outer Wilds, but it’s a game that I can’t find a spare few hours in front of my PC to download and actually play. The ability to quickly feed my whims on a phone is incredibly useful.

I came to another realization while thinking about my new habits. When the Apple Arcade game subscription was announced in March, I thought it sounded interesting, but outside of a few games that I was already planning to play on other platforms, it didn’t think it was for me. I’m not an Xbox Game Pass subscriber, nor an Origin Access person. I don’t want to pay a monthly fee for access to a bunch of games I’m not going to play. I’m a Nintendo Online subscriber, but I rarely play the included library of NES games because I forget to download them until I’m browsing the library on a bus.

Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick recently expressed a similar skepticism over video game subscription services on an investor call, saying ��people do consume video games differently than they consume linear entertainment.”

He explained: “In the case of video games, it is possible that the average user in those 45 hours might be playing one, two, maybe three titles; certainly not 70 titles. In that event, if you play one, two, or three titles and you play them for months in a row–which often happens in [the video game world]–then a subscription model may not be such a great deal for the customer.”

I’m beginning to change my mind, however. I’ve installed and played over two dozen games on my phone since my revelation, most of which I can access on different platforms–but I haven’t. It’s been a pretty positive experience that’s been assisted by the ability to easily jump between games on a whim and download them anywhere I am.

Apple Arcade is currently poised to include a bunch of games that I was already keen on–Sayonara Wild Hearts, The Pathless, Beyond A Steel Sky, Klei’s Hot Lava, and ustwo’s Repair–and if they’re all going to be readily available on my phone there’s a way better chance I’ll actually play all of them. I’ve already got early access to tactical survival game Overland on PC, but I’ll be damned if that isn’t a perfectly-suited portable game. I can totally see the reasoning behind Apple’s big push into the video game space now–they likely want to stay competitive with the likes of Microsoft and Google, of course, but they’re also capitalizing on a different kind of gaming behavior which I’m only just cottoning on to.

I can’t wait to play more Overland.

An Apple Arcade subscription will also give you access to these games on MacOS and on Apple TV, which seems handy for when I actually have a chance to sit still for a while. Additionally, Apple recently launched the ability to connect Xbox One and PS4 controllers to iOS and Apple TV, which suggests that they’re interested in keeping their platform as flexible as possible. That’s a nice touch, because if there’s one thing I still haven’t come around to, it’s playing complex action games with a touchscreen interface–I don’t know how the people who play PUBG on the train do it.

I’m surprised at how much I’ve come to genuinely appreciate my phone as a portable gaming device. The convenience of accessibility make it incredible for catering to whims, it runs a variety of the games I personally love to play (and in some instances, ones that can’t be found on any other platform), and I can use it in situations where it’d be too uncomfortable to use any other portable. I can’t believe it took me so long to take it seriously–I could’ve actually finished The Witness and become a genius by now, instead of embarrassing myself with a PS Vita for years.

(I’m sorry, PS Vita. I didn’t mean that. You’re still cool, no matter what anyone says.)

GameSpot – All News

[laureviewer]

Final Fantasy XV: A Review

Having never played a Final Fantasy game before, it was interesting starting up the game to read: “A Final Fantasy for fans and first-timers.” With the franchise’s first game released in 1987, I was interested in picking it up so late in its lengthy history, and in all honesty the fact that the Japanese video game developer Square Enix developed the game was a large part of the reason I picked it up, as I’ve admired their beautiful graphics and vastly superior character realism ever since Life is Strange and their take over of the Tomb Raider franchise. And I’m so glad I did: it was phenomenal.

Characters

The strength of the game lies in the incredible bond that is established over the course of the game between the four main protagonists. You are Noctis Lucis Caelum (‘Noct’), a Lucian Prince and heir apparent to the Lucian throne, who must travel across the realm to reunite with and marry your childhood friend Lady Lunafreya, the Oracle, to forge an alliance between Lucis and Niflhiem of Eos.

On your journey to Altissia, you are accompanied by your three closest friends who never leave your side. Gladiolus (‘Gladio’) is your lifelong friend and bodyguard who has sworn to protect the kind at all costs, the typical tough guy quick to anger but who can be surprisingly sweet; this is particularly apparent when they are around his little sister, Iris, and to Ignis, particularly in the later game (I will explain this later – massive spoiler). He calls Ignis ‘Iggy’ most of the time, which is a really cute nickname to come from such a tough man and to give to someone as respectable as Ignis.

Ignis is the brains of the group who looks after his friends, driving the Regalia and cooking them nutritious meals, having looked after a young Noct in their childhood. He is also now Noct’s Royal Advisor, which makes sense once I realised that but during the game I just thought Noct was referring questions back to Ignis merely because he was the smartest rather than someone actually employed to help in such a way. I particularly like the exchange between Ignis and Gladio at regular intervals when you discover a new ingredient:

“That’s it!” “What’s up, Iggy?” “I’ve come up with a new recipe.” (pronounced “recipehh”) “I can taste test for ya.”

Very sweet.

Lastly, Prompto is the hilarious jokester of the group, always trying to make light of a situation and have a good time. He is also quite insecure, and so quite a few times he asks Noct pretty heartbreaking questions like “Were you worried about me?” and talks about having no friends in his childhood. At all times like this I made sure to support him, where the conversation options meant that the moody Noct could have brushed him off or been downright mean to him. Considering Prompto is his only school friend, a commoner rather than one of his royal entourage, I think their relationship is particularly special.

In fact, the whole of FFXV is incredibly sentimental, mostly driven through the banter of the four boys throughout the game, even when just exploring the open world, as if they are going on a road trip with their best friends rather than undertaking life threatening missions to save the world. This includes sitting around the campfire together every night where you can see them chatting and hanging out by the firelight, and little optional cutscenes and quests where Gladio asks Noct to train with him, Ignis wants him to help prepare breakfast, or when Prompto needs a bit of a boost to feel needed in their little group. Every moment of FFVX takes a moment to the 4 friends’ personalities. I feel like I know so much about these boys and care about them all. I am more familiar with them and empathise with them more than I think I ever have with any other video game characters, and this is because every time they travel together, be that in a side quest or a road trip, little things come out about their lives and you can really tell how much they rely on and protect each other. This is amplified with Prompto’s photography skills, which allows him to take around 10 photos that can be viewed every time you rest at camp or in lodgings, allowing you to capture the most epic moments in their journey and which became more and more valuable to me the further into the story I got and the more attached I got to the characters. This deep friendship made the ending, for me, so much more heartbreaking (spoilers later on when I chat about the ending).

Saying all this, the characters outside of the immediate friendship group don’t get as much of a look in at all – even Lunafreya, the Oracle and Noct’s bride to be, or Iris, Gladio’s sister, or Aldyn, another crucial character (spoilers – see below!). Other than the fact that they spent time together as children, I feel like I know nothing about Luna’s backstory – I don’t know why she and Noct were separated, how she became the Oracle, or literally anything about her other than she loves Noct (though even this is debatable!) and that she can talk to the gods. And that’s by the end of the game! Watching Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV helped with this, but really I shouldn’t need to watch a film in order to understand the plot of a separate game, even if it is in the same franchise. In regards to Aldyn, I had to actually look up his backstory to know the motivations behind his actions, and all I know about Iris is that she is fond of Noct and has a good relationship with her brother. There’s also a crucial (apparently) character called Cor Leonis, who is the King’s Lord Commander and helps you along the way, but I had completely forgotten about him halfway through the game and was confused when he returns just before you board the boat to Altissia. I really appreciate that the bromance of the four comes before the romance between Noct and Luna – a welcome change from most storylines where the love story takes precedence – but even so, I feel like more cutscenes are needed to properly explain the background of all of these characters in order to get a more in-depth story throughout.

Combat

Many other RPGs, and really all types of games, have loosely related characters to stand by the side of the protagonist, but are never really developed as much as the main character; you feel like the protagonist could hold his or her own if these support characters went off for a bit. But there are several times in the story where one or more of the characters have to go on their own missions or are separated from the rest of the group, and I really felt that I wasn’t as powerful or supported than when the whole gang were together. All four are crucial to the story, and all four bring their own necessary aspects to a battle. Ignis can heal, Gladio is strong with a load of HP to stay alive long enough to help bring down those particularly difficult enemies, and Prompto can shoot accurately from any range and it only depletes one section of the tech bar, giving Noct time to get out of a tough spot at frequent points in the battle.

In fact, having your allies with you means that you can perform other Link Strikes as well as character techniques in battle, all of which will bring your Finesse score up at the end of each encounter. These are performed by having a member of your party near you, either by parrying or by attacking an enemy from behind, called a Blindside Link Attack.  These are really useful, as not only can it get you out of being completely overwhelmed by a bunch of creatures using your buddy to outmanoeuvre them, but they are also more powerful than your standard moves, meaning that you are more likely to get out of the fray unscathed.

While many believe that the combat is quite simple, as attacking and blocking are as simple as holding down buttons, Noct’s own abilities make battle a lot more exciting. He can warp (teleport), either to high-up vantage points to get out of the immediate battle and restore MP (Magic Points), to improve speed and agility in the battlefield, or to Warp-Strike enemies, which increases damage done (more so the further you are from the enemy) and uses MP. The weapons are great, and Noct can have 4 equipped at any one time for easy weapon changes. It’s great that you can give powerful weapons to your team, and they fight and change their moves and weapons very intelligently, and seem like they’re often your equals in battle with their abilities to take down enemies and bring each other back from the brink of death.

However, the Royal Arms, or Armiger Weapons, which Noct collects through quests and various locations throughout Eos, while powerful are a real hindrance in my opinion. They’re a cool addition as Noct has to seek out ancient tombs of past kings from his lineage to collect them, but they drain your HP steadily and so should be handled with care. Personally, I don’t use them as I have found that other weapons are just as powerful, and the reduced HP is annoying, especially when fighting the tougher beasts that can take you down in one hit.  

Spells are also well worth having in one of your weapon slots. While they seem limited as: you can only cast in the realms of Fire, Ice and Thunder; there is a cool down, limiting the amount of times you can use your spells; and in order to craft the spells in Elemancy you need to find elemental deposits or take down specific enemies to absorb the energy to use. However, they are definitely worth it as they can do mass amounts of damage to several opponents, and you can also mix and match the spells when you craft them to be a mixture of two or of all three, and you can add items to give extra perks such as allowing the user to heal or to poison the target. The only issue with the spells are that, when you cast them, chances are your buddies will also be in range. While this put them out of action for five seconds or so whilst they twitch on the ground from electrocution or shiver after being blasted by your Blizzard attack, they still seem to hold their own and get back into the fray in a jiffy. In order to avoid this completely, try to get Ignis to Regroup and heal everyone so that they are out of the way when you then cast a spell afterwards.

The weapons and spells are used in conjunction with an interesting feature I’ve never seen before, which they dub ‘Wait Mode’. When an enemy has spotted you, as long as you have Wait Mode on, the game freezes and the Wait Timer starts to go down, where you can focus on one enemy and learn what their weaknesses are. For bigger monsters this can take quite a long time, but it’s worth the payoff of knowing what spells or types of weapon are effective or weak against particular enemies – for the more powerful ones, having an effective weapon really cuts down the time you are spent fighting the enemy, especially as the really big enemies take ages to take down with or without an advantage. This makes some of the weapons’ secondary effects, such as Thunder or Fire damage, particularly hard to navigate, as a creature with a weakness to greatswords but an advantage against fire would have a neutral weakness to the weapon, which means you might have to change your Blade of Brennaere to something else. I only had one problem with Wait Mode, and only had to turn it off once in my play through of the game – I had to warp up to a specific ladder in a dungeon and make sure to stay up there until the battle had ended, as the warp spots only appear in combat (a poor design choice, IMO). The problem was, staying stationary to make sure I didn’t fall off the scaffolding meant that Wait Mode kept cropping up and pausing the combat as I wasn’t actively fighting the daemons present. It was a rare moment, but brought up a couple of issues particularly with warping – without warping to this ladder in combat, there was no way I could get to this spot without allowing the daemons to respawn by leaving the dungeon and calling the enemies back with my whistle.

Lastly, I found that items were invaluable in battle, especially as you can encounter some very high level creatures very early on (I had to run away from a Level 54 Midgardsormr when I was below level 20!), or even some that are a lower level than you but can still take out with one hit. I always made sure I had Hi-Potions, which restore your HP, Elixirs, which restore not only your MP and HP but also allowed you to regain your Max HP, which could deplete and not return until after the dungeon or encounter had finished, and Phoenix Downs, which restore you to life with full health once knocked out of the battle. This depletion of Max HP was very annoying, and I still don’t know why it goes down in some battles and not others, so if anyone could shed light on this that would be amazing.

The Experience

As with most Square Enix games I’ve played, the scenery and animation is absolutely stunning. The people are beautiful – as a heterosexual girl, I found all of the boys gorgeous, as well as many of the secondary characters, especially as they’re anime and thus naturally good-looking – and, as I’ve said before, I’ve found that Square Enix have always done the most realistic character animations. I also didn’t mind driving around in the Regalia on lengthy trips, even though others complained that this essentially created unnecessarily long loading screens as you don’t need any skill to drive the car. The horizon and the beautiful sunsets and the incredible beasts and stretches of countryside to explore made me want to go on the long drives (although after a while, the fast travel did become useful when I wanted to get somewhere quickly).

This brings me onto travel: in general, this is quite tricky at the beginning as it is dangerous at night, and I had to make sure I knew I was near a campsite (haven) or outpost so that I wasn’t caught out in the middle of the night by daemons ready to attack you. After night falls, Ignis refuses to drive, and even if Noct takes over, quite often you are pulled over by a level 30 Iron Giant or the like in the middle of the road, creaking out of the floor, and so when you’re first starting out the only option is to take to foot and go in the other direction. Not helpful if you want to get anywhere at all, as even off road daemons are likely to find you. After you reach level 30, Ignis is willing to drive, but the dangers still stand.

Furthermore, once you reach the Chocobo outpost, you get an adorable bird creature, sort of like a fluffy ostrich, which you can rent by the day and ride over the rough terrain that doesn’t allow your Regalia to encroach. They’re great (and adorable), as they’re much faster than travelling by foot, and after levelling it up a bit, it starts to have increased stamina, higher jumping capabilities, and even learns techniques to use in battle, such as giving the team a stat boost or kicking a monster in the face for you. You can also race them for medals against the three other boys, and it’s adorable at camp when Noct sleeps on his Chocobo in front of the fire. However, you have to make sure that your Chocobo rental period lasts if you’re planning to go out into the open world far away from roads and your Regalia. It is so frustrating to embark on a quest and then have to run across the never ending plains, Noct’s stamina running out every 10 seconds unless you hit the L3 at just the right time. Be prepared.

The music is also brilliant, and aims to (and succeeds at!) really affecting you emotionally. You can tell that the soundtrack is trying to make something exciting, scary, action-packed, or devastating when necessary, and the music gets particularly exciting when you fight a creature that is particularly big, powerful, and downright epic. This most often occurs in the ‘boss’ battles in dungeons, but I was also recently fighting a giant buffalo-like creature called a Kujata, for example, and the epic music came into play, which really makes it feel like you’re defeating something special. Although, it was funny in Gladio’s random sidequest where he wants the perfect cup of noodles, and so you have to fight a giant lobster for its meat – such epic music seemed a bit out of place in such an unimportant sidequest (though I’m sure Gladio would disagree) but I found it amusing.  

When you stay at havens, you get to sample Ignis’ very appetising-looking meals, the recipes of which he makes out of gathering ingredients and putting them together to make something delicious, or by viewing or trying food other cooks have made. These are great, as they give various boosts to Noct and his friends for their adventures the next day, and can often make a difference between spending hours fighting foes and using up your whole stock of potions and elixirs, and defeating them easier with increased attack, HP, magic, resistance to poison, or a whole other manner of effects that come from eating that delicious grilled trout that Noct caught the other day.

There are a lot of similarities with another game that I have reviewed in the past: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This mostly comes from both games being an open-world RPG of course, and the fact that I loved Skyrim was always going to be an important step into also loving FFXV, but honestly I loved this game even more than Skyrim due to the sentimentality and the characters, despite the rushed linearity of the story after chapter 8. I agree with critics that it finished far too quickly, but the storyline was so epic, so heartbreaking, that I loved it… more about that later (spoilers below). Another factor that both games share was their technique levelling system. While Skyrim simply calls theirs Skills and Perks, FFXV calls it Ascendance, which I feel is fitting for the game as the whole journey centres around Noct ascending to his rightful place as King. By gaining AP points from resting at camp, travelling for long periods of time, having successful conversations, and by defeating enemies, you can use these points to improve certain skills, such as Techniques, Combat, Exploration, Teamwork, and Recovery, which affect all four of the boys. While this is useful depending on how you want to play the game, giving you a sense of autonomy, it can also be stressful if you aren’t sure which skills would be best to improve and thus how to use your points wisely.

Creatures

I’ve already talked about the adorable Chocobos which you can rent to ride around the landscape, but there are hundreds of other creatures that roam the world in the wild, which are all fascinating and beautifully designed. All across the world you have a different assortment of creatures of various levels, from cat-like creatures, to rhinos, to giraffe-deer hybrids, to creatures you can barely describe, such as the giant Catoblepas, which tower above you in a lovely lake near Alstor Slough and sport pig-like faces and giant necks like diplodocuses.

You can explore the world engaging these ‘enemies’ as you please, or go to tipsters (normally these are the ones also willing to give you food at restaurants, cafes etc) to get Bounty Hunts. These are a variety of levels which can range from the lowest to level 110 (being level 64 currently, I haven’t tried these yet!) and require you to seek out certain creatures and kill them for whatever reason, and to get a reward in return. They are similar to a side quest, but are also classified by rank. Noct starts at rank 1, and the more bounties he undertakes, the more he can undertake – you cannot do a certain bounty hunt by the tipster at Hammerhead until you are rank 4, for example. These are fun, and allow you to find creatures all over Lucis that you may have overlooked, to explore some of the areas you may have also missed, and also results in opening up some creatures to combat that wouldn’t have engaged you before (such as the Catoblepas).

The other creatures that roam Eos can also be fought in Bounty Hunts, but only come out at night. These are daemons – the creatures of the dark that Noct and his friends must defeat in order to save the realm and keep the light in the world. As you go through the game, the nights get longer as the daemons get more powerful, and they are particularly active in dungeons (where, annoyingly, you cannot save!). They are particularly annoying creatures, and some are very powerful, knocking you out with one hit.  

There are also the MTs – Magitek Troopers – and soldiers that fight for the Imperials. The Imperials are Niflhiem’s army that seek to take over Lucis and the whole realm of Eos. They follow you around in giant airships and try to attack you throughout the game, which can get really annoying if you’re trying to do some sidequests and they keep getting in the way. Thankfully, you can simply sprint as fast as you can away and normally you can get away from them, but they’re also useful to get EXP out of, and aren’t too tough to take down, until you get further into the game that is and level 45 assassins and MA-Xs (big robots) come to destroy you.

  The Storyline (WARNING: spoilers ahead!)

Now to what I really wanted to talk about: the storyline, and in particular, the ending.

I spent a lot of time in the first few chapters doing the sidequests, as that’s what I like doing in an open world game – I hate leaving quests, and so I took my sweet time, exploring and having a great time around Eos. But as the game progresses, things start going down. And I really mean down!

The characters become more developed, for a start. What began as a journey for four closer-than-close friends (that’s not an innuendo…but very well could be with how close they are!) starts to sour, particularly after the massive battle with the Leviathan, and the death of Lunafreya.

After this point, Noct becomes even more moody and angsty than normal (quite understandable really, considering his father and beloved had both died recently) but Gladio isn’t having that, telling Noct to stop moping around and to take his place as King to restore the light to the world. I thought this was quite harsh from Gladio, but of course, this is the stereotypical ‘tough guy’ way of dealing with pain – get angry, and get even. This was where I first started to really get emotionally invested in the game, when the threads that keep this lovely quartet together begin to unravel. Especially when you learn another reason why Gladio’s so pissed off with Noct – for caring more about himself than caring Ignis, who was blinded during the fight with the Leviathan. All of this, as well as Prompto being more subdued from then on, trying half-heartedly to raise all of their spirits with jokes but failing miserably, is so sad. Blind Ignis actually turns out to be very annoying, as there’s one bit where you can choose to leave Ignis behind when you go into the mine at Tenebrae (which I didn’t do) and Gladio makes you walk at a really slow pace to wait for Ignis. Fine, that makes sense, but it was really frustrating in game.

And who had killed Luna, to start all of this angst and infighting off? We had seen Ardyn throughout the game, as a weird shady character on the side of the Imperials but, strangely, seemingly dedicated to helping Noct out. For example, he saves the boys from one of the massive gods, Titan, and only shows his true colours when he kills Noct’s beloved. I did like the uncertainty of who the main antagonist was, although others who had actually seen the trailer beforehand said it was obvious as he was in the trailer acting like the primarily antagonist anyway. He really did play the part brilliantly, with his powers allowing him to taunt Noct in his head and to use a rift in time to cause Prompto and Ardyn to swap forms, tricking Noct into throwing Prompto off the train they are riding across Eos. This was very clever, as I didn’t see it coming – and again, threw me into greater despair at the fate of all of the boys, particularly as Prompto is the delicate one always vying for Noct’s affections and approval. It really made me want to kill Ardyn, and so along with the unnecessary death of Luna, Square Enix really succeeded in creating an effective and hateful baddie.

In regards to the linearity of the storyline, it was certainly rushed after chapter 8, but to me that made sense. People are starting to die (most importantly, the Oracle Lunafreya) and the nights are getting longer, with the daemons becoming more powerful. Ardyn is starting to show his true colours, and the gods are beginning to intervene in human affairs, at the pleas of Noct and Lunafreya. With all of these exciting and action-packed events, and with time running out to save the world, it’s not surprising that the story progresses quite rapidly. However, it is a shame you don’t get to see beautiful-looking cities such as Altissia for very long, and some not at all, in the case of Tenebrae. Some extra side quests and just some more willingness to put time into the game would have made this a whole lot better, given us some more character development in the case of Luna in Altissia, and allowed us to truly appreciate the incredible design – for Altissia truly is stunning, with canals where you can take boats across the city and stunning architecture to admire.

Furthermore, you can use Umbra, the dog that Luna and Noct have been using to communicate in a little book he takes back and forth between the two, to go back to past Lucis and complete some of the sidequests. However, at this point in time I was so into the story and I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of the events by going back in time. It felt insincere doing so, going back just to kill a few beasts or run a few errands, when so much was at stake. Besides, I’d already spent hours upon hours doing more side quests than I really should have been, levelling up quite fast, and so it would have been unwise to gain more experience lest the main story quests turn out to be too easy. While I was slightly disappointed the game’s chapters flicked through faster and faster as I wanted the game to last forever, in a way that made it exciting. The climax was coming, and I was racing towards it, hopefully getting rid of the darkness quickly to restore the former might of Lucis.

But then chapter 14 hits, and ten years have suddenly past and Noct has been in some sort of stasis being absorbed by the crystal for all this time, after being told by Bahamut that he must die in order for the darkness to be destroyed for good. He left his friends to a world overrun with daemons, millions have died and there is a perpetual darkness, leaving all to head to Hammerhead or Lestalium for refuge. This really shook me up in the game, more so than anything else. Knowing that the boys had such an intense friendship throughout the game, and then Noct had left them for so long without a trace, broke my heart. I have always hated stories that include lost time, like people being in comas or getting amnesia, and this is exactly what has happened here. Noct travels back by sea to Goldin Quay, and here he finds that everywhere is abandoned. It was a sickly feeling having to go through the restaurant and beach, one of the earliest points in the game, and finding that it was overrun with (incredibly difficult!) monsters, with everyone dead or seeking refuge elsewhere. While obviously this was very effective as it affected me so deeply, I think it would have been better to draw this bit out more and to have Noct have to go to all the corners of Lucis in order to reunite his friends who had decided to fight daemons all over the realm – ten years is a very long time, and they could have been anywhere, doing anything when Noct just happens to return. As it happens, they are around Hammerhead together, and while they don’t always fight together, they are still close. To be honest, this was better than having them grow apart, as I would have found it very sad if they had fallen out or had forgotten each other in that time. Still, it made me really look back on the more innocent times in FFXV before chapter 8 with sadness and nostalgia, as so much has gone wrong with the boys, making me grow up emotionally with them. [NB: how can a game of all things affect me so much, you ask? I’m not sure, as it’s never happened to me before, but having put over 60 hours of my life into this story it’s safe to say I grew attached!]

So after reuniting, Noct, Gladio, Ignis and Prompto prepare to confront Ardyn in Insomnia, the Crown City, where he has taken over. This is where you really appreciate the photos that Prompto has been taken throughout the game. They were becoming more lovely and sentimental anyway, as I was becoming more attached to the characters, but it is particularly appreciated when Noct chooses a particular photo to take into the final battle with him. I’m sure I’m not the only one who took in the first group photo of the boys with me, when they had fixed the Regalia right at the start. The game really makes you want to take in a photo that means something to you, and it’s lovely that a game can make you that sentimental. I’ve read some funny accounts of others who took in pictures of Chocobos or even Cup Noodles in with them, which is hilarious, especially as Luna and Noct (at the end, when they are presumably happy together in the afterlife) have the photo with them, and so having them staring lovingly at a picture of Cup Noodles is brilliant!

The final battle was somewhat easy, I think, if quite interesting as Ardyn can use your warping ability and the Armiger, as he is of the royal Lucian bloodline from years before. Honestly, this isn’t what I remember from the end game. It’s the flashback to the boys’ final night together, where they make camp and eat together just like old times. This was very emotional. Noct can barely get the words out, and after what seems like an age, eventually gets out: “You guys are the best”. I felt complete and utter devastation at this ending. Actually, I can’t believe how empty I felt when the game had finally finished. It was like I didn’t know what to do with myself, as the character I had been playing with for 60+ hours had just died, and so he couldn’t even see the world he had saved recover. In fact, we don’t even get to see the aftermath of his actions, of Lucis being restored and of the light returning, other than a sunrise. I suppose this is poetic, as Noct obviously doesn’t get to see this either as he is dead, and so the gamer shouldn’t be able to either, but it still would have been great to see the few characters that did survive and how they recover after 10 years of perpetual darkness and the horrors they have seen.

What was really disappointing was the lack of backstory and explanation of the lore throughout. Some have said that it was ‘subtly explained’ in the game, but I just got confused. What are Ardyn’s motivations for his evil actions? Why does Noct need 10 years and then wakes up in a prison? What was the backstory behind Prompto being an MT? I ended up having to look all of this up, and while it’s very interesting, it would have been good to have some cutscene flashbacks, to satisfy my curiosity – particularly in Ardyn’s case, as it would have been good to know that he was betrayed by the king thousands of years ago in order to be essentially a container for the darkness and then thrown aside, causing him to want to take out the Lucis royal bloodline in revenge. I think that’s what it all boils down to – I wanted more from this game, to make a more rounded story.

The ending was also incredibly confusing. There seems to be two viable interpretations, the first being that Gladio, Ignis and Prompto die fending off the massive army of daemons just before Noct goes to confront Ardyn in the final battle, and thus are there in the afterlife to help Noct destroy Ardyn once and for all. I choose not to believe this ending, for two reasons: firstly, that they are with Noct just before he calls on the past kings to kill him to take on Ardyn in the afterlife, and so why would they have been there, unless Noct was just imagining them there?; and secondly, I don’t want everyone to die, dammit! The other interpretation is that, when Noct parts with them, they simply live on, knowing that their friend has made the ultimate sacrifice, and that their appearance in Noct’s afterlife is simply an ethereal representation. Considering how close Noct is to all three of them, this makes sense, and dulls the emotional blow somewhat, despite Noct having to sacrifice himself. I wish they’d made it clearer – and I’d like to know what happens to the boys, if only to get closure.

If Final Fantasy XV really is a final fantasy for fans and first timers, then it definitely has become my fantasy, but not necessarily my final one. They are doing a remake of Final Fantasy VII, apparently the most loved of all the games, and so I know I’ll be one of the ones buying that as soon as it comes out. I’ve since watched the movie Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, which explains some of what happened to Noct’s father and how Luna got to Altissia (but has barely any of Noct and his friends in it, sadly), and I’m very eager to watch the anime Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV to indulge in more.

It’s an incredible game, despite its flaws, and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time to come.

[orihime-maychan]

Just raving about FFXV here, if its irrelevant to you, you may move on (otherwise, word vomit ahead)

Just a warning, long shit ahead the break. Read at your own risk. *hugs*

Ok, so my younger bro had been raving about wanting a PS4 pro so he could play at 60fps. Not that I mind or care, but srsly after realizing better visuals during the game (I have been a backseat gamer and I dont intend to quit lolz dont hate me ok) I figured that he should really buy the unit so we could watch game cinematics with better frame rates and lesser frame rate drops yay. So after waiting for around 2 months to buy the unit (weirdly there had been a scarcity of the consoles in the PH, or at least in MLA and here in the province like srsly do the Sony guys think some people can’t buy? gah.) he finally got his paws on one. Now he  says he could play most of his RPG’s with better visuals. And as a person who also likes visuals I had to admit that some of his games do look a lot more fluid now. More stuff to copy and turn ito my art models kekekeke

Prior to that, I have been egging younger bro to buy FFXV because it looked so good with the trailers. But seriously I just wanted to watch a bunch of bros doing bro-ey stuff for a change (apparently they’re called CHOCOBROS srsly only in tumblr lolz). I even got into the Kingsglaive trailer which was srsly tugging so much at my feels. Well after waiting for a few months he finally did, and only did so because he already got the console that would give justice to the beautiful world (and people kekeke) of that game, but alas not the one with the free movie blue ray because other people had em first XD Well either way he got his console, his game, and some DLCs and timed quests and all that jazz so I’m like, ok I’m on board this trip now yay. 

 Moving on to the pores.. I affectionately call FFXV as Final Fantasy Pores because of the lovely details in the cinematics: Prompto’s freckles, Noct’s crinkles, Gladdy’s pores and of course, dearest Iggy’s wrinkles and specs. And also teh KingsGlaive movie (srsly my feels, RIP Nix, and old King Reggie. Just when I thought Square Enix’s hair game just couldn’t get any better, now comes this thingamabob with all the skin details I could ever want. And the hair too. I mean really, now aside from having to learn Cloud’s hard to render hair (please see pic, I mean, really, how can that hair be drawn? I cry)

now i have to include the wrinkles and pores and scars and freckles (and spoiler alert: more scars T^T) apart from learning how to draw freaking hair and fur. But not that I mind,at least now I have something to look forward to.

Speaking of Chocobros, don’t even get me started on Brotherhood, like srsly my younger bro has been playing this game for around a month now and haven’t watched Brotherhood, meanwhile I already watched the subbed version around 3x already because Nihongo Ignis. (OK so I’m weak against anime guys who can cook, wear glasses, intelligent, and seemingly have all of their shit together. If that’s not a good ideal, idk what is.) Srsly. Especially ep4 (spoiler alert, baby people abound in Brotherhood. Spazz at your own risk. I know I did.). I’m just trying hard not to spoil anything to my bro, or else I won’t hear the end of it. So for now, I keep all that spazzing to myself. XDD

Uwaah, apparently younger bro got bored with Chapter 13, he’s gonna wait for the update next week, so I guess i’m on a diet rn. *sad* Oh well, hopefully with the Chapter 13 updates comes the Gladdy DLC and another update with playable Gladdy and Iggy *yay even tho you’re blind I heart you yay*. I should prolly keep that to myself... Or not. Srsly Spazzing on that idea.

OK, I guess that’s all about my ranting. Please don’t hate me, but yes if you think an oldie such as my self is laughable on that account, sure I’ll let you laugh. It’s not like its gonna hurt me. Besides, after watching two Super Show concerts and seeing reaaaaly old ladies and gents watching with the younger ‘uns, I don’t see anything weird or lol in that at all. Just respect to the oldies who can appreciate the younger generations. And I hope to be a cool grandma like them too. Because we need cool old people nowadays. To end this word vomit of a post, here is an Ignis holding up a skewerful of meat, good thing my younger bro (and prolly Prompto-chan) likes taking screencaps every so often. I don’t even like barbecued skewers but if he’s the one giving me a free taste because he has “come up with a new recipeh”, I say “Why not, babe?”

Bahahaha ok I’m logging out.

[monasatlantis]

Review of Dragon Quest Builders 2

I got Dragon-Quest-Builders-2 (DQB2 for short) on the first long Autum -Weekend here in Germany. It kind of became a tradition for me to buy a new game if we have two long weekends available in October and if there are games that I want of course. And I was totally in the mood to play DQB2 so the moment to buy it had finally come. So lets talk about what I think about the game.

1. What got you into the first Dragon Quest Game? I bought a PS4 two weeks or so before the first game that I actually wanted was released and I kind of wanted to test the Playstation out so I  downloaded the Demo of the first Dragon Quest game. I never expected to like it. I have never before played a Dragon Quest game and I also heard the basics of the game were like “Minecraf” wish never got me interested at all. I thought I just play for half an hour or so to test the PS4 and get accustomed to the new controller and that’s it. I finished the Demo (took me 1 1/2 hours or so) and realized… I kind of liked that game? It was somehow fun? I sorta want to know how the story continues? So I bought it. And although it was not like “The best game I ever played” it was a really nice game that I enjoyed.

 2. Lets talk about the Beginning of DQB2, the prolog and the intro! I was kind of confused at first. The first game started with you waking up god knows where in some kind of underground cell and then you straight ran into town and things unfolded from there. This time we started imprisoned on a ship of the monsters and… kind of befriended them at some point after the game took the small work they gave us to introduce us to the games mechanics. And then, despite our best efforts the ship sank. Oooookay? The intro started then. I kind of really like it. I usually skip intros after watching them for the first time. This one I watch almost every time I start the game. I don’t know why. It just really talks to me? Fun fact? The moment Melroth reaches for MCs Hand my Head automatically plays Kingdom Hearts “Simple and Clean” XD After the intro we are stranded on our first Island and met Melroth there who had not been on the ship and of course WE do know who he is. Surprisingly, neither he nor our MC does and somehow even the cult that worships him and that we are fighting with doesn’t recognize him? Okay… What totally surprised me was, that there were like dead people in that scene. When you tried to talk to those people that you previously saw imprisoned in the ship the game tells you that that are just corpses that the waves wash away. And I was like: “Okay… kind of dark?” I didn’t expect that to happen. Overall I like the theme of that game. “Before creation, there must be destruction.” And it really hits the spot of the game? To get the materials for the things you build, you must first destroy things. Also… if the places that we visited wouldn’t have been destroyed, then there would have been no need for our MC to go there and rebuild them? It also fits the fact that our MC, who is creating und building stuff, is close friend with the most destructive character of the game. Also… we have friends in this game that are monsters? Not every Monster is bad in this game. I like that. However, after some more basics and information’s we leave our special island behind to go on a quest to find new materials and new friends who could join the arrogant Lulu, the only survivor of that ship going down – besides MC of course. 3. Now… what did you think about the first world?

 Dejavu? I remembered that the second world in the first game was a world that also had poisonous rain or something? And that it was hard to make anything grow there too. And at some point we planted fruits and stuff there too. It was different, if course, but the first vibe was really familiar. All in all I really liked the world and I also really liked what they did with the storys and the characters there. The priest from the enemys who allowed the special magical tree to live at first and every now and then wanted to destroy it, just to become a protector of it and friend of our villagers? Something you can clearly see in this world is, that the children of Hawgok didn’t think things through. They forbid every form of creation, including to take care of fields to get food and now they struggle to find food themselves, but instead of making an exception (like our Priest Al did) for their own survival, they just mindlessly destroy the fields again, after we build them and filled them with food. I liked how most of the people who were part of the Village sooner or later were mostly converted to MCs new religion because of the fact that they actually wanted to work on the fields and build new stuff. They did that for themselves, even though there were hesitant at first. Overall the Island was really “easy”, but when I got the blueprint of that holy tree I first thought I would need to kill someone. Like: “WTF?! Why is that thing so huge? How am I supposed to do all this on my own? And why the hell is that only Part one of that Blueprint? Ahhhhhh!” And I was so pleasantly surprised that my Villigaers suddenly were all like: “We got this! We get the stuff you need and we even build it ourselves. No biggi. You just go and do theses and that small mission. We are fine on our own.” And they really build that whole thing without much of my help and it felt kind of… amazing when it was finished? That was one of these “This is a great game” – smile – Moments. 4. So what about the second world? Uffff! Even bigger Dejavu. A desert and a bunch of muscle-man falling for a woman and train-transport thingys? Sounds a freaking lot like the third world of the old game. And that world was hard. This world turned out to be even harder. Thanks to the mines, the freaking map of this world was huge. Despite the fact that there was some land under the sun that could and probably should have been explored I mostly did spend my time in the dark mines. Which was really not fun at all. I got why those mine works needed something to rewind after work. Going down there drove me nuts. I really hated it. And whenever I thought I was through all of the damn tunnels, there was a new one I had to find and then explore. Lets not even talk about that freaking temple or the stupid Lava-Cave. This map was exhausting and I needed much more breaks then I did when playing  the first map. And it just never seemed to end? I finally found gold! I am finally done! “Hey… uh… we need that rare blue metal, no idea were to find it. Have fun searching!” and “For some reason I need Diamonds. They are found at the darkest corners of a cave full of Lava and Monsters and heat and some enemy’s summoning a freaking dragon, but I got this.” Ahhhhhh! So much hate! And it was not just that. The second bar I had to build was a freaking pain in the ass? It was so damn huge and the materials were rare and expensive and it took me In-Game-Weeks to finish this thing. I can not tell you how glad I was when I wasn’t the one who had to do the blueprints for the last bar. And all those people! I didn’t know were I should put all the beds I needed for them and the food was never enough. Seriously, this world lacked a lot of materials like wood and stuff. But food… food was a real problem. I was drowning in cabbage in the first world and in this one I was happy with fried mushrooms that actually looked poisonous XD And here I was… having like 20 people (or more…) to feed and barely managed to feed myself. Thank god Malroth never asks for food. If I had to feed him too we would have starved. I was kind of glad to finally leave that world behind. Tho I have to say, when our Golem had to leave, I felt more sad then when Priester Al died in the previous world. 5. Lets play prison break! How was that little intermezzo?

 Boooring! In all honesty, if that wouldn’t have had any kind of meaning for the plot, then I would have wanted to kill someone for that little trip to Prison. I am a creator, for gods sake. What am I doing in a place were I can barely create a stupid pupped and cook some food so I won’t starve? What was this whole “Lets sit on this booring bench until the sun goes down!” – thing? It was really no fun at all and most of the stuff I did there or learned there or even the people I met there were meaningless afterwards? I mean… this is a freaking Square Enix game and we are the good people, how on gods mighty earth could we allow the prisoners to stay there? Why didn’t we go back there later to kill the guards and free the prisoners? It felt like they just needed to add something different to make the game even longer? I like this game, I really do, but it was a tad bit to long and adding a part like this, useful for the plot or not, was really absolutely and definitely unnecessary. I am sure the “How to make friend with monsters” – thing could have been shown us elsewhere too. 6. Now, lets talk about the third world!

Oh my god was this world a nightmare! But a totally different kind of nightmare then the second world or the prison-part. This whole thing was a living battle-field and my MC still is not a fighter. And with Malroths “betrayal” coming closer and closer I was pretty scared the whole time if I would be able to survive this world. I equipped the best fighting gear and weapons and shields as fast as possible but those monsters in this world were so damn overwhelming. And they got stronger and stronger while I still… well… didn’t. It was so damn frustrating. We had a huge bunch of fighters and immense walls and lots of other war-stuff that helped us and that was great. But it was still hard and very, very, very dangerous for a small little builder like my MC. Especially after Malroth was imprisoned. I get that the whole goal of this world was to collect people who can fight and knowledge about how to protect our home-island better from the enemy. Yes, I do get that. But fighting was already a nightmare in the previous game and just because Malroth is a berserker who protected us with all his might, doesn’t mean it was easy with all those monsters destroying the walls for which I had to collect so damn much material for for hours. Not to mention how much harder it was without Malroth later in this world.

I did like the plot tho. Plot was amazing. With all this foreshadowing things finally got interesting there. You know, with that traitor among us for a moment even I doubted Malroth. Not that I thought he would have killed someone, but I thought that someone might have taken control over him again and thus he killed those people unwillingly or even unknowingly. And then the moment were you realize that the woman (Anessa or so?) is either not the only traitor or Warwick is the actual traitor is pretty cool in a way. Because at this point you basically doubt everyone. The thing that tipped me of with him was how he framed Anessa for Malroth getting arrested but constantly postponed freeing him. So I was like: “Okay… he is definitely a traitor too. The question is, are they working together? Are there two traitors in the team that don’t work together and he just frames her to make sure we don’t suspect him? Or is she actually no traitor at all and this is all his fault?” That was made really amazingly. I liked how the plot tricked us for forever. The game was good with that the whole time. I mean we know from the beginning who Malroth was and he was basically a ticking timebomb and you were just wondering when he would explode and he just didn’t? Regardless, the heartbreak was real when he told my MC that he is done with her. I was kind of shipping them and so this really hurt? I really liked their relationship, but this is also why I was a bit pissed that while he was in prison I couldn’t just say: “You know what? If you want my help, free my friend! Either that, or this Monsters will kill us all.” Because at this point they totally needed AND wanted my help so I could and should have done that. Or at least MC could have tried it. She probably would have helped anyway, because that is how she is, but still… And all in all I think this whole Malroth mess took a little too long in the end. The mistrust and anger/disappointment started early in the third world but the conclusion to what was really going on only happened later in the world of Awakening. Were, once again, we were stopped from seeing him, because the game was hiding him. I disliked that. I think MC would have looked for him everywhere – which I did, but he was just gone when I searched for him. And now we are stuck in this nightmare-world and uh… it was kind of enough at this point? But lets talk about this next. 7. The third world… lets be honest! You didn’t see that coming, did you? Hell no!  I though that after the game told me time and time again that I was by all means not meant to fight, I actually still had to fight the final boss alone. First get Malroth back to his senses, then fight Hargon with him – I wasn’t so far off in the end tho. I thought that would happen immedeatly after I jumped through the portal. And then we actually had to build a freaking city full of monsters in a world almost without Materials? Fuck this! This world was the biggest nightmare ever. Because at this point I felt like the game did go on for far too long. Not to mention going around with this car that was so hard to handle. All this cliffs and I couldn’t jump down because my magical-cape didn’t work there. And the map was basically a maze. I was constantly lost and that while maneuvering in that stupid car. Plotwise, the idea with the monsters who turn against all their believes because they want to live was a great idea. But I really think that this world plus the world of Awakening was just a little bit too much. One less world would have done the trick as well. Or the Maps smaller and less missions in those 4 worlds. I wished for a little faster way out of this mess at that point. The game was getting boring in a way. The plot, although so much better and more interesting than in the first game, was not enough to motivate me anymore at this point. I wanted to save Malroth and was worried that saving him might mean killing him, especially with the fact that the game had a rather dark plot this time, but even wanting to know how my little lovestory ended was not enough for me to motivate me to like going through the last world. 8. So how was the end? I would not say it was worth it… but it still kind of was? It was really nice to reunite our Builder with Malroth and then fight the final boss together who wasn’t has hard as the one from the first game – which I skipped in the end because he was too hard for me, so technically speaking, this is the first time I actually finished a Dragon Quest Builders game. The story ends on a good note and I am really happy about it. It could have been a bit more emotional, since we had a lot of great scenes for an emotional breakdown of both MC and Malroth, but I guess some things were just left to our imagination do to the fact that our MC wasn’t expressing her thought and feelings so openly. I am glad that this time, the game did not end with this “This was all just a dream” – Bullshit from the last time. But all in all the plot was definitely much better than in the first game. Like the first game, I did mostly like to play it, but I doubt I do it again. Dragon Quest Builders is a game that you play once and then never again – at least not for the story.

9. Changes from the Previous games? One thing that was really hard on me in the first game and that I really disliked was that fighting was such a pain in the ass. Your character doesn’t get stronger. You can give him stronger weapons at some points but if you have trouble with some monsters or a boss you can not even spend a day or two to level yourself up to get stronger, because you won’t get stronger. Especially in the desert-World I have been struggling a lot in the first game because the every-day-monsters already were torturing me. But in this game, we have our partner and he is a fighter and he is damn strong and he is (almost) always with you. He is there in a boss-battles as well as on your day-to-day-tasks. That helps a damn lot. When he is not around, other characters fill his spot and help you fight.

That the Characters of the worlds actually do some things themselves so you don’t have to do them yourself/alone is also a big help. (Like taking care of the fields…)

The biggest thing besides the fighting-buddy for me was when, in the second world, the people asked for that hugdge-ass-silver-bar and I was like: “I barely found a place for Babs room, were do you think I should place that freaking bar?” And then the characters themselves realized this and opened a new space that I could use. It was amazing. I would have wished for that in the first map too, with all the fields I had to place there. In the first game that was awful. In the game with the sour rain I had to give the buildings a second floor because they asked for so much of them and I didn’t have enough space. So this was really a great thing in the second and third world of this game. I also kind of liked the benefits of those small Islands. I wished I would have realized much sooner how helpful it is, for the missions to actually have an infinite amount of certain materials.

 10. Points? I think Dragon Quest Builders 2 gets from me 7 out of 10 points. People who know me, that 7 means that it did not manage to be as god as I expected or wanted it to be. It was by no means bad, but it just wasn’t god enough.

The game got plenty of points for the story which was, although much darker then in the first game, really good and much deeper than I would have expected it. I loved the message behind the plot too. The Characters were mostly interesting and/or funny and/or lovely. The Missions were manageable, the fighting was much easier than in the first game thanks to Malroths and other peoples help and thanks to the traps and other possibilities to keep enemies at bay. Music was nice enough, the graphics fine for a game like this. The Game-Mechanics were better than in the first game, even tho still not good enough. What really made the game lose points were that some of the world were just too big. The maps were too huge, the missions never seemed to end and still in the end, I didn’t learn half of the rooms that were technically speaking possible. For a game like this, were the story, although much deeper then last time, is rather… easy and with the characters you spend your time with constantly switching it was simply too long. I kept on building and fighting and searching and at some point the story was not enough anymore to motivate me to drive that awful car through that awful world to get my hands on materials that I have to turn into materials before I can actually use them.

The story was rund tho in the end, the relationship between MC and Malroth a motivation and a joy to watch. The building tho was not always as much fun as it should have been. So I thin 7 points out of 10 are still really good for a game like this.