A Blurb on the Remake of FFVII

The recent announcement of a Final Fantasy VII remake has got me thinking about that classic title.  I have a mixed relationship with Final Fantasy VII.  As Jaconian has said in the past, I think it's one of the most overrated games of all time.  You should read his post on the subject for further thoughts.  However, I have played through the game several times, and when I take a moment to daydream about the games aesthetic, I find myself welling with pleasant nostalgia.  

It's not to say I don't like FFVII -- I do!  Heck, I've revisited it several times throughout the years.  My issue is that, right from the start, it was hailed as the greatest game ever, or the greatest RPG ever or some other expression of the highest possible praise.  And, often enough, this praise game from people who had not played previous iterations of Final Fantasy games. 

At the time of its release, it was the first Final Fantasy on a non-Nintendo System.  I had to buy a Playstation just to play it!  So I was already a little annoyed.  Actually, wait, I was a teenager, so I was actually shocked and betrayed and hurt.  I think I stamped the game as tainted or something, and I became an outspoken Final Fantasy VII critic.  But I do really like it.  

I guess I don't have much to say about the potential remake, except that I really hope for a remake of the Super Nintendo game, FFVI(III) to follow.  Additionally, I want to say that I really like the blocky graphics and rendered backgrounds of the original VII.  I think the characters look like little puppets and are fairly expressive; enough to get the job done.  On the other hand, the soundtrack should be great!

But I get it.  FFVII is the legendary greatest of all games.  Of course this one will get the remake, simply from a business standpoint.  It's not the game that has the most to gain from a remake, but it is the one that is most likely to sell copies.  That's fine.  But I'll cross my fingers for Final Fantasy VI(III)

-D

First Impressions: Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (PSP)

Wow, okay.  I bought Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together because I liked the look of the game, I'd heard nothing but good things about the Tactics Ogre/Ogre Battle series and because the game was on sale when I bought it through Amazon back in December 2011.  I started it up, but then relinquished my PSP to Conklederp since she was just getting into Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, which I had suggested she try out, so that was my own doing.  Jump ahead to February 2013 when I restarted the game as I had no idea where I was supposed to go or what my motivations for doing anything was and I played on-and-off until April.  I don't remember what happened back in April, but I've finally picked the game up again a couple of days ago.

I've actually tried writing this article a few times and each time I go off on tangents about certain aspects of the game which leads to a history of this game, Final Fantasy Tactics and tactics games in general.  But lets get down to things about the game, which is why this article is in existence.

It's a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics.  The look of the game, the character design, the complicated political plots that are reminiscent of something you'd find written by George R. R. Martin.  I don't understand all of the political intrigue and back stabbing, but I'm sure that that epiphany will surface on it's own in the later chapters.  Even the music is composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto (FFT, Vagrant Story, FF XII).

What's interesting and much welcome about TO:LUCT, similar to what was done in FFT:TWotL, is a historical record of sorts is kept in game by a "historian."  This means that I can go back and look through a timeline of important events and watch cutscenes of said events.  There's even a record of NPCs and their backstories before the events in the game take place.  The game is detailed in a way that allowed me to pick the game up after not having played for nine months and I felt I knew what I was doing and why I was making those decisions.

One drastic element that is added to this game is the ability to rewind turns during a battle to have them replay differently.  For instance, you move your mage over a couple of squares to a better vantage point on an enemy who is already being attacked by one of your own fighters.  You cast a fireball spell that accidentally hits your fighter in the back of the head.  Or if you moved a thief to a spot you had thought was going to give you a tactical advantage, but then that thief is gang-killed.  You have the ability to rewind time to any point in the battle.  For posterity sake, the game keeps track of how many battles you won using this feature.

Two very much welcome features to this game happen when you're losing a battle.  First off, your characters do not permanently die.  I found this out during a boss battle and thought that I would give up the life of one of my characters as I just won a difficult (~45 minute) battle.  As my characters timer reached zero, they said something about "living to fight another day."  When the battle was over, they didn't gain any skill points, but they did gain some XP.  The second thing about losing, is that if you are about to lose a battle completely, you can, with the click of a button, retreat from that battle.  You will then gain some skill points and some XP, but obviously not as much as if you had won the battle.

Battles in TO:LUCT are about as cumbersome as they are in FFT, but that's one of the reasons why I fell in love with FFT and why I really like TO.  Conklederp will confirm that my swearing increases ten fold every time I'm in a battle; if it's missing an attack chanced at 80% accuracy or being gang-killed.

Okay, I'm going to limit myself to talking about only two more aspects that I love about TO.

First.  Apparently the music in the game has been re-orchestrated and it sounds great.  Granted I didn't play any of the original releases of this game so I cannot say "how much" better or worse it sounds, just that it sounds very much like Hitoshi Sakimoto. And, and, AND!, there's a music player included in the menu that also has a notation from the Hitoshi Sakimoto or the arranger Masaharu Iwata about the song.  How flipping awesome is that!?  I love that Square Enix acknowledges the music side of the game to include information about it's composition.  This should be standard in every video game.

Lastly, is the "Personality Test" based around a fictional tarot deck, that is supposed to alter (slightly?) the game based on your answers.  I have no information about how this actually happens, but the questions themselves, I felt, put you in the mindset that this world won't necessarily be a friendly one and that tough choices are ahead.  Below are a couple of my favorites.

XVI: The Tower

A Fire engulfs your home.  Whom do you save from the flames?

-My Beloved

-My Child

-My Parents

(I love how this question is worded.  It's stating that all three are in a burning house, but you can only save one set: your beloved, child or your parents, then watch as the rest die).

XVII: The Moon

In a fit of passion, you take your friend's lover.  What will you do next?

-Keep the lover for my own

-Savor the moment

-Put it from my mind

(The added layer to this question is self imposed, in that I already have a fiance.  So in this instance, I knowingly take my friends lover, running the very high risk of ruining my current relationship, what then would/do I do?  No one is coming out of this unscarred).

So after a nine month hiatus, I'm back into this game and I'm really liking it.  There have already been a number of times when the story split based on a decision that I made and each time I've questioned if I made the right one.  Granted I could "go back" to see what would have happened if I made a different decision, but I don't want to know that, at least right now.  I want to live with the consequences of my actions.  I feel that's where a lot of character development (implied or self induced) comes from and I don't want to rob myself of that emotional experience.

In closing, if you've played Final Fantasy Tactics, you will not at all be disappointed with Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

Full Review: GoldenEye 007 (DS)

This review will refer to the 2010 remake by n-Space of the 1997 classic by Rare.  When the re-make of GoldenEye 007 was first released, I had a hard time, near impossible time actually, trying to locate a review for the DS game as everything I came across was for the Wii release, before the PS3 and 360 versions were released.  Everything I found was all about the Wii release, which made me sad because I wanted to know about how the translation to the DS was.  Even the Wikipedia article mainly covers the Wii version, only briefly mentioning the low GameRankings and Metacritic of 68.8% and 64/100 respectively for the DS version and the involvement of n-Space.

This post probably should have been one of my first reviews posted since, I feel like that I want to post things that I would want to read, and a review for a game that I was interested in, but couldn't find, that's something I'd like to read.

So on with the show.

If you don't think that is Pierce Brosnan's hairline, you'e right.  It's Daniel Craig's.  Maybe that'll sell more copies of the game?

The DS remake of the N64 Rare game GoldenEye 007 doesn't feel so much of a remake as it does as a re-imagining and sadly, not a very great one at that.  Believe it or not, the DS is a pretty good platform for FPS' regardless if you're right or left handed: you look around with the touch pad, move with the directional pad or ABXY buttons and shoot with either the L or R button.  I've played a number of FPS on the DS (Dementium: The Ward, Dementium II and Moon) so my general dislike for the game is not related, as one might think, to playing an FPS on the DS.

I'll be honest when I say that what I was hoping for from this game was a slightly revamped and beautified edition of Rare's amazing game.  Instead what n-Space delivered was a decent looking FPS with, among other things, horrible enemies.  I say "horrible" not because their AI was something ferocious, but because unless you killed them with a head shot, they did not go down very easily.  The enemies, whom all looked identical (just to note, but  not really a criticism) would take a handful of hits, stagger then keep on firing.  If you were lucky they would drop to one knee and then continue firing.  

Your life in the game was again represented by the red/yellow bars along with a set of blue bars when you had body armor equipped.  Now, apparently life regeneration is a current thing in FPS games and it is a thing in this edition of Goldeneye 007.  That's something I don't really like.  It almost makes the game too easy as all you have to do is come out from behind a corner take a couple of badly aimed shots, get shot yourself and move back behind the wall to regenerate while the enemy remains stagnant, patiently waiting for you to come out again.  So either the AI is very smart and holding their ground or really stupid and forgot that someone was shooting at them 3 1/2 seconds ago.  Oh yes, and your Walter PP7 has infinite ammunition.  I know that it's done in the Left 4 Dead series, but there you're fighting hordes of zombies and not stand-still Russian soldiers.  Maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy.

Maybe I'm just being too harsh, considering that GoldenEye is one of my favorite James Bond movies and GoldenEye 007 sat unmoved in my N64 for almost nine months so I am kind of attached to what I know and love.  It's true that the 1997 GoldenEye 007 expanded on the story that was in the movie, filling in the nine year gap between the mission in Arkhangelsk and the stealing of the Tiger Helicopter in Monte Carlo.  The storyline too is something that bothered me as the DS re-make didn't do this, but simply took events that happened in the movie and reworked them to be plausible to have happened in a short-ish amount of time, like a Dan Brown novel.  I liked visiting Severnaya while it was still under construction and the missile silo  in Kirghistan before the Goldeneye satellites were launched.  Things that made the original game feel like it took information from a pre-existing book that the movie didn't have the time or money to fit in.  That feeling of an expanded universe/story just didn't exist in this re-make.

Another thing the game was lacking, and maybe I'm just nitpicking here, was the massive amount of playable cheats.  Yes, there were some but you had to purchase them after they became unlocked.  The other "special feature" for this game was collecting document files throughout each level.  With each file you were awarded a puzzle piece to put together an image from. . . something?  Concept art?  I'm not sure.  I only unlocked the tank busting through the wall in St. Petersburg.  I don't know who Activision and/or n-Space's target audience was for this, but it sure wasn't people who played the original GoldenEye 007 or anyone who would play this game.   

The re-make also didn't take the same approach that the original did when it came to stealth.  In the original, ducking behind boxes or walls and taking out security cameras was essential if you didn't want to get into a firefight, while in this game, I don't remember taking out too many, if any, cameras at all.  It felt more of a run-and-gun game.  Maybe that's what they were going for, but then why bother calling it GoldenEye 007?  Oh, probably to try and capitalize on how awesome the first game was.  It's not like it's been done before, right?

I should probably also mention that the game touts a six person local online multiplayer.  That's all I know.  I can't say how well it plays or how fun it is because I simply haven't met anyone else who owns the game to play it with them.

After all that, was there anything that I liked about the game?  Well, the game didn't look half bad and the spoken dialogue was a nice touch, although I couldn't tell you if Daniel Craig or Dame Judi Dench actually did the voice work, but whomever did it, didn't do too bad of a job with their lines.

Oh, and I didn't like that you couldn't duck if you were not behind a crate or box.  Just wanted to throw that in there.


~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Atrocious Humanity

P.S.  To note, I bought this game in the hopes that I would enjoy it as much as I did as the 1997 release AND because it came with a copy of the film GoldenEye on DVD, all totalling something like $24.99.  I decided that even if the game was bad, at least I would finally own a copy of one of my favorite James Bond films.  So I would still like to think that I have come out on top.

Full Review: Dragon Quest V - Hand of the Heavenly Bride (DS)

I just finished Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (hereto referred to as DQV) on Sunday afternoon and thought it apt that I have a post to do today, which was originally intended for Monday's post but I wasn't able to get around to writing/posting it because my sister was in town.  Yes, I'm blaming my sister for my inadequacies as a blog posting human being.

I started this game on the DS maybe six months ago, so around the middle of January 2012.  I had recently completed Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen (DQIV) and wasn't tired of 1990's style Japanese role-playing games. And DQV, is very much that, a typical RPG where you have a main character, up to three companions who all raise levels while completing story elements and end up saving the world from an evil king/tyrant/overlord/dictator who is somewhat one sided.

~*SPOILERS*~(With intentional bits left out)

Monsters & Villains

In these types of RPG's, I don't seem to immediately question why the world is full of monsters. I don't care that there are random encounters or how world economics would work with all these effing monsters everywhere. But you know what, I don't care. I just figure that the world work well enough until Grandmaster Nimzo decided that the Underworld wasn't where it was all at and decided to take over the rest of the planet, there-by releasing a shit-ton of monsters upon the earth.

As previously mentioned, I felt that Nimzo was a bit of a flat, one sided main villain. He was talked about quite a bit by his lackeys, but really only as this all powerful being who will take over the world. So he's not an overly original villain, but again that was fine with me as I was able to keep in mind that this game was developed in the early 90's and came out in 1992; so it's a 20 year old game with updated graphics.

The monster design was very similar to DQIV and had some familiar characters from the previous Dragon Quest games, which I feel is very much a part of the series.

Music

This will be the shortest of the sections. As with previous Dragon Quest remakes, the music has been revamped from Koichi Sugiyama's original score and it all sounds great. That's it.

Gameplay

Like all previous games in this series, it's a top down view in both world map and towns.  You walk around and talk to people.  When you're not talking to people you're fighting in battles.  Battles are fought in first person and are turn based.  There's not really any use for the bottom touch screen, which is kind of sad considering the system it's on, but the lack of a touch function didn't detract from the game.

Story

The story here is somewhat non-original but it's done in a very original way. Wait, what!?

Here's what I mean. The story goes that a "Hero," someday, will arise and save the world from the destructive plans of the evil warlord Grandmaster Nimzo. You start the game with that bit of knowledge. The world is already going down the toilet, but a Hero is coming. Oh, and when the game begins, you're only six years old and traveling with your father who's some kick-ass travelling warrior with an honorable reputation. You find out soon enough that your father is on a quest to find the "Hero," already knowing that he isn't it because he can't equip the Hero's gear (A sword, shield, helmet and armor).

The child aspect was really interesting. You couldn't read many books(shelves) and only understood some words or basic themes. You were often told by NPC's that you couldn't leave the town or enter certain areas, again, because the character is only five.

One thing leads to another and your character and friend are kidnapped and sold into slavery, helping to build some grand temple for Nimzo. Jump ahead 10 years. Your character and friend and another random slave manage to escape to find the world very similar to how it was left. This was a bit of contention for me. Both you and your friend have been in slavery building an evil temple for the last 10 years and after escape, come away nearly unscathed emotionally. A kingdom even makes your friend their king because he was their prince before said kidnapping. Okay, maybe it didn't/doesn't bother me all that much, but maybe I just wish that it did. I'm suspending my sense of disbelief anyway.

So your friend becomes king and you're going back to adventuring, like any good son-of-an-adventurer would. In your travels (by boat), you come across the scenario where you are "forced" to be married. In the original 1992 game, you had a choice of two women, but in the DS remake (as opposed to the 2004 PS2 remake) you're given a third choice, who is the vindictive sister of one of your choices. Just before choosing, I decided to make multiple save files to find out how parts of the game progressed with a different wife. The first time though, I chose Bianca (who was a childhood acquaintance) as it seemed like that's what the game was setting up for you to do anyway. So you're married and like any solo adventurer, you have sex with your new wife and she becomes pregnant, eventually giving birth to twins, a boy and a girl.

One thing leads to another and you and your wife are turned into stone statues by one of Nimzo's lackeys. Your bodies/statues are found and sold to a rich family living on an island. You then watch the game as eight years pass by, seeing your wife eventually sold off again as the rich family seem to lose money because the world is becoming worse because of Nimzo's eventual coming into the world to take it over. Eventually your children and friends find your statue and are able to restore you to your normal self.

While out adventuring with your children and searching for your wife (their mother), you find pieces of the Hero's armor (thought I'd forgotten that bit didn't you?) and discover that one of your kids is able to equip them. Oh, and you also get your "airship" and are able to traverse the entire world now, or at least the places where it can land.

The End Game

After you find your wife and restore her to normal, it's about time to enter the Underworld and kick Grandmaster Nimzo's ass. Which is pretty much all that you do. There's a quest to obtain a key from some giant-ass giant in a bottle (as in you have to fight him from the top of a tower because that's how tall he is), which I admittedly had to look up on gamefaqs because I didn't even know that this existed and didn't know where I had to go to progress the story.  But anyway. 

So you travel to the Underworld, defeat Nimzo. My issue with this battle is a little minor. One of your children ends up being the "Hero" that will save the world from Nimzo. We know they're the hero because of the Hero's gear. Aside from having really good stats, it doesn't seem to play in anyway into the final battle. The child that was wearing all of the said gear, I had casting support spells and then attack spells for the majority of the battle. The so-called awesome sword, I don't think touched Nimzo because it didn't do as much damage as casting a lightning spell. I found that to be a little disappointing.

Okay, so peace is restored to the world. You travel back topside and visit a couple of notable cities from your quest, eventually taking you back to your kingdom where a dance is held. Roll credits.

Final Thoughts

Was this the most compelling RPG I've ever played? No, it was not, but it was a lot of fun. I did really like the age progression, even if it was done in odd jumps. However, how often is it you are able to play the same character at 6, 16 and 24? I also liked how the game didn't start with you somehow screwing up the world or letting out some impossible evil and it's your quest to go and fix your mistake. The world was already messed up by the time your character became aware. And then there's the whole part of the game about letting specific monsters join your party and training them, which sounds oddly familiar, but can't think of what it reminds me of.

Throughout the game, I didn't feel as emotionally attached to the characters as I have in other RPG's such as Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger. I attribute this fact to that while the story was somewhat mature, the world created for the story was not. Keep in mind this isn't so much a criticism as it is an observation. 

So that's really it. I would recommend this game to anyone who has played any other Dragon Quest game or if you enjoy early RPG's akin to the Final Fantasy series. 

I put in 49 hours 13 minutes into playing the game, I think I can say that I enjoyed Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride very much.

 ~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

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