Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (5)

I laughed when I first read that sentence, because taken out of context (together with my limited knowledge of English) it sounded funny. This is a church of the goddess Tria, because the game was developed by Tri-Ace.

I just remembered I haven't properly introduced Rena to you, as she's the first character to be added to your party; too bad you'll have to wait till I save her from trouble again. Yes, the very first thing Claude did after getting beamed onto this planet was saving Rena from a monster, using his phase gun, which the girl mistook for a 'Sword of Light', and took Claude for the legendary 'Warrior of Light'. Pretty classic, isn't it?

Because of the Dating Simulator features of this JRPG, the relationships the protagonist builds with his companions (friendship with everyone, romance with girls only) affect the ending sequences you'll get: I heard there are more than 80 different ones!

Some more Final Fantasy VIII hate (3)

Let's talk a bit about the overall presentation of the game, shall we?

That was the time when Computer Graphics were undergoing huge improvements, both in quality and popularity; the CG cutscenes in FFVIII were a nice example of that. Compared to the rather raw-looking ones in the seventh episode, all movies in VIII were really beautiful. Too bad that by then I had already overcome my enthusiasm for pre-rendered animations, so those cutscenes didn't impress me as much as most other players, except for one which sported a nice transition from 'in-game' graphics to the CG scene. Still today I don't really like all those CG movies (Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks alike): I guess there's something in the animations which bothers me.

CG aside, the game wasn't that different, technically speaking, from its predecessor: you have your polygonal characters and monsters move over a pre-rendered background (while in towns or other confined places) or on a full-3D map, while battle scenes were full-3D. All these areas got some improvements, mainly because of 'textures' (instead of using many coloured polygons, you use less, but apply images onto them to make them look better). The first result of this move was improved realism (helped by normal character proportions compared to the 'puppets' in FFVII), while the second one was that everything looked shabbier: maybe it was just me, but it looked like there was much less colour.

All these improvements weren't entirely free: I already mentioned in the previous post that the game was slower, and it's partly because of its better 'graphics', although I hated the slower animation more.

A special mention goes to the music department of the game: before I say anything about the artistic quality of the soundtrack, I must make it clear that I hate the choice of instruments in the game! I also didn't like the battle music (it made me feel the game was even slower) and some other tracks, but really, no other Final Fantasy game I've played or watched has ever made the same effect to me. I once read on a videogame Forum that someone had defined the song 'Eyes on Me' (the main theme of the game) something like a crime against humanity. I wouldn't go that far, but for me that song foreshadowed a worrying trend in Japanese videogames; I won't tell which it is though.

Next post will be about playing cards! I'll write it down so I don't forget it.

Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (4)

Introducing 'treasure chests'! Yes, I'm in a couple's house stealing their possessions in plain daylight withouth them minding at all. This is actually a very common thing in JRPGs: the hero you're controlling can freely enter most houses in towns and take useful stuff. Also, did you know that in this game every single treasure chest, found either in towns, caves or castles, looks exactly the same? The manufactorer must be famous galaxy-wide, since you travel to another planet halfway through your adventure and can still find the same chests!

As for all JRPG clichés, there's always a reason for them: this way the player can easily spot useful items wherever s/he goes. It doesn't mean that they don't look out of place most of the time though...

Some more Final Fantasy VIII hate (2)

Let's resume the hate!

Ok, I was screwed with the magic system, but it was actually more complex than that: magic spells could be linked ('junctioned') to your characters' statistics, meaning that you could make your characters stronger by basically 'equipping' them with more and/or stronger spells. It's a lot complicated to explain in a few sentences, so just know that this caused the 'draw syndrome' in a lot of Final Fantasy VIII players, i. e. a player would spend hours upon hours battling random enemies just to draw spells from them and get more powerful; additionally, they wouldn't dare to cast 'junctioned' spells unless necessary, because that would mean having to draw more to get as powerful as before. It's not really mandatory in the game, but I'm pretty sure it was the norm back then: after all, when you play an RPG you tend to make your characters stronger as fast as possible.

That may be a bit extreme gameplay strategy, but I know for certain that I only cast Ultima once (a very powerful spell and quite rare) in my first playthrough just to see how it looked, in order to keep 100 of them junctioned. I don't remember right now, but I think that spell couldn't be drawn from enemies (not regular ones anyway), only from rare 'draw points' which would recharge after a long while (while you can draw spells from enemies endlessly).

In short, to me magic spells were little more than equipment. After all, I found that casting spells were only useful earlier on, when you can exploit enemy weaknesses to certain magic to end battles faster, because in the beginning other alternatives just aren't viable:

• attacking with your weapon doesn't really deal much damage, even if you junction spells to your strength attribute; moreover, you can't enable junctions to all your attributes from the start for all your characters, you need additional Guardian Forces which are found later in the game
• using items for healing is feasible, but they cost money, and you get that periodically (not from battles like in the previous FF) or by selling other items, so why not use healing spells, which are free? Attack items aren't an option either (do they exist? I don't remember)
• summoning Guardian Forces, magical beasts which generally attack all enemies at once with magic, may be useful, and that doesn't consume anything, but initially they take a very long time to summon (spells are cast instantly) and you only start with 2 of them (3 shortly after the start), so you probably won't be using them regularly
• getting low on health to unlock your 'Limit Break', a sort of powerful near-death technique, is a nice option to your regular attack, but the initial ones aren't very powerful, having low health is risky, and the animation lasts longer (boring...)

Oh, regarding the last point, did I mention that battle animations are incredibly slow? Sure, even Final Fantasy VII had its share of slow battles, but this one is even worse! Most regular attacks and spells are quite slow, the initial loading for each battle is long, and enemies always have a dying animation, but the worst offenders are surely Guardian Force summoning sequences; FFVII had very long ones as well, to be fair (I feel they were slightly shorter on average though). But overall FFVIII felt way slower: I blame the designers for trying to convey a more scenic and realistic look to the game, which a lot of players appreciated, but not I.

This is getting too long, see you next post!

Some more Final Fantasy VIII hate

Some posts ago I expressed my dislike for the eighth chapter in the Final Fantasy series. It could be said that a lot of people who played and enjoyed the previous one as their first JRPG would have hated this game just because it's not another Final Fantasy VII, it doesn't have story or characters in common with it (all Final Fantasies didn't, but many didn't know), and it introduces a completely different growth system. I'm sure it isn't just that.

I wanted to put in this post some of my other reasons for hating this game. Maybe it will take more than one post to list them all, but here goes...

First of all, when news and screenshots of FFVIII I was really excited, but only for a very brief moment: some graphical effects shown in the pictures looked great to me, but then I looked at the concept art and started disliking it. Characters, settings, the gunblade (basically a gun with an extremely big bayonette), I didn't really like any of them, maybe because they were going for a more realistic and serious look. In hindsight, I wish I didn't followthe development of this game so much, as I probably would have enjoyed playing it more. I barely knew anything about Final Fantasy VII before playing it.

Some time after the initial information was released, I read that the magic system wouldn't use MP: simply said, instead of using a single pool of magic-casting energy for all spells, you could have up to 100 casts of each spell for each character. This meant two things for me: using magic was going to be much like using items, and the MP-based system was gone. These impliy that going to rest wouldn't replenish your magic-casting ability (as it was in all previous episodes), and the simplest way to get more spells would have been to 'draw' it from enemies (there are other ways, but they're either harder or less efficient). I had played other RPGs before that, videogames and pen&paper alike, and frankly the MP system was my favorite for simplicity and flexibility; it's just my personal preference though.

Wow, I guess this is gonna take a lot more posts than I thought! I'll be back for more.

Simulation and impersonation

A good majority of videogames have the player impersonate a virtual character, which is either shown on screen or is just described with a name and/or a role (king of some country, president of a sports club and so on). This is a way to make the player feel 'immersed' in the virtual reality of the game.

Other games instead provide the player with control over certain elements of the virtual world, from a deck of playing cards to a party of heroes off to save the world; the role of the player in the virtual world is never explicitly stated, or there is no consideration of the virtual world itself.

A small number of games (recently there have been more) play on the concept of the 'player', breaking the 'fourth wall': such games may have a consistent virtual world, but then there would be instances in which some kind of (fictitious) awareness of it being a mere videogame, or there being a player on the other side of the screen.

But in the end, the attitude of the player towards the game is what counts the most: all of the above considerations, in fact, could apply to passive entertainment media, while playing a game makes one more proactive in the fruition of the contents the game provides.

Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (3)

What does 'bonkers' mean? I got the general meaning, but where does it come from?

Anyhow, there he is, your typical 19 year-old beamed onto an unknown undeveloped planet with no means of communicating with his ship. Luckily for him though the place is eerily similar to Earth: he can breathe normally, there's plants, animals and civilized humans (Expellians to be exact) who even speak his language! The only thing that seems to be different is gravity, but I'll explain it later when fighting monsters gets more interesting.

I said 'monsters', didn't I? What did you expect? This is a JRPG after all, the protagonist has to fight monsters to kill the time, otherwise the game would be really boring.