RPGRabbit Is Back After Two Years For the Sole Purpose of Sharing Her Many Feelings About Final Fantasy VII Remake

Look, I’m the person who pre-odered FFVII Remake from Game Stop just for the Shinra dogtags —

–wait…Key card?? When did THAT change? Goddamnit, GameStop.

I feel like I’m the person that this game was aimed to ensnare, which is precisely why this demo was so disappointing.

I loved the atmosphere, the character models, (much of) the dialogue, the dynamic and orchestrated music, and the delight of seeing the little Lego people transformed into actual people. I’ve been looking forward to this game for a long time, because I loved FFVII, and I’ve always wanted a more fleshed-out version of the world with a translation that made a bit more sense (I didn’t actually understand Cloud’s story until years later when I played Crisis Core).

However, I loathe the Remake battle system, and I’m a bit upset about it. It’s worse than FFXV’s system (a game which I would like to play but still haven’t for more than two hours because the system is so frustrating to me). Now, I’m a bit biased when it comes to these sorts of action systems, because I have tendonitis, and games that are not turn-based are very difficult for me to play, even with the controller I’ve modded for the purpose. Final Fantasy games are generally a delight for me, because it’s everything I want in a game paired with gameplay that doesn’t mess up my hands. So the idea of “updating” a classic turn-based RPG that I am able to play so well with this button-mashy nightmare is very irritating. I held out hope for the Classic mode, but that’s barely approaching actual turn-based combat, although I’m going to play through the demo again from the beginning with Classic mode enabled from the start to get a better feel for it. Playing it on Normal was a fairly miserable, slightly painful experience for me. The target-switching in particular is a very tricky maneuver with how I have to hold the controller, and it made the boss fight against the Scorpion tank an interminable, four-try slog.

Good question, Barret! The answer: slowly, painfully, and with a lot of loud cussing.

I’m annoyed at SquareEnix’s (and Nomura’s) general trend towards action systems, and indeed, the general JRPG trend towards action systems. There are only so many ways to mash buttons.

There are endless, fascinating permutations of turn-based systems. The interconnected stat management and optimization present in RPGs is most satisfying and evident when a battle moves slowly enough that you can appreciate the effects.

So who is this game for? Those who have a nostalgic glow for FFVII, as I do, presumably also have nostalgia for the turn-based combat. There are a lot of interesting updates Square could have made to FFVII’s original battle system without scrapping it all together. The kind of people who like action games, are they interested in this kind of beautifully rendered trip back to the 90s?

Hopefully I can get used to Classic mode, even though it just feels like button mashing with training wheels. I physically can’t play the whole game on Normal.

If I wanted to play Kingdom Hearts, I would just play Kingdom Hearts.

RPG Rabbit Still Plays Too Many Games at Once

I’m great at buying video games. I’m even better at playing them. I’m terrible at beating them. Consequently, I end up playing a lot of games at once. In no particular order, here are my current impressions of a handful of the RPGs that I am juggling at the moment.

 

Yep. I am still playing Fire Emblem: Awakening on my 3DS, and I won’t let myself buy Fates: Conquest until I beat this one. The game is still amazing, the characters are still great…but because my pride refuses to allow me to play the game on Casual mode and because my attachment to my party members refuses to let me allow anyone to succumb to permadeath, the game has become a bit of a frustrating exercise in constantly restarting battles. Also, the “Fight the evil empire! Because…evil!” plot is wearing a little thin at this point. I’m going to get there eventually, though…

 

Yo-Kai Watch is my go-to for when I want to game, but I don’t want to have to pay too much attention to it. When I want to watch Boyfriend play a game, I’ll often have Yo-Kai Watch going on my 3DS to play while he’s doing something in his game that isn’t plot-related or super-interesting. Yo-Kai Watch is an adorable, charming, highly-polished little time-waster by one of my favorite developers. It’s a Pokemon game if Pokemon games were somewhat interesting. It has a plot, but the plot is less important to me than exploring the richly-detailed and whimsical city of Springdale, collecting wacky monsters, and naming them after Shakespeare characters.

 

Speaking of Pokemon, let’s go ahead and get this one out of the way: of course I am playing Pokemon Go. I love Pokemon Go. (Team Mystic FTW.) I played Ingress when I first got my smartphone, but I tired of it quickly. Pokemon Go takes everything that was appealing about Ingress and adds Pokemon, which, let’s be real, was absolutely the thing that Ingress was missing. Pokemon Go is essentially guilt-free gaming; it’s hard to feel like you’re wasting time when you’re getting exercise. I’ve walked almost 45 miles over the course of this month. This app is well on its way to single-handedly solving America’s obesity problem.

 

I enjoyed Bravely Default quite a bit, so it is perhaps unsurprising that I preordered Bravely Second. However, I’m not enjoying it quite as much as I expected. Much of the charm of the first game is lost, though this second iteration remains just as polished and beautiful to behold as its predecessor. It seems as if the developers were just trying too hard to make the plot and the characters seem as wacky as possible, and the forced whimsy is falling a little flat. Beyond this, the combat got boring and repetitive much more quickly than it did the last time around. The dungeons feel too long, too repetitive, the enemy mobs too similar. Some reviews have hinted that the story will eventually become more interesting, but I can tell that it’s going to take me awhile to get to that point. This may end up being another playing-while-watching-Boyfriend-playing-a-thing sort of game. Though, as an aside, I have to admit that some of the puns are amusing, despite being over-used.

Question #2, #bravelysecond: With how much giggling did the localization team create as many "Ba'al-busting" puns as humanely possible?

— Yanna Usagi (@RPGRabbit) July 25, 2016

 

This one was a Boyfriend recommendation. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura (which, let me say, is easily the best subtitle of any game ever) is a PC RPG that regularly appears on toplists of the best PC RPGs. Boyfriend tells me that the plot, the world, and the writing are staggeringly amazing. I am sure that they are. However, I’m finding myself having a similar attitude towards this game as I have towards Planescape in that I really want to like and play this game, but I’m having some trouble actually doing it. The dialogue is well-written, the world fascinating and fully-realized, but I just can’t seem to get past the clunky controls and weird combat. Some aspects of PC RPGs are hard for this JRPG girl to grasp, but I’m going to keep trying.

 

This weird little gem is one of Boyfriend’s Steam games. I’m not actually certain that one would describe Kentucky Route Zero as an RPG exactly — I suppose it’s more of an adventure game? — but there haven’t been any puzzles yet, just surreal dialogue options accompanied by dreamlike visuals, moody music, and quirky characters. I have no idea what this game is about, but I know that I like it.

 

 

I have been wanting to play Transistor for ages, as I really enjoyed Supergiant’s first foray, Bastion, despite the fact that I suck at it and have yet to finish it. I’ve owned Transistor for quite some time, but Archimedes, my clunky, elderly tank of a laptop, was unable to run it. Boyfriend, however, owns a custom gaming PC with impressive horsepower, so now I can play the game without issue on the highest graphical settings. (Thanks, Boyfriend!) The game was well worth waiting for. The story unfolds organically as the silent protagonist, a singer who has lost her voice, explores a mysterious technologically-advanced city that appears similar to Bioshock’s Rapture by way of Tron, de-rezzing enemies made of code with strategic action RPG mechanics, and equipping skills that may or may not be the souls of dead people. The battles are tense but fun, the game is gorgeous, and I love the idea of a silent protagonist that actually has a compelling reason to be silent.

 

GUYS. CAN WE TALK ABOUT SKIES OF ARCADIA. I never had a Dreamcast or a GameCube, so I missed out on this game and had never really thought to seek it out. The other day, Boyfriend sat me down in front of the TV, put a controller in my hand, and informed me that I was going to play this game. I was sold as soon as the opening video finished and obsessed after about thirty minutes of gameplay. Skies of Arcadia is charming, exciting, exuberant, colorful, and absolutely everything I want in a JRPG. Many recent JRPGs seem to be lacking a certain unencumbered sense of joy, bogged down in self-referential tropes and overly jaded self-awareness. I don’t dislike that sort of thing, mind you, but I was surprised to discover how much I missed the innocent fun of a classic JRPG. The characters are varied, the random encounters are fast and often challenging, there is an entirely separate system governing airship battles, and I’m genuinely interested to see where the story is going. Boyfriend is enjoying watching me play it as much as I enjoy actually playing it. If you haven’t experienced this game, do yourself a favor and do the same.

 

The last game on today’s roundup is Stella Glow. I have been playing this game in demo form. I don’t usually count demos as “games I am playing,” but this particular demo deserves special mention. It’s an unusually long demo, for one thing, allowing the player to experience the first hour or so of the game, and I have found myself unable to put it down. I’m not entirely sure what about this game I am finding so compelling, as the plot appears to be pretty standard JRPG-fare — amnesiac male hero and cute female childhood/love interest friend must save their village from certain doom — but the extreme polish, fully-voiced dialogue of unusual quality,  and crisp, beautiful artwork make the cliched story much more palatable. The battles are streamlined,  scripted encounters that move along with surprising speed, a rarity in grid-based strategy RPGs. The magical girl “witches” are clearly channeling Madoka Magica, but Madoka Magica is far and away my favorite anime of recent years, so I’m not complaining. As much as I absolutely do not need another video game to beat, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to resist picking this one up…

I need to admit that I have a problem.

RPG Rabbit Is Somewhat Unimpressed by Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae

I was happy to discover that Square Enix has a survey to gather feedback about their Final Fantasy XV demo, because I have a lot of opinions about it. So I’m really glad Squeenix allowed me to share the following with them:

“This did not feel like a Final Fantasy game. It plays like Skyrim meets Kingdom Hearts II.

Let’s be honest, it also LOOKS like Skyrim meets Kingdom Hearts, too.

Now, I’m not certain that’s necessarily a bad thing, as I enjoy both of those games, but it’s not really what I’m looking for in my numbered Final Fantasy games. The battle system was almost fun once I started to get used to it, and with a bit more practice, I think I might actually enjoy it. I will say, though, if there are unskippable quicktime events at the start of every boss battle, then this game will tire my patience quickly. Navigation was difficult, and I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find the entrance to the Behemoth’s canyon every time I wanted to head back there after camping, but after I figured out how to set destination markers on the map, I was able to navigate a little better. A word of advice: if you’re going to have an open world design ala Skyrim, copy one more thing from Skyrim, the quick travel. Being able to teleport to already-visited locations makes an open world fun to explore instead of a boring chore across which to journey.

I might have forgiven many of these issues if the demo contained a compelling story, or even a story at all; alas, Episode Duscae is largely free of context, making it difficult for me to determine how I felt about any of the characters. I know I feel slightly irritated that the entire party is male.

Quite the sausage party.

One of the most compelling things about Final Fantasy as a series is the typical inclusion of strong, interesting men AND women as playable characters. Yuna, Terra, Celes, Fran, Tifa – the list goes on. Your frankly baffling decision to make the party all one sex, thereby guaranteeing that at least half of your potential audience remains unrepresented was unfortunate, but forgivable – I’ve played men in great games before, and I’ll do it again. However, I was in fact more dismayed after finishing the demo.

In the demo, only one female character has a name or interacts with the party, and that is Cindy, the ridiculously and almost offensively sexualised Cindy. When you arrive at your party’s broken car, all you see is Cindy’s butt.

YOU THINK I AM JOKING

Seriously, her NPC model is bent over, frozen, with her ass in the air, and she remains that way until your quest is achieved and the garage reopens. Her model just stands there, thrusting her ass into Noctis’ face. It’s utterly ridiculous, and it made me laugh when I saw it, but in disbelief rather than delight. This is my gender representation?

Also, this is not how boobs even work.

A pin-up girl mechanic in daisy dukes?

Sure, you dressed Fran in lingerie, but at least I got to have her shoot bitches in the face with arrows and intone cryptic warnings about the Mist.

Even wearing inexplicable stilettos, she can kick your ass.

This was a pretty big disappointment, SquareEnix. I’m glad Final Fantasy Type-0 HD turned out to be so amazing. You can keep ogling Cindy’s butt. I’ll be over here, stabbing bad guys with a longsword as Queen, one of those awesome female characters that you’re usually so good at.”

RPG Rabbit Plays the Diablo III Demo, Has a Few Thoughts

I somehow managed to escape the early 2000s without ever playing a Diablo game. Several of my gamer friends recently expressed shock and awe at this apparently criminal lack of Diablo in my life, so when I noticed the demo available on the PlayStation Store, I downloaded that shit. And then it sat, sad and lonely in my game menu until I finally had the time to spare to try it out this afternoon.

I did sink about 40 hours into Torchlight when it first came out, so I kind of knew what I was in for. Diablo-style dungeon crawlers are usually not my cup of tea, though. I find the endless, Sisyphean loop of click-kill-loot-equip quickly boring, especially if it is not accompanied by a riveting story with sympathetic characters. Does Diablo III deliver “riveting”? Well…not really. Diablo III delivers incredibly competent polish – and I would expect nothing less from Blizzard – but my brief time with the game did not inspire me to keep that time at anything but brief, because it delivers little else.

My three most common thoughts while playing Diablo III:

1. Who the fuck is going around this zombie-infested wasteland hiding small amounts of their gold in rotting barrels?

2.  I am dressed like this, but the game lies to me and insists that I am wearing pants.

3. This quote from my husband: “Diablo III is like they took Diablo II and just made it shitty. It’s like they hired a really hot model for their movie and every time you’re just looking at her, she looks great, but whenever she opens her mouth to talk, you realize that she can’t even act.”

RPG Rabbit Plays Some Demos, Freaks Out About a New JRPG Involving Fairies

One of my favorite things about owning a console that can connect to the internet is the capability of downloading demos for games. There is nothing more effective at making people excited about your game than letting them play it for a little bit. Last night, I got to sit down with two PS3 demos, and I had a lot of fun playing them.

I downloaded the Abyss Odyssey demo for one reason: it’s published by Atlus, who is hands-down my favorite publisher. As someone who loves weird Japanese games, Atlus is near and dear to my heart. They regularly take risks to localize and market super-niche, oddball video games that might not ordinarily make it out of Japan. Also, they publish the Shin Megami Tensei games, which I have mentioned before as a deep and abiding passion of mine, and a close tie with Final Fantasy as my favorite game franchise of all time.

I had zero expectations of Abyss Odyssey. I kind of assumed it would be an RPG, as Atlus publishes a lot of RPGs, but I was surprised to discover that it was in fact some kind of strange side-scrolling, combo-based, beat-em-up, platformer thing with roguelike elements. Oh, it also has a really beautiful and unexpected Art Deco visual style that I found immensely appealing. Interestingly, the game was developed by ACE Team, a game developer based in Chile of all places!

I was immediately thrilled that the playable character was not only a lady, but a lady who is dressed in some very stylish and not-super-revealing clothes! Also, listen to Katrien talk:

HOLY SHIT IS THAT MOTOKO KUSANAGI.

YES, IT CLEARLY IS.

Although I couldn’t find any confirmation of the voice actor’s involvement in the game, I am pretty damn sure that is Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. Atlus uses a lot of anime voice actors pretty frequently (especially my personal favorite, Liam O’Brien!), so it seems probable. Score another point for this game!

Abyss Odyssy gets lots of points for style and presentation, but its substance, while interesting and briefly diverting, wasn’t enough to make me want to buy the game. It’s pretty button-mashy, and although it looks like there’s some room for ability customization, the demo didn’t make it seem like a particularly deep system. More of a problem for me was the sketchy, uninteresting story. Seriously, check out the Wikipedia page I linked to above – the story synopsis is literally three lines long. For someone who mostly plays games for the stories they tell, that was kind of a deal-breaker. It’s really pretty, though! If you like fighty games, it might definitely be worth your time and your investment of $14.99.

I have no idea how I missed the fact that this game was a thing. Beyond: Two Souls heavily involves two very famous actors, one of whom is Ellen Page, and I LOVE Ellen Page! She’s so adorable and snarky and nerdy! So I feel like there must have been some sort of intense advertising blitz that I somehow managed to avoid, but whatever, there was a demo, and I downloaded it!

And holy shit, wow, what an experience.

I feel like this kind of interactive experience is ever-so-slightly distinct from what many people would consider a “game,” although I’m not 100% sure where that distinction really falls. Certainly, this is much closer to the “movie” end of the spectrum than a traditional video game with all of its expected fiddly bits like stats and a health bar and equipment and what have you, but I was completely sucked into this demo in a visceral way that far eclipses any movie watching experience I have ever had.

It was…intense. I found myself literally yelling at the screen almost the entire time. “WATCH OUT, ELLEN PAGE! OH SHIT, ARE YOU OKAY?? NO, NO, DODGE THAT LOG!”

I know the character had a name in the context of the world of the game, but I can’t actually remember it now. The motion capture was eerily accurate and the voice acting so good that I was sold on the idea that the digital being before me was actually Ellen Page. No unexpected visit to Uncanny Valley here, no sir, this was ACTING.

All of the “gameplay” consists mostly of quick-time directional button presses, but for all its simplicity, I was absolutely THERE in a way that I found incredibly engaging. It helped that the story is really very interesting, with a lot of mystery that I found myself quite excited about unraveling. To be fair, things do get more “game-like” when you control the mysterious entity called Aiden, and the controls for its part of the game are actually really tricky to use and a little bit frustrating. I actually found that my difficulty in controlling Aiden made the game even more immersive, because a huge part of the plot seems to center around Ellen Page’s lack of control over Aiden and Aiden’s lack of control over itself. After all, if you were a non-corporeal being trying to interact with a corporeal world, wouldn’t you have a whole lot of trouble? Wouldn’t you constantly be falling through solid matter and overshooting the mark of your intended targets because you aren’t affected by friction? I really felt the frustration at having all this power and ability but so little control. It was excellently implemented!

I will most DEFINITELY buy this game. Probably right not this very minute, because $40 is a lot of dollars for me, and perhaps I will wait for a Black Friday sale or for enough Powerup Rewards points for a coupon, but I WANT this game. I need to know what happens to Ellen Page!

Wait…what? A PS3-exclusive JRPG about fairies? A PS3-exclusive JRPG about fairies with a soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu and his Earthbound Papas?

WITH A BUNNY…DOG…BUNNYDOG…CUTE THING?

WHAT ARE YOOOU? I don’t care, actually, just come home with me and be adorable forever!

HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THE EXISTENCE OF FAIRY FENCER F? I love fairies! And JRPGS! And Uematsu! And cute things, especially cute things. The trailer from Game Informer looks really cool. I really, really hope the game is as cool as it looks. I’ve been burned by adorable-looking JRPGs before. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

RPG Rabbit Plays the FFXIII: Lightning Returns Demo

Oh, Final Fantasy XIII. What a weird trilogy you are.

I didn’t exactly dislike Final Fantasy XIII.  In the months leading up to its release, I wasn’t as worried as many fans about the huge departure it was taking from the series roots. XII had taken many unexpected liberties with its battle systems, and I LOVED that game (though, to be fair, there are viera in that game, so I may be slightly biased), so I was looking forward to SquareEnix’s next move.

I was initially unsure of the hyper-futuristic setting of Cocoon. I typically like the steampunk renaissance faire Final Fantasy settings better than the cyber punk sci-fi settings, but that’s just personal preference. While Cocoon never was that exciting for me, the weird, alien world of Gran Pulse was pretty fun to explore, and I got to ride chocobos and steal wool from sheep, so that was cool.

Seriously, the sheep were like my favorite part of the game.

The battle system was very fast-paced and engaging, and even grinding was hardly ever boring. The game was, however, relentlessly linear and oh my God, did I hate every single one of those stupid characters except for the black guy whose name I had to look up because I could only remember it had a “z” in it. “Sazh” is a pretty weird name, even for Final Fantasy. I generally play RPGs for the plot, and it’s really hard to get into a story when you wish that all the characters would seriously spontaneously combust. It was difficult to sympathize with anything that any of them went through. I think this was caused by a combination of overwrought writing (particularly in the constant, dramatic voice over monologues), subpar voice acting (Vanille’s voice was like a flock of excitable birds shrilling in my ears), and uninteresting character arcs. Even Sazh, my favorite character, ended up getting kind of boring after the bit with his son is resolved, and moreover, the son in question was clearly secretly a demon that was terrifying to behold.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

The over-arching plot with the fal’Cie was mildly interesting, however, and the battle system and the general shininess kept me playing. I beat it. I enjoyed my time with it.

FFXIII-2’s plot was so incomprehensible and idiotic that I don’t think I even played through a third of the game. I appreciated the monster-capturing aspect of the game. It was really fun to catch and level up creatures (not to mention ACCESSORIZE THEM!! <3) .

This was seriously the best part of the game.

I liked that the game was more open, but it was frankly confusing. I kept forgetting where I was in the timeline, the story was incredibly incomprehensible even for a Final Fantasy game, and Serah was probably my least favorite character from the first game (aside from whinebag Hope, who is everyone’s least favorite character), so why the hell would I want to play a whole game about her?

So I didn’t finish it. So I don’t really have any idea how the game ended or where the characters eventually ended up.

So I do not know how I am going to feel about Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning Returns. I have read a lot of mostly positive reviews about it, but I find that most reviewers tend to focus on the gameplay rather than story. The Game Informer review panned the game’s story, however, so I am not really hopeful about this one. I’m not sure how much story I can glean from a demo, or how much that story will make sense without having finished the previous game, but let’s find out.

So, much like FFXIII-2, this demo opens with an out-of-context cutscene that I’m sure makes sense in the game, but makes little to no sense now. Or maybe it would make sense if I’d actually finished XIII-2? It’s very shiny. And has pole dancers.

No, seriously. Pole dancers.

There’s a long shot of a night time city that is slightly reminiscent of Midgar (but maybe that’s just the train), and then we see Lightning herself standing dramatically upon a clocktower wearing future sunglasses (because all badasses, even future badasses at the end of time, wear sunglasses at night).

Maybe they are magic sunglasses.

Now we cut to Pimp Snow chillin’ at his mansion with lots of Playboy bunnies, only one gets eaten by an Anubis that comes out of the wall and then Pimp Snow and Lightning fight a lot and Serah’s evil twin appears and giggles. This sounds like a bad acid trip, but this is actually what happened.

Pimp Snow chillin’ in his Pimp Throne.

Opening cutscene out of the way, let’s see what the game is like.

*starts game*

…Wait, is this the SAME cutscene that I JUST WATCHED, only NOW it will make sense because we actually hear the dialogue? Man, fuck you guys.

Well, now that I can hear the actual dialogue, it seems to consist mostly of more overwrought voiceover monologues. The writing is as cheesy as ever. And no, the scene does not make any more sense now that I can hear the dialogue. Again, this may be because I didn’t finish FFXIII-2, but I am inclined to think that this doesn’t make any sense simply because it doesn’t make any sense. 

Snow disappears into a wall, and Lightning has another voiceover to explain some things – Lightning is now the Savoir of the world, which is ending. She is here to save Pimp Snow. And Whinebag Hope is back, talking to her on a radio. Suddenly, another Anubis materializes! It wants to beat Lightning’s head in with an ax. So now I get to play some game.

The battle system is very different from the first two games in the series. There’s still an ATB guage, but the similarities seem to end there. Lightning is the only fighter; there is no party. This is a huge departure from pretty much every Final Fantasy game ever. You control her movement in real time. Abilities are mapped to each button on the Dualshock, and each ability consumes a certain amount of ATB. Once your gauge runs out, the only way to refill it is to change schemata. Schemata appear to essentially be a cross between FFXIII’s Paradigms and FFX-2’s Dress Spheres. Lightning can have three equipped at once, and a press of R1 or L1 commands an instant change of both her costume and her abilities. Right now, I have a choice between The Savior, her default costume, Dark Muse, who wears chaps and a beret and slings ice magic, and the Black Mage, complete with pointy hat. Anubis goes down easily.

I have a few more encounters. As in the previous games, I can see all of the enemies in the world around me. I can attack them before they attack me to give them a HP disadvantage, but if they hit me first, I take the HP disadvantage.  I murder three more monsters before opening the way to the rest of Snow’s Pimp Mansion and unlocking the ability to customize my schemata.

Each schemata can have its own costume, accessories, weapons, abilities, and defensive items. I can also give Lightning different adornments. I trade her beret for a ridiculous feathered tricorn hat and play around with her abilities. I end up switching out the Dark Muse for the Red Mage and the Black Mage for the Dragoon because their abilities sound cooler. The depth of customization is  astounding, and as you amass and level your various abilities, I bet it will get pretty addictive.

I run up the stairs, where I am accosted by a creepy guy in an elaborate mask an a hideous striped robe that looks like it was made out of a set of bedsheets. He offers to sell me things. As it turns out, Lightning’s HP does not restore at the end of battles, and she can only hold six items at once, so some amount of inventory management strategy is a definite must. What an interesting choice for the game to make.

I run upstairs, murder a few more monsters, and discover that I really like the Dragoon schemata. The Charged Strike ability deals a shitload of damage, and Lancet both deals damage and heals Lightning, something that could be critical in a game where HP will have to be carefully managed and conserved.

I chase Snow some more while Whinebag Hope blah blahs at me over his communicator. La la la, do not care, let’s murder more monsters. I travel through hallways full of rubble and caution tape. Did someone bomb Pimp Snow’s Pimp Mansion recently or something? I’m not really sure what I’m looking at. The level design is typically linear and slightly nonsensical, but it funnels Lightning efficiently towards more monster murder, which I suspect is its intended purpose. I reach a dead end, and solve the “puzzle” of pressing a switch on the wall to open a gate. Whinebag Hope observes that the Chaos in the room has spiked, whatever that means. There’s certainly a bunch of suspicious black mist floating around.

I enter the room, triggering an FMV cutscene starring Evil Giggle Serah. She giggles and taunts Lightning, and then summons a Motherfucking Dragon. Boss fight!

The stagger mechanic returns in this game, but instead of there being a stagger gauge to fill, you stagger enemies by exploiting weaknesses. The stagger tutorial helpfully informs me that the Motherfucking Dragon (the game insists its name is Zaltys, but I know better) is vulnerable to magic. The stagger gauge is replaced by a “wave” that looks like a seismograph laid over the enemies’ health bar. It’s kind of cool-looking, actually. As the wave gets more active, the stagger point approaches. After I stagger the Motherfucking Dragon, the tutorial invites me to use Lightning’s Overclock ability, which slows time for everyone by Lightning and allows her to use a bunch of attacks against a foe without it being able to fight back. The tutorial tells me that this is especially effective against staggered enemies. I overclock Lightning and murder the monster after a few successful Motherfucking Dragon staggerings.

I run on and find a door covered in Chaos. Snow is on the other side. Lightning wonders if Snow has gone crazy. But then Lightning  is spotted by sentries and Hope teleports her out of Pimp Snow’s Pimp Mansion. Evil Giggle Serah reappears to giggle and make some disparaging remarks about both Lightning and God. My husband wonders if Evil Giggle Serah is possibly Satan. Her name is listed as “Lumina” in the cutscene subtitles, and the name Lumina does share a signification similar to “Lucifer,” so I’m going to go with that theory.

The face of Satan himself.

And then the demo is over. A trailer for the full game plays (advertising, hilariously, “NEW LANDS!” as a major selling point, probably because all the lands were recycled in FFXIII-2). The end.

Hmm. Well, I have to say I enjoyed the battle system. It’s fast-paced and fun, and I can see an endless amount of fiddly bits to play with in order to achieve prime Lightning costume optimization. Will I buy the game? Maybe? I enjoyed it, but I certainly didn’t feel driven to go out and grab a copy right the fuck now. This, like FFXIII-2, is a game that I’ll pick up eventually if I happen to see it for a good price at the discount grocery store. Which is actually how I acquired FFXIII-2. And then it will sit on my shelf for a few months until I’m really bored one day and I start playing it. Maybe I’ll finish it, maybe I won’t.

I can definitely say that this game is better than FFXIII-2. You can decide if that’s a selling point or not.

RPG Rabbit Plays the Bravely Default Demo

I am a really big fan of SquareEnix, or as I like to call it, Squeenix. I haven’t played every Final Fantasy game, but I have played a lot of them. The game that made me become obsessed with video games was Final Fantasy X, the first PlayStation 2 game I ever played.

When I moved to the dorms at Radford University in 2004 for undergraduate, the first thing I did was buy a PS2. No, seriously. I arrived, I put down my stuff, I said goodbye to my parents, and I went downtown to explore. There was a small pawnshop on the corner, and in the window was a PS2 for a hundred bucks. I happened to have a hundred bucks, meant for buying furniture for my dorm room, but hey, a PS2 is like furniture, right? And as I was an “independent” adult now, I could play video games without my parents breathing down my neck and declaring how much my brain was rotting RIGHT NOW. So I marched right in and bought that motherfucker. I took it back to my dorm room and hooked it up to my TV before I remembered that I needed games for it to do me any good. So I messaged one of my friends from high school, who was also attending Radford.

God, I loved this thing. Years later, it met an ignoble end when my roommate dropped a TV on it. RIP, PS2.

Me: So I just blew all my spending money in like ten minutes because I decided I needed to buy a PS2.

Friend: OMG YESSSS. Come over right now because I have a game YOU MUST PLAY

The game in question happened to be Final Fantasy X. I had heard of Final Fantasy because I was really into anime, and at anime conventions, you will see an average of 1.5 Final Fantasy cosplayers per second, so I was really excited. I went straight back to my dorm room and played that shit ALL NIGHT LONG.

Next to my Atari 5200 and my cousin’s Sega Genesis and N64, Final Fantasy X was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was fully voice acted, had a complicated and interesting plot, and adorable creatures like moogles and chocobos. It was everything I loved about anime, only it was interactive! I was completely hooked.

And that is the story of how I became a gamer and fell in love with Squeenix. Of course, now that I am older and wiser, I know that blitzball is a boring, broken mess, the voice acting is pretty wooden, and Titus is whiny pretty boy. But Yuna still rocks, and Final Fantasy X will always be near and dear to my heart. And I will continue to pay attention whenever Squeenix releases a new RPG, even after the deep disappointments of the FF XIII games.

Bravely Default is a weirdly named RPG that I wasn’t even aware of until a friend (the SAME FRIEND who lent me Final Fantasy X all those years ago) posted the trailer on her Facebook wall. I did a little dance in my cubicle while I watched it, and downloaded the demo from the Nintendo eShop the day it went up.

First of all, this game is absolutely gorgeous. The 3D effects are stunning, the world map is lovely, and Ancheim, the city you get to explore, is insanely detailed. Navigating the city is really cool, because when you enter, you are treated to this amazing long view of the gears and workings of the town, and then when you start to move, the camera zooms in on your character as he moves through the levels of the city. It’s a wonderful visual effect, and I never get tired of it. Sometimes I stop moving to let the camera zoom out so that I can move again to let it go back in. And in my head I go, “Wheeeee!”

There isn’t much to the demo, plot-wise. You don’t get any introduction to the characters, and you have no idea what’s going on or where you are. You are tasked to rebuild Norende, which is apparently Tiz’s hometown, using StreetPass, a function that I haven’t actually been able to use because the only StreetPass tags I get in my rural Southern Oregon town are for Pokemon X/Y from the same two people. But the idea is neat. I believe you can assign your StreetPass-encountered minions to different jobs in the town, building back up after whatever horrible thing happened to it. Luckily, even if you only have one dood to work with, you can slooowly work at rebuilding things. I’ve managed to unlock the weapons shop, the items shop, and the armor shop, and each shop unlocks more items for sale in-game at save points.

The meat of the demo is completing simple quests for townsfolk. And I do mean simple. The “fetch me 6 lizard gizzards for a lame excuse of a reason!” kind of quests. So I’ve been running around the world map, having the same three encounters over and over again. This is surprisingly not as boring as it sounds. The game has a job system, similar to Final Fantasy III or Tactics, and your jobs level separately from your character levels. So there’s a lot of incentive to keep grinding, because every job you level up unlocks more cool abilities.

You can also combine abilities from more than one job. For instance, my Tiz is currently a Ninja. But before I had him be a Ninja, I made him a Swordmaster. So now while he is leveling up his Ninja abilities, he can still use his previously unlocked Swordmaster abilities. There are also Support Abilities that can be assigned from more than one job after you have unlocked them. So there is an excellent amount of character customization possible with this system.

 

 

So you pick your jobs, equip your doods, and then run around on the world map to stirring orchestral music, looking for random encounters. When you are thrust into battle, awesome music with rocking trumpets plays, and you rain down some righteous murder on some monsters. Battle also looks wonderful, by the way, with really nice character sprites and three-dimensional backgrounds that look like they’ve been painted with watercolors. Monster models are also highly detailed and I have not run into any palette swaps yet, although there certainly could be some in the full game.

The battle system is a turned based affair with a twist. In addition to MP, your characters power their abilities with BP, Brave Points. These are a bit like Action Points that you may have encountered in other RPGs, but they work a little differently. Your characters generally enter battle with zero BP, although you have a random chance to start out with 1, much like you often have a random chance to get a preemptive attack. Even if you don’t have any BP, though, you can still choose to spend it, pushing your BP into the negative. This will cause you to skip as many turns as you have negative BP, which sucks, but by spending BP, your characters can take extra actions or fuel powerful abilities. On the other hand, you can chose to have your characters Default, which causes them to skip a turn, but boosts defense and stockpiles BP. This system named the game, and it’s actually pretty cool once you get the hang of it.

So, for example, I am running around the world map when I meet a White Cait and two Venomous Snakes. I am still pretty low level, and I know that asshole of a White Cait is going to cast Aeroga on one of my characters and probably murder them in one hit. So I have Tiz, my Ninja, enter Brave mode, giving him two actions, and I attack the Cait twice. Then I have Agnes, my White Mage, go Default to boost her defense and stockpile some BP in case she has to do a bunch of healing. Ringabel (that is seriously HIS name, snicker), currently a Valkyrie, goes into negative BP to use his Crescent Moon ability, which deals damage to every enemy, and Edea, my Red Mage, enters Brave mode to cast Thunder twice. After assigning actions to every character, I press GO, and death rains down upon mine enemies! Even though most of my characters will have to skip turns after this assault, only one very damaged Venomous Snake remains after all that bludgeoning and Thunder magic, and my Defaulted White Mage finishes him off easily with a whack of her mace. This system opens a lot more strategic possibilities than a traditional turn-based system.

This game, quite simply, looks awesome. I will be honest, I don’t know why it isn’t a Final Fantasy game. It’s got the job system, the classes (White Mage, Red Mage, Ninja, etc), and the spells (Fira, Aero, Cura, etc) like a Final Fantasy game. It’s got the monsters (Cait, Adamantite) like a Final Fantasy game. It is my understanding that there are crystals involved in the plot, as well. Throw in some Moogles and you’ve got a damn fine Final Fantasy game. So I admit to being somewhat mystified as to why Squeenix decided not to use the power of that franchise for this game. Bravely Default has been out for awhile in Japan, and it’s done pretty well. I think this game would have increased confidence in the Final Fantasy franchise after the betrayals of the XIII games and the disastrous MMO release.

Either way, I’m buying it. Tragically, I don’t think I can afford the collector’s edition right now, even though WANT.

It’s not quite as exciting as the Japanese collector’s edition, but it comes with an art book, the soundtrack, and a pack of AR cards. I am happy to see another game using the AR technology. It’s such a cool thing. So, in conclusion, if you’ve got the funds, this game is definitely worth the pre-order. And pick up the demo if you haven’t already! Bravely Default is the Final Fantasy game you’ve been wanting to play, and it’s a game that makes me excited that I own a 3Ds.

 

 

RPG Rabbit is Still Playing the Etrian Odyssey Untold Demo

I was really prepared to be bored by this game.

But then I was sent to investigate a mysterious ruin full of ancient technology, where I found…

…a mysterious amnesic girl in a spacesuit…

…who fights with guns even though it’s a medieval fantasy setting…

…and then a doctor, an alchemist, and a knight appeared…

…and we were attacked by an angry camel chocobo.

This all happened in less than ten minutes, mind you. Oh, and then I found fat bunnies in the forest.

FAT BUNNIES!

…Damn it, I don’t want to buy another game…

RPG Rabbit Plays the Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl Demo

I have heard of Etrian Odyssey and its dungeon-crawling goodness for some time now. It’s been through several iterations on the DS now. Wikipedia tells me that this is the fifth game in the series, and the second for the 3DS, although apparently Etrian Odyssey Untold is sort of a remake of the first game.

I say “sort of” because the developers added a story this time around. This is the first Etrian Odyssey that has any kind of story. When you start a new game, you are presented with the option to play either “Classic Mode” or “Story Mode.” Classic Mode lets you create a party of characters and explore the vast Yggdrasil Labyrinth. Story Mode, however, has cut scenes! And characters! A STORY!

I actually didn’t know this when I downloaded the demo. I just figured out where the demos are located in the Nintendo eShop last night, so I went on a demo binge. I hesitated over this one briefly, because I kind of thought it would be boring, but then threw it in the queue with the others. Because it’s free! Free downloadable demos are one of my favorite things about an internet-enabled console.

I haven’t bothered with any of the Etrian Odyssey games prior to this precisely for their lack of story. Story is a big reason for me to keep playing a game, and a hack n’ slash RPG needs to give me some motivation other than “Explore this dungeon! Get some treasure! Upgrade your items! Repeat ad nauseam!” So even though I love me some Atlus, I hadn’t had a reason to pick one up.

You play as a nameless Highlander.

The game starts out with a really nice anime cutscene, showing said nameless Highlander arriving in Etria. The animation is smooth and very detailed, quite beautiful for a handheld. I still haven’t gotten over how nice the video quality is on the 3DS XL. You see some shots of a burned village, probably the Nameless Hero’s tragic past, and then his grizzled old mentor, sending him to Etria, where he is immediately tasked with the heroic task of…drawing a map?

Yes, apparently a huge part of Etrian Odyssey is cartography, something I never really considered wanting out of a game. Nameless Hero is tasked with drawing a map of the first floor of the Labyrinth, accompanied on this first mission by two level 30-somethings. But first, into the town to stock up on supplies and save at the inn!

You don’t actually get to walk around the town, but instead select places to visit from a list. Selecting “Shilleka’s Goods” takes you to a still, 3D image of an item store, where you are waited on by a black girl dressed kind of like a Disney Native American who speaks in an outrageously bad Jamaican accent. For some reason.

I suspect that reason is “because Japan.”

Even though I appreciate having an actual town to actually explore rather than a static menu of destinations to choose from, the three dimensional images of the locations are really very beautiful and the hand-drawn character portraits stand out like a pop-up book. It’s really pretty cool looking.

After gearing up, it’s off to the forest to draw a map!

The top screen shows a first-person view of the forest labyrinth that you are to navigate. It’s gorgeous, this forest, vividly green, and the 3D effects are very successful at making you feel like you are actually wandering through forest paths. The bottom screen is your map, which you are expect to actually draw with your stylus. This was completely unexpected to me, and kind of an amazing use of the DS touch screen.

Each square you traverse is automatically filled in with green, but it’s up to you to drawn the walls in with your stylus. The lines auto correct to utter straightness, so even though you are actually drawing, your finished product looks very nice and neat. The map making tools are very detailed, with little icons you can drop in and a tool to make notes about features of the area. For instance, I found a spring of water at the end of one path that healed my party, so I marked it on my map and made a little note: “Healy water here.”

Every ten squares or so, you’ll be beset by monsters, which drop items you can sell to the shop that they will make equipment out of. Clawed moles drop soft hides, for example. Beetles drop beetle whiskers. Which Shilleka the Jamaican will make into swords. The battle system is a very simple turn-based affair, which will probably be more exciting once I’m not adventuring with two outrageously over-leveled party members. Each character has a simple skill tree that they can feed their skill points into, points earned one at a time for leveling up.

It looks pretty basic at the outset, but maybe it expands more after I level up a lot. The demo only lets you level up to ten. This first adventure into the woods got me to level five. I was surprised how much I enjoyed making my little map, but I don’t know that I’ll buy the whole game. So far, it feels like the most elementary kind of Dungeons and Dragons campaign, where some generic Adventurers get sent into a Dungeon at the behest of a King, Mayor, Grand Vizier or, in this case, Radha to explore and loot and destroy whatever monsters are lurking about. So while there IS a plot here, it looks pretty boring. And I don’t think I’m going to want to draw maps for the sake of drawing maps for upwards of 30 hours.

For someone who loves dungeon crawlers, though, this is an exceptionally polished example. I’m definitely going to at least play the demo to the level cap. Maybe some more exciting story will pop up in the next five levels. If not, I do get to draw another map!

Man, I never thought I’d enjoy drawing maps.