NeoCracker
12-05-2012, 03:19 PM
I think its late enough in the year that just about anything people have been excited for has already come out, (Barring a couple games like Play Station All Star Battle Royal, and P4: The Golden, a PSVita Remake), so I think it's time for everyone's favorite games of the year.
As usual, I shall be presenting mine in the style of a correctly done Top 10, and presumably you uncultured heathens will do your random jumbles of no particular order, or start at your top favorite for some silly reason.
Anyway, first I'll post a few games I didn't get to this year, so Sadly they won't be on my list.
Last Story
Final Fantasy: Dimensions
Code of Princess
Dragons Dogma
Dishonered
To start with, this game year was weak. Very weak. So weak, that the bottom game of my top 10 isn't even a game I liked. Hell, were it not for a recent PSN download, I'd have two games I didn't like on this list, but hell, I'll list it anyway. Just because I have yet to have the chance to bitch about it. :p
Okay, this was easily one of the most disappointing games I've played in a long time. If you know me, you know how much I loved the first Agarest. It was difficult, it had a vast amount of great characters, and a story expanding across five generations. Its easily one of the best SRPG's I've ever played.
So I guess It's easy to see why this game bothers me so much. None of the characters match up, the designs are no where near as cool, and worse off the SRPG set up was switched out for an, in this case, inferior turn based system. Really, in no way does this game measure up to the previous.
So, that begs the question of would this game stand up on it's own, outside of Agarest War 1's Shadow? No. A battle takes a long time, even just normal encounters, and yet the length of the fight you don't really feel like you are doing anything. The characters still aren't very good, and it makes it hard to care about anything going on since these characters you don't like deliver all the dialogue.
After all this time, we finally get Twisted Metal back, and man was I let down by the single player. I loved playing through all the different characters stories, seeing how Calipso smurfed with their wishes. This game has 3 or 4 stories. Mind you, Sweet Tooths was awesome.
The Visuals were spectacular, and his story was great. But really that's all I can say about the game that's positive. I didn't care for the others stories, they were way to short considering that's all there were, and in that regard I feel Twisted Metal 3 is still the best of the series.
The Control Scheme sticks to the usual, which by now feels a bit Archaic, but usable. I'm not much for online focus, so I can't really comment there. Really, it's decently designed enough, it's just nothing I've always loved Twisted Metal for.
All I can really say is it's enjoyable enough. Its kind of Clique, and fate plots can always get kind of goofy. The World maps are really great looking, the gameplay is decent, characters range from meh to pretty good. Honestly the only real downside is the game doesn't do anything great. Just overall enjoyable. Nothing ground breaking, nothing bad.
This game will not appeal to most people. At all. I'll be honest, the story of this game can barely be taken seriously. The combat system is really just pretty good. It's slightly better then the first, but nothing to write home about.
This game is carried on the back of it's simply bizzare and hilarious nature. The game knows it's not to be taken seriously, and runs with it. It pokes fun at a bunch of video game and anime cliques, and is basically a paradoy of those things. It's just hilarious and creepy the whole way through, and I love it for it.
Though Again I stress, this game is NOT for everyone. And by that I mean most people. Just to give you an example, they have a line of Dialogue “I Can taste your innocence” that sounds WAY creepier in context then it does out of context right here.
This game got a lot of flack for it's control scheme, but to be honest I handled the game without a problem, so I don't really see what the issues other people had were. It handled just fine, and felt satisfying when you killed things. So the controls get no issue from me.
Like Suda's other games, there are 2 things that make this game stand out. Firstly is the boss fights. From the Punk Rock Zombie voiced by Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence, to Disco Zombie in Black face flying around in a UFO, the bosses are all wonderfully inventive, and fun as hell to fight.
The Second thing is a strangely bizarre world that manages to make you care about it, even with all the goofiness of the reality. The game's characters and world aren't realistic, and they don't try to be. Yet somehow you get sucked into this strange world and the fate of it's people still matter to you. This is one thing I always liked about No More Heroes as well.
It is, of course, still a Suda game. I was laughing constantly as I played through it, there was never a dull moment.
Though now I get to the negative. This game is way to short. It's another constant flaw of a Suda game. The Length is just terrible for a full priced game. There is some replayability with unlocking outtifts and what not, but a 6 hour play time to beat the game is no good for me.
And the smurfing quick time mini game with Nick. IT's there to waste your god damn time, and is not remotely enjoyable or fun to watch. Though the game is still very fun, even if those two aspects bothered the hell out of me. :p
I was always going to like this game. I love Shin Megami Tensai's writing, and the Battle System crafted by Aksys, a tweaked version of their BlazBlu games, runs smoothly. It has some really top notch writing for a fighting game, and handles very well.
The only real issue with it is it doesn't really do that much differently from BlazBlu, and feels like it really could be an entry in that franchise, and it lacks any of the social buildings of the Persona games I love so much. Mind you, it's understandable given the genre, but still a little sad nothing was included.
If I was more into fighting games, I'm not sure how I'd rate this. I'm not really a competitive player, so I can't say how broken or unbroken it is, so for the die hard fighting enthusiasts, loot to someone elses opinion. :p
Okay, I almost came when they finally revealed the third one of these. 1 and 2 were hilarious and fun, and with Zeboyd games behind the third (The ones behind Cthulu saves the World and Breath of Death VII: The Beginning), it was promising.
The game delivered. Opting for the more Retro Graphical stylings of Zeboyd, we get an SNES RPG era style adventure. The story these games have been building really is top notch. The guy at Penny Arcade are good at more then just 1-3 strip stories, and it comes with all of their wit and humor you would expect.
You can mix up to 3 classes with each of your party members, their base class as well as two others. This gives you a lot of options on how to build your parties. The classes themselves are hilarious, with a huge variety. One of my favorites is Hobo, who can inflict Hoboism on it's targets.
The game comes with a fair amount of challenge, though not as much as a game like Breath of Death, and I always appreciate a good challenge.
This game is best described as Old School. It has a mix of elements of the NES era Gaunltent, Zelda, and Secret of Mana. Really, I play this game and see everything I wish the Mana series had grown to become.
It has that trademark NIS style of bizarre humor and characters that help to drive the narrative. The story, as little as I have played into it, seems pretty basic but serviceable. I'm not expecting some crazy Disgaea like Plot to come of all this, but who knows.
The real crutch is the combat is great. Mid dungeon you switch between your party members, controlling them one at a time, and each party member plays differently depending on the class you have them with, and the weapons equiped. Mind you, even under similar classes the characters play differently, so you still have reason to pick different people to take in with you.
For a 30$ game, PSN download, there is an insane level of customization, and the game seems like it is going to take some time to beat.
I know it's a bit premature to rate the game so high, seeing as how little I've played, but what I've done so far is really fun, but it's always possible I'll amend this to lower on my list in the future. :p
This game is absolutely everything I had hoped it would be. It had taken everything done in the first Borderlands game and improved upon it, fixing many of the issues the first title had.
To start with, they lost none of their ridiculous humor, and expanded on it. With all the new and returning characters, the game is constantly hilarious.
The second big thing is the story. Oh god did they improve the story. You get some honestly surprising plot twists involving Angel, the AI who helps you in this game and guided you through Borderlands 1, and an amazing Villain in Jack. On whole, the story being told is decent, nothing amazing. What seals the deal here is Angel and Jack, and the original cast of Borderlands 1. You get invested in these characters, and start to care about what it is that will happen to everyone. I won't spoil it here, but there are two moments in this game where trout gets personal with Jack. For those of you who know, you'll know what I mean by bringing up The Wildlife Preservation and The Bunker.
The gameplay was smoothed out and expanded a bit on, but on a whole stays true to Borderlands 1. They added enough to keep it from getting stale, as well as keep the games feel the same. Really, this game is everything a Sequal should be.
I will go on to state this is arguably the greatest Strategy RPG ever made, as well as arguably the greatest original hand held game ever made. (This excludes remakes and Ports.)
Firstly, it has Shin Megami's absolutely wonderfully designed characters. Both in art design and personality. No one feels wasted, even in it's large cast. The only character I feel is that lacking is the female lead, I forget her name off the top of my head. Though I notice Atlus has a habit of this. Yukari in Persona 3 I wanted to stab violently, Chie in 4 who I just thought was alright while still being the games weakest character, and the worst offender of all Yuhoo in Devil Survivor 1. But this is an unrelated tangent. :p
The story in this is another really good one. The world is on the brink of destruction with these demons coming, and you are fighting under Yamata to save it. As the game progresses, your interactions with the Mysterious boy and Yamata reveal more and more about whats going on, and all the powers and ideologies at play. In the end there are 4 endings to choose between, all of which are endings you can reasonably see yourself selecting.
And I will bring this up now, Joe is smurfing awesome. He is easily my favorite in the game, and makes one of the greatest references in gaming history. As he walks off to see his bed ridden girlfriend he sings to himself, 'Girl we've been together, for such a long long time~'. That's all you get, but if you've heard it, you know what's going on. :p
The gameplay, much like with Borderlands 2, is a smoothed out and expanded upon version of the first game. Even the system of building affinities with other people has been improved upon greatly. Another great example of a sequel doing everything that it is a sequels job to do.
This is a game I was afraid I was going to miss this generation. And I am happy I didn't. Firstly, however, I will get one quick rants out of the way. The second one I'll make involves spoilers, so I'll spoiler that one and wait until I'm talking about characters to post it.. :p
Firstly, the side quests are both this games blessing and it's curse. It's very easy to start to feel like all these extra quests can be a bit pointless and overwhelming in their shear volume. There are a lot of side quests. That easily makes up the bulk of the game.
At their best, you get things like the quest that starts off at the Satori Marsh helping a Pon in a cave not get eaten, and through seemingly unrelated quests it all culminates to one giant plot expanding to near end game.
At their worst, you have Material Collection Quest Part 1-4 done for random no name for no real discernible reason.
And it can be annoying to track down the guys you need to turn quests into, especially frontier villiage which has around 9 floors to look through to fnd these smurfers. This is where I broke down and just started using a guide, because this gets ridiculous.
That out of the way, this game is absolutely stunning. The first thing I want to say about it is this game is the perfect examply of why Art Design is better then Graphics. The land scapes and scale of this game are absolutely asstounding, and monster design is always wonderful. This game looks better then anyting on PS3 and 360, the only exception I can think of being Dark Souls. I think my absolute favorite area of the game in term of aesthetics is Prison Island. Really this game is chalk full of amazing atmosphere.
Next up the story. Oh is the story wonderful. Starting off as a quest for revenge, as more things are learned the goals and aspirations of the party begins to change, especially when the realize the truths behind the Face Mechon, the Mechon themeselves, as well as Bionis, the world they live on. The plot is full of great twists and amazing moments, helped along by its wonderful atmosphere.
Characters are also great in this game. Your main character isn't as cool as most of the rest of the cast, but he makes for a good lead with understandable motivations.
Reyn as your slightly thick best friend is pretty funny, and very dependable. Probably one of the games most cliché characters, but in the end he's always fun to have around.
Dunban is the guy you get who is way cooler then your main. The one armed swordsman who originally wielded the Monado against the Mechon, he is the seasoned and well spoken vetran. His dialogue is awesome, his design is great, he's very funny when he wants to be, and is bitchin' in cut scenes. You get the occasional thought of 'why isn't this guy the hero?' rather often. :p
I will give the Xeno team some major props for Riki. I feel as if Riki was an apology for the atrocity that was smurfing pupu in Xenogears. He's the games mascot character, but he's actually very funny. If you are focusing on just the plot, he comes across as kind of pointless, but if you do the games Heart to Hearts, you start to feel as though Riki really is a part of the team. He keeps the teams spirits up, and helps them realize what it is that is really important for all of them. I think the game would truly be missing something with the absence of Riki.
On the contrary, there would be very little noticed were Sharla were to just not be there. She's a good character and all, but aside from the arc you get her, and one very short bit just before the Core, there doesn't really seem to be a need for her to be there.
Though now for Melia, the games best character. I remember talking with Wolf a bit, and we both worried that Melia would turn out to be a bit of a cliché' character. She is easily one of the best written female characters I have ever seen in a video game, the only one that comes to mind handled better is Persona 4's Naoto. I won't go into more detail, because a lot of the reasons I like her will spoil some of the story, but If you've made it up to The Core, and know who the last character is, you can unspoiler my next rant, cause it'll involve a bit of Melia! :monster:
smurf Fiora. Meyneth is great, but I was sad she got stuck to Fiora. She is, for multiple reaosns, the games worst aspect. Xeno is above such a horribly clique character. I know a can rag on Xenogears a lot, but they did a damn good job at avoiding this kind of thing even in that game. Fiora exists as Shulks love interest because she's his child hood friend, and nothing more. This is one of my most hated clique's in anything.
Worst of all is what her interaction with Melia leads to. The last Heart to Heart they have is nothing short of infuriating. As Fiora leaves, Melia says 'I really can't compare to her' as if to say Fiora is the stronger character of the two. smurf that.
Melia has had to deal with way more bulltrout story wise then Fiora has. Melia, after the events at Prison Island, has every reason to travel with you to chase after Metal Face. Firstly she has, after this time spent, fallen in love with Shulk. She knows Shulk cares about this Fiora girl, and knows that if she lets him go she will pretty much lose her chance at being with the man she loves. On top of that, Metal face killed her father, and of course she desires revenge against Metal Face and the Mechon for doing this to her and to all of her people.
Despite all of this, she choses to stay behind. The fate of both her people and the Homs and Nippon hang in the balance, and she is needed to help this. Mind you her smurfing awesome brother gets her to go with them for actually very valid reasons, and has a great plan to cover for her absence, but point in case, she was willing to give up all that and realize the good of the whole smurfing world was more important.
Hell, after Fiora Joins, she realizes Shulk is in love with her. So, rather then cause trouble for him, she gracefully stands to the side. Not once does she let her jealously effect her duties or her friendships.
Finally, there is the High Entia turning into the Telethia. She fights against the people who were once her family and friends, people who had trusted her of mixed blood to be the one to lead them, people she cared deeply about. Because again, she realized it needed done. Once again she subjects ehrself to some of the most horrible situations a person in this game has to go through, for the good of those she cares for, and the good of the people of the world.
Don't you dare for a second try to tell me smurfing smurfing Fiora is anywhere near as strong a person as Melia. Whoever wrote this and who ever okayed this needs to bow their heads in smurfing shame.
With that out of the way, the last bit to discuss is the battle system. It's really good. There is a lot of customization amongst your party, and really no character is useless. Everyone can have a purpose in battle, and dependant upon affinities and the skills you select, everyone can have multiple roles they can preform. It keeps combat fresh for most of the game.
It can start to drag a bit near the end, depending on your stratagy. Mine involved by doing very little, opting to quickly build my Talent gauge to keep re-casting Armour every 15 seconds, which invovled me letting my guy auto-attack, and every so often drop a heal. When I developed this stratagy, I felt like I wasn't doing much, but this is pretty late game. So most of my 150 Hours of playing was great.
To wrap up, smurfing great game. It's big problems keep it from being my favorite RPG of all time, but dam does it do a good job at trying, and I can see it at least being top 10, if not top 5.
As usual, I shall be presenting mine in the style of a correctly done Top 10, and presumably you uncultured heathens will do your random jumbles of no particular order, or start at your top favorite for some silly reason.
Anyway, first I'll post a few games I didn't get to this year, so Sadly they won't be on my list.
Last Story
Final Fantasy: Dimensions
Code of Princess
Dragons Dogma
Dishonered
To start with, this game year was weak. Very weak. So weak, that the bottom game of my top 10 isn't even a game I liked. Hell, were it not for a recent PSN download, I'd have two games I didn't like on this list, but hell, I'll list it anyway. Just because I have yet to have the chance to bitch about it. :p
Okay, this was easily one of the most disappointing games I've played in a long time. If you know me, you know how much I loved the first Agarest. It was difficult, it had a vast amount of great characters, and a story expanding across five generations. Its easily one of the best SRPG's I've ever played.
So I guess It's easy to see why this game bothers me so much. None of the characters match up, the designs are no where near as cool, and worse off the SRPG set up was switched out for an, in this case, inferior turn based system. Really, in no way does this game measure up to the previous.
So, that begs the question of would this game stand up on it's own, outside of Agarest War 1's Shadow? No. A battle takes a long time, even just normal encounters, and yet the length of the fight you don't really feel like you are doing anything. The characters still aren't very good, and it makes it hard to care about anything going on since these characters you don't like deliver all the dialogue.
After all this time, we finally get Twisted Metal back, and man was I let down by the single player. I loved playing through all the different characters stories, seeing how Calipso smurfed with their wishes. This game has 3 or 4 stories. Mind you, Sweet Tooths was awesome.
The Visuals were spectacular, and his story was great. But really that's all I can say about the game that's positive. I didn't care for the others stories, they were way to short considering that's all there were, and in that regard I feel Twisted Metal 3 is still the best of the series.
The Control Scheme sticks to the usual, which by now feels a bit Archaic, but usable. I'm not much for online focus, so I can't really comment there. Really, it's decently designed enough, it's just nothing I've always loved Twisted Metal for.
All I can really say is it's enjoyable enough. Its kind of Clique, and fate plots can always get kind of goofy. The World maps are really great looking, the gameplay is decent, characters range from meh to pretty good. Honestly the only real downside is the game doesn't do anything great. Just overall enjoyable. Nothing ground breaking, nothing bad.
This game will not appeal to most people. At all. I'll be honest, the story of this game can barely be taken seriously. The combat system is really just pretty good. It's slightly better then the first, but nothing to write home about.
This game is carried on the back of it's simply bizzare and hilarious nature. The game knows it's not to be taken seriously, and runs with it. It pokes fun at a bunch of video game and anime cliques, and is basically a paradoy of those things. It's just hilarious and creepy the whole way through, and I love it for it.
Though Again I stress, this game is NOT for everyone. And by that I mean most people. Just to give you an example, they have a line of Dialogue “I Can taste your innocence” that sounds WAY creepier in context then it does out of context right here.
This game got a lot of flack for it's control scheme, but to be honest I handled the game without a problem, so I don't really see what the issues other people had were. It handled just fine, and felt satisfying when you killed things. So the controls get no issue from me.
Like Suda's other games, there are 2 things that make this game stand out. Firstly is the boss fights. From the Punk Rock Zombie voiced by Jimmy Urine of Mindless Self Indulgence, to Disco Zombie in Black face flying around in a UFO, the bosses are all wonderfully inventive, and fun as hell to fight.
The Second thing is a strangely bizarre world that manages to make you care about it, even with all the goofiness of the reality. The game's characters and world aren't realistic, and they don't try to be. Yet somehow you get sucked into this strange world and the fate of it's people still matter to you. This is one thing I always liked about No More Heroes as well.
It is, of course, still a Suda game. I was laughing constantly as I played through it, there was never a dull moment.
Though now I get to the negative. This game is way to short. It's another constant flaw of a Suda game. The Length is just terrible for a full priced game. There is some replayability with unlocking outtifts and what not, but a 6 hour play time to beat the game is no good for me.
And the smurfing quick time mini game with Nick. IT's there to waste your god damn time, and is not remotely enjoyable or fun to watch. Though the game is still very fun, even if those two aspects bothered the hell out of me. :p
I was always going to like this game. I love Shin Megami Tensai's writing, and the Battle System crafted by Aksys, a tweaked version of their BlazBlu games, runs smoothly. It has some really top notch writing for a fighting game, and handles very well.
The only real issue with it is it doesn't really do that much differently from BlazBlu, and feels like it really could be an entry in that franchise, and it lacks any of the social buildings of the Persona games I love so much. Mind you, it's understandable given the genre, but still a little sad nothing was included.
If I was more into fighting games, I'm not sure how I'd rate this. I'm not really a competitive player, so I can't say how broken or unbroken it is, so for the die hard fighting enthusiasts, loot to someone elses opinion. :p
Okay, I almost came when they finally revealed the third one of these. 1 and 2 were hilarious and fun, and with Zeboyd games behind the third (The ones behind Cthulu saves the World and Breath of Death VII: The Beginning), it was promising.
The game delivered. Opting for the more Retro Graphical stylings of Zeboyd, we get an SNES RPG era style adventure. The story these games have been building really is top notch. The guy at Penny Arcade are good at more then just 1-3 strip stories, and it comes with all of their wit and humor you would expect.
You can mix up to 3 classes with each of your party members, their base class as well as two others. This gives you a lot of options on how to build your parties. The classes themselves are hilarious, with a huge variety. One of my favorites is Hobo, who can inflict Hoboism on it's targets.
The game comes with a fair amount of challenge, though not as much as a game like Breath of Death, and I always appreciate a good challenge.
This game is best described as Old School. It has a mix of elements of the NES era Gaunltent, Zelda, and Secret of Mana. Really, I play this game and see everything I wish the Mana series had grown to become.
It has that trademark NIS style of bizarre humor and characters that help to drive the narrative. The story, as little as I have played into it, seems pretty basic but serviceable. I'm not expecting some crazy Disgaea like Plot to come of all this, but who knows.
The real crutch is the combat is great. Mid dungeon you switch between your party members, controlling them one at a time, and each party member plays differently depending on the class you have them with, and the weapons equiped. Mind you, even under similar classes the characters play differently, so you still have reason to pick different people to take in with you.
For a 30$ game, PSN download, there is an insane level of customization, and the game seems like it is going to take some time to beat.
I know it's a bit premature to rate the game so high, seeing as how little I've played, but what I've done so far is really fun, but it's always possible I'll amend this to lower on my list in the future. :p
This game is absolutely everything I had hoped it would be. It had taken everything done in the first Borderlands game and improved upon it, fixing many of the issues the first title had.
To start with, they lost none of their ridiculous humor, and expanded on it. With all the new and returning characters, the game is constantly hilarious.
The second big thing is the story. Oh god did they improve the story. You get some honestly surprising plot twists involving Angel, the AI who helps you in this game and guided you through Borderlands 1, and an amazing Villain in Jack. On whole, the story being told is decent, nothing amazing. What seals the deal here is Angel and Jack, and the original cast of Borderlands 1. You get invested in these characters, and start to care about what it is that will happen to everyone. I won't spoil it here, but there are two moments in this game where trout gets personal with Jack. For those of you who know, you'll know what I mean by bringing up The Wildlife Preservation and The Bunker.
The gameplay was smoothed out and expanded a bit on, but on a whole stays true to Borderlands 1. They added enough to keep it from getting stale, as well as keep the games feel the same. Really, this game is everything a Sequal should be.
I will go on to state this is arguably the greatest Strategy RPG ever made, as well as arguably the greatest original hand held game ever made. (This excludes remakes and Ports.)
Firstly, it has Shin Megami's absolutely wonderfully designed characters. Both in art design and personality. No one feels wasted, even in it's large cast. The only character I feel is that lacking is the female lead, I forget her name off the top of my head. Though I notice Atlus has a habit of this. Yukari in Persona 3 I wanted to stab violently, Chie in 4 who I just thought was alright while still being the games weakest character, and the worst offender of all Yuhoo in Devil Survivor 1. But this is an unrelated tangent. :p
The story in this is another really good one. The world is on the brink of destruction with these demons coming, and you are fighting under Yamata to save it. As the game progresses, your interactions with the Mysterious boy and Yamata reveal more and more about whats going on, and all the powers and ideologies at play. In the end there are 4 endings to choose between, all of which are endings you can reasonably see yourself selecting.
And I will bring this up now, Joe is smurfing awesome. He is easily my favorite in the game, and makes one of the greatest references in gaming history. As he walks off to see his bed ridden girlfriend he sings to himself, 'Girl we've been together, for such a long long time~'. That's all you get, but if you've heard it, you know what's going on. :p
The gameplay, much like with Borderlands 2, is a smoothed out and expanded upon version of the first game. Even the system of building affinities with other people has been improved upon greatly. Another great example of a sequel doing everything that it is a sequels job to do.
This is a game I was afraid I was going to miss this generation. And I am happy I didn't. Firstly, however, I will get one quick rants out of the way. The second one I'll make involves spoilers, so I'll spoiler that one and wait until I'm talking about characters to post it.. :p
Firstly, the side quests are both this games blessing and it's curse. It's very easy to start to feel like all these extra quests can be a bit pointless and overwhelming in their shear volume. There are a lot of side quests. That easily makes up the bulk of the game.
At their best, you get things like the quest that starts off at the Satori Marsh helping a Pon in a cave not get eaten, and through seemingly unrelated quests it all culminates to one giant plot expanding to near end game.
At their worst, you have Material Collection Quest Part 1-4 done for random no name for no real discernible reason.
And it can be annoying to track down the guys you need to turn quests into, especially frontier villiage which has around 9 floors to look through to fnd these smurfers. This is where I broke down and just started using a guide, because this gets ridiculous.
That out of the way, this game is absolutely stunning. The first thing I want to say about it is this game is the perfect examply of why Art Design is better then Graphics. The land scapes and scale of this game are absolutely asstounding, and monster design is always wonderful. This game looks better then anyting on PS3 and 360, the only exception I can think of being Dark Souls. I think my absolute favorite area of the game in term of aesthetics is Prison Island. Really this game is chalk full of amazing atmosphere.
Next up the story. Oh is the story wonderful. Starting off as a quest for revenge, as more things are learned the goals and aspirations of the party begins to change, especially when the realize the truths behind the Face Mechon, the Mechon themeselves, as well as Bionis, the world they live on. The plot is full of great twists and amazing moments, helped along by its wonderful atmosphere.
Characters are also great in this game. Your main character isn't as cool as most of the rest of the cast, but he makes for a good lead with understandable motivations.
Reyn as your slightly thick best friend is pretty funny, and very dependable. Probably one of the games most cliché characters, but in the end he's always fun to have around.
Dunban is the guy you get who is way cooler then your main. The one armed swordsman who originally wielded the Monado against the Mechon, he is the seasoned and well spoken vetran. His dialogue is awesome, his design is great, he's very funny when he wants to be, and is bitchin' in cut scenes. You get the occasional thought of 'why isn't this guy the hero?' rather often. :p
I will give the Xeno team some major props for Riki. I feel as if Riki was an apology for the atrocity that was smurfing pupu in Xenogears. He's the games mascot character, but he's actually very funny. If you are focusing on just the plot, he comes across as kind of pointless, but if you do the games Heart to Hearts, you start to feel as though Riki really is a part of the team. He keeps the teams spirits up, and helps them realize what it is that is really important for all of them. I think the game would truly be missing something with the absence of Riki.
On the contrary, there would be very little noticed were Sharla were to just not be there. She's a good character and all, but aside from the arc you get her, and one very short bit just before the Core, there doesn't really seem to be a need for her to be there.
Though now for Melia, the games best character. I remember talking with Wolf a bit, and we both worried that Melia would turn out to be a bit of a cliché' character. She is easily one of the best written female characters I have ever seen in a video game, the only one that comes to mind handled better is Persona 4's Naoto. I won't go into more detail, because a lot of the reasons I like her will spoil some of the story, but If you've made it up to The Core, and know who the last character is, you can unspoiler my next rant, cause it'll involve a bit of Melia! :monster:
smurf Fiora. Meyneth is great, but I was sad she got stuck to Fiora. She is, for multiple reaosns, the games worst aspect. Xeno is above such a horribly clique character. I know a can rag on Xenogears a lot, but they did a damn good job at avoiding this kind of thing even in that game. Fiora exists as Shulks love interest because she's his child hood friend, and nothing more. This is one of my most hated clique's in anything.
Worst of all is what her interaction with Melia leads to. The last Heart to Heart they have is nothing short of infuriating. As Fiora leaves, Melia says 'I really can't compare to her' as if to say Fiora is the stronger character of the two. smurf that.
Melia has had to deal with way more bulltrout story wise then Fiora has. Melia, after the events at Prison Island, has every reason to travel with you to chase after Metal Face. Firstly she has, after this time spent, fallen in love with Shulk. She knows Shulk cares about this Fiora girl, and knows that if she lets him go she will pretty much lose her chance at being with the man she loves. On top of that, Metal face killed her father, and of course she desires revenge against Metal Face and the Mechon for doing this to her and to all of her people.
Despite all of this, she choses to stay behind. The fate of both her people and the Homs and Nippon hang in the balance, and she is needed to help this. Mind you her smurfing awesome brother gets her to go with them for actually very valid reasons, and has a great plan to cover for her absence, but point in case, she was willing to give up all that and realize the good of the whole smurfing world was more important.
Hell, after Fiora Joins, she realizes Shulk is in love with her. So, rather then cause trouble for him, she gracefully stands to the side. Not once does she let her jealously effect her duties or her friendships.
Finally, there is the High Entia turning into the Telethia. She fights against the people who were once her family and friends, people who had trusted her of mixed blood to be the one to lead them, people she cared deeply about. Because again, she realized it needed done. Once again she subjects ehrself to some of the most horrible situations a person in this game has to go through, for the good of those she cares for, and the good of the people of the world.
Don't you dare for a second try to tell me smurfing smurfing Fiora is anywhere near as strong a person as Melia. Whoever wrote this and who ever okayed this needs to bow their heads in smurfing shame.
With that out of the way, the last bit to discuss is the battle system. It's really good. There is a lot of customization amongst your party, and really no character is useless. Everyone can have a purpose in battle, and dependant upon affinities and the skills you select, everyone can have multiple roles they can preform. It keeps combat fresh for most of the game.
It can start to drag a bit near the end, depending on your stratagy. Mine involved by doing very little, opting to quickly build my Talent gauge to keep re-casting Armour every 15 seconds, which invovled me letting my guy auto-attack, and every so often drop a heal. When I developed this stratagy, I felt like I wasn't doing much, but this is pretty late game. So most of my 150 Hours of playing was great.
To wrap up, smurfing great game. It's big problems keep it from being my favorite RPG of all time, but dam does it do a good job at trying, and I can see it at least being top 10, if not top 5.