<![CDATA[Eyes on Final Fantasy Forums - Blogs - Wolf Kanno's Crazy Ramblings and Incoherent Statements by Wolf Kanno]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/blog.php/25655-Wolf-Kanno-s-Crazy-Ramblings-and-Incoherent-Statements The Eyes on Final Fantasy Forums are the premier place for Final Fantasy fans to meet and discuss this classic video game series. Join our community today. en Thu, 14 May 2026 07:31:56 GMT vBulletin 60 http://home.eyesonff.com/images/images_neoclassic/misc/rss.jpg <![CDATA[Eyes on Final Fantasy Forums - Blogs - Wolf Kanno's Crazy Ramblings and Incoherent Statements by Wolf Kanno]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/blog.php/25655-Wolf-Kanno-s-Crazy-Ramblings-and-Incoherent-Statements I have other things to catch up with... http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6319-I-have-other-things-to-catch-up-with Wed, 09 Apr 2025 06:53:17 GMT I know I already have a lot on my plate, but I do want to finish a few other things besides writing projects and my various marathons. I like to do gunpla and other mecha themed model kits, and I still have six more I need to finish. I have the old MG line of Gundam Wing Endless Waltz models... I know I already have a lot on my plate, but I do want to finish a few other things besides writing projects and my various marathons.

I like to do gunpla and other mecha themed model kits, and I still have six more I need to finish. I have the old MG line of Gundam Wing Endless Waltz models from back in the early 2000s and I still need to put together the Tallgeese III to complete the set. I also recently picked up the EW version of Gundam Epyon from the same series because GW was my first Gundam series and I have a serious soft spot for all the mecha designs. I've dabbled with the Macross series, but I genuinely hate the quality of the model kits I've put together with them, so I'm probably not going to really bother with them anymore.

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I also have set 1 of the Xenogears models and I really want to put them together, but they are going to require painting and I am not at all ready for that. My one foray into painting Gundam models didn't end well. So I guess I need to work through that minor trauma before I start working on them, especially since I feel painting them before assembly will be the easiest way to go about it.

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Beyond model kits, I also want to sit down and watch a few movies and anime series this year, the big one being Serial Experiment Lain, a classic I never got around to back in the day. I also want to go through Revolutionary Girl Utena again and also rewatch Hades Project Zeorymer. I also want to rewatch Gundam Wing and Yu Yu Hakusho sometime as well.

For films, I'm hoping to watch the original Universal Studios version of Dracula from the 30s. I also wanted to rewatch Bringing Out the Dead and Cecil B. Demented since it has been almost two decades since I've watched either film. I also have two more films planned but that will depend on other factors. I also forgot I owned some of the Lone Wolf and Cub films and Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, so they may also be on the docket because I enjoy foreign and art films. I need to find a copy of Spring Summer Fall Winter...Spring as it might be my favorite Korean film after a Tale of Two Sisters.

Granted, I don't plan on doing this all at once, I'll likely spread this across the year. ]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6319-I-have-other-things-to-catch-up-with Games tha are distracting me from playing other games... http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6318-Games-tha-are-distracting-me-from-playing-other-games Sun, 10 Dec 2023 06:09:24 GMT Since I'm doing a marathon, I thought it would be fun to list the games that are distracting me from actually finishing said marathon.

FFXV ~ MGS: Peace Walker and SaGa Scarlet Graces
FFXIII ~ Breath of Fire 1-3 and MechCommander Gold
XIII-2 ~ Romancing Saga Re:Universe and FF: Opera Omnia

Will update more in the future... ]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6318-Games-tha-are-distracting-me-from-playing-other-games Projects!!! http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6279-Projects!!! Thu, 28 Jan 2021 07:40:05 GMT Oof, I've been a bit out of sorts with my mental health lately, and I think it's about time I do something about that. I've got a lot of balls in the air so to speak concerning projects I've been doing around the forum both past and present. So I'm thinking about tackling a few of them, but with how I've been feeling lately, I want some second opinions I guess. Of the projects I've abandoned, what should I work on next?

Here's where I'm at for the moment:

FFVI Retrospective - Part of the retrospective series I started, I'm currently at the sixth installment. This has actually been started, just needs to be finished, including hunting down all the images I wish to use. It may also surprise a few of you to know I've also started ones for VII and VIII as well.

FFV Let's Play - This may have to wait until my new controller comes in the mail but this is project where I just reached what I consider to be the best part of the game. This one is a bit tough for me though since each session involves a lot of research. In fact I do have enough content for a new entry at the moment so I could get that up while waiting for my new controller.

FFX-2 Let's Play - I got distracted by shiny new things like Sekiro, though making this a 100% playthrough has made it more aggravating than I would like. On the other hand, I am in Chapter 3, meaning I'm about halfway through the game at the moment. So maybe I should continue my suffering and restart this.

FFIII Let's Play - Despite what many may think, I do actually think about starting this back up. Like FFV, I still have all my screenshots for this and it's just a matter or going through them and coming up with some witty writing to go along with it.

WK's Top 100 List/Lost But not Forgotten List - I have four new entries at the moment I could do for these lists. They include a Zelda title, a SaGa title, a From Software title, and a SMT title. I may also include another Final Fantasy. In addition to this I also want to go back and rewrite a few entries on both lists. Mainly do some clean up on the blog entries since I'm notorious for not checking them for errors before posting them, but I also hope to rewrite a few articles I feel I did a poor job going into like Star Ocean 2, Pokemon Red/Blue, and a few arcade entries I felt I didn't due justice to. I may even spruce up more of the FF entries as well.

So of these projects what are people even remotely interested in? ]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6279-Projects!!! <![CDATA[WK's Top 100 Lost but Not Forgotten : Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6265-WK-s-Top-100-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Tactics-Ogre-Let-Us-Cling-Together Sun, 24 May 2020 22:43:17 GMT
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I'm always split on these articles. So many of these games are great and I have retroactively said a few of them made the list, but occasionally something comes along that I really want to love but the game just won't let me. Tactics Ogre is in a weird place for me because the remake and the original are pretty different in some meaningful ways, so much of this review pertains to the remake due to having only played a little bit of the original.
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Set in the isles of Valeria, the lands were filled with strife due to ethnic tensions among the Bakram, Wallister, and Galgastani, but a man named Dorgalua of the Bakram group was able to lead his troops to victory over the others and unite the islands for the first time in eighty years. Valeria was at peace and all was well until a series of misfortune cost the Dyanst-King Dorgalua both his newborn son and his wife. Driven to despair, Dorgalua passed on not long after leaving his kingdom with no heir. Quickly the kingdom fractured on ethnic lines with Abuna Brantyn of the royal court, and of the Bakram group, seeked the aid of the foreign aid from the Holy Lodis Empire in order to secure his rule and protect his people. Galgastani was led by the Heirophant Balbatos who was stopped in his efforts against Brantyn and his allies leading to stalemate in their fighting. To gain more territory, he decided to approve of the ethnic cleaning of the weaker Wallister group led by Duke Ronwey who was quickly captured and became powerless to help his people.
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After the Dark Knights of Lodis begin raising towns and kidnap his father, out hero Denam Pavel, along with his sister Catiua, and childhood friend Vyce begin to plo their revenge against the leader of the Dark Knights, Lanselot. When they try to ambush him and their guard, the group discover that their information was partially wrong. Lanselot had come, but he hailed from Zenobia and was once hailed as a hero when he helped another nameless lord overthrow a corrupt monarch. Being a good sport, and seeing this as an opportunity to make connections within Valeria as a mercenary, Lanselot and his crew help Denam to liberate Wallister's Duke Ronwey, making the trio into heroes for their people. Soon they get more tasks from the Duke as he tries to rally the Wallister forces to fight back from their expansionist and genocidal neighbors. This all accumulates into a horrible choice towards the end of the first chapter that will change the course of Denam's life and tear the trio of childhood friends apart. From here, the story begins to shift and Denam learns the hard truth of war, no matter how much you try to be a "good guy" you'll always be someone else's villain. Will Denam succeed in saving the Wallisters? Why is Lanselot of Zenobia really in Valeria? What does Lodis really want with Valeria? Finally, what is the real truth about Denam and Catiua's origins?
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From just reading the very abridged run down of the first few missions of Tactics Ogre, you can tell this game is really complex in the plot department. This was the second title Yasumi Matsuno made for Quest and the game that really put his star on the map in the Japanese game development industry. After debuting with the RTS title Ogre Battle, Matsuno made some major changes to the next entry in his Ogre Battle franchise by changing both the gameplay by switching to a Tactical RPG format, and by having a heavier focus on narrative compared to the more abstract Ogre Battle. Yet it was also nice to see the team connect the two series together by bringing back characters from Zenobia and finally letting players learn more about Lodis, who were sort of a boogie man in the first game.
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What is really nice is how the game retains one of the best elements from Ogre Battle which is how your choices in game start to paint how the game sees you. The defining choice at the end of the first chapter will largely pigeonhole Denam's reputation for the rest of the game and I enjoy how it changes his character arc from either being someone who is being wrongfully persecuted for their virtues or one who has to come to terms with their crimes. This may be a blasphemous statement for some, but I honestly feel Tactics Ogre has an overall better plot than Final Fantasy Tactics. While I adore Ramza and Delita's dual story, FFT was always sidelining the better human drama for it's magic stones and demons story, whereas the human drama is front and center for all of Tactics Ogre and even when it does get a bit mystical, they save it for the grand finale with a only a few minor hints here and there which I feel worked better overall. I also appreciate the multiple endings and how only one of them actually leads to an ideal ending whereas the other two pretty much end with Denam getting assassinated and the whole war starting over. Again, pointing to the fact the morality of this game falls into the "you're always someone else's enemy" no matter how noble your think your intentions are. What I also find interesting is how well Catiua plays in all of this, and how at the end of the day, the game is really more about her than Denam. Probably why the good ending is the one where she lives.
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If I have to criticism the plot for anything, it may be with Vyse, who winds up taking the path you don't choose for Denam. It's not a bad idea, but his personality switch is a bit glaring depending on the choice. If you go the Law route, he's actually a reasonable and still endearing character who is simply holding Denam accountable. If you go Chaos/Neutral though, he turns totally evil and it's a bit alarming considering what he's like in the first chapter. I sometimes wonder if this drastic change was meant to sort of goad the player into going the Law route more. Yet, I ended up really liking the cast and the deep politics of the region. Matsuno had taken inspiration from the Yugoslav Wars that had dominated the news cycle in the 90s as inspiration for the conflicts. Even some nefarious elements like how some of the more sympathetic factions eventually became just as brutal and power hungry as the forces trying to wipe them out. There is a lot of humanity in the characters both good and bad and the real treat of the multiple scenarios is watching enemies from one story branch become loyal allies and vice versa. Granted, a lot of this is thanks to the new and robust translation from the remake whereas playing the original could still feel flat in places, but it's honestly the best part of the remake for me. I think what helps here is how the game does try to humanize all the characters. Even some named generics end up having elaborate backstories and call backs as you try to take territory. It may be anvilicious, but I like the fact the game tries to make you feel bad for wiping out enemy units and killing certain characters.
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I wish I could say the same about the gameplay. Tactics Ogre ended up ditching it's original system which was a bit closer to FFTactics in execution, though with Ogre Battle job class mechanics, and instead tried to go with something more "user friendly" i.e. accessible to people who probably wouldn't play this genre in the first place. This ended up creating a mixed bag for me personally as the game brought in one of my least favorite elements from Tactics Advance, and that's XP and SP being rewarded at a flat rate for missions. You have no idea idea how annoying I find this and how I feel it halts any sense of progress for building a team, which for me is a big part of the addiction factor. Instead I have to keep mindlessly replaying missions just to level up classes.
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This brings me to the other element I disliked which was the change in the class system. In the original, classes unlocked based on an individual unit's stats so if they had a high enough intelligence, you could turn them into a wizard or if they had a higher kill count than other units, you could transform them into a Terror Knight. In the original this made how you played battles more interesting and made going after stat cards more important. In the remake, classes are simply numerical cards you get from missions, usually from ones where the class is prevalent, and then the class is raised as a whole a la Valkyria Chronicles style, so if you get a new character, you can make them instantly useful by changing their class to one you've been leveling, but there's the rub, it means that new classes are always lagging behind, and since XP is given out in a flat rate, it becomes tiresome to try and level up new classes. The game practically tells you to just stick with starting classes and never experiment with newer ones because it's too much of a hassle to have to stop everything to grind levels for the new classes or try riskier strategies that involve leveling up a class by itself. In the good ending path, Catiua gets access to a really good class late game, but it's virtually useless for players because it still starts at level one, and skills are made way too important in this game. Now, I didn't really mind the game merging some classes together. I can imagine how annoying it would be to waste a party slot on an Exorcist class due to how often undead pop up in missions, so merging them with the Priest class was great. Likewise having the offensive Wizard merged with the Debuff/Buff Witch saves time as well but unfortunately, due to the skill system this class suffers a lot of issues because you practically have to make them a specialist in a single element to get the most mileage out of them. This brings me to my other issue...
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The original didn't really have a skill system, classes had their roles and some had a few abilities but unless they were a mage, they were often just fancy sprites with a different set of numbers governing how you used them in battle. Games like FFTactics popularized the idea of a skill/customization system among the Squenix fanbase, so the game was retooled to have one. The issue is that the majority of the skills are simply augments for your character stats, which doesn't sound bad on paper until you realize the classes desperately need them to function in battle. It gets frustrating how unless a class is ridiculously over leveled, they need accuracy skills if you ever hope to see them hit anything and a damage skill to make it worth your trouble. Had the game simply stuck to giving the classes just some flavor skills to make them play differently from each other in battle for the sake of variety, I could easily look past this issue, but the fact a units stats are so tied into the skill system just makes it a pain in the ass when you combine the new class system and flat rate XP/SP mechanics on top of all of this. It was bad enough new classes start at level one, but since skills are often more important than class levels, even gaining a few levels after a few missions will still have the class too far behind to be useful, and heaven help you if you're dealing with a class that deals with both melee and magic, they are almost always garbage units because you don't have enough slots to make them good with either, so they seriously suffer from this new system. You pretty much have to decide from the beginning to make a character good with one thing and stick with it, which makes the whole system feel inflexible.
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I guess my issue is that this is one of those games where the best way to play is to build a starting team and then just stick to it until the end of the game because too many of the mechanics penalize you for experimenting by forcing you to grind more than normal and until you hit a class cap, you'll never have classes catch up fast enough. Specialty classes are often more trouble than their worth, and since a lot of them tend to be dual red mage style classes, they're automatically less useful than they need to be due to the skill system prioritizing specialization over flexibility. It just made building a team far more of a chore than it had to be. Another annoying new mechanic was crafting. It was implemented as a way to hide all the best stuff in the post game where you can actually grind the same missions for the materials needed to make anything good; as well as serve as the only means to get around the poorly thought out skill system. Your characters gear is restricted by their class and its level. Crafting allows you to build gear that will often have better stats than higher gear but at a lower level cost, so you basically have to be outfitting your whole team with custom gear if you really want to make strides in the game without stopping every few story missions to grind. There is a bit of RNG at play as you start unlocking higher tier stuff, and unfortunately, what you can make is restricted to having plans which only the most basic which will get your through the story campaign is available in shops and all the really good stuff are rare drops in missions or restricted to post-game dungeons.
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In a way, Tactics Ogre remake sort of fully embodies the worst practices of Squenix at the time by back loading the game too much/ Leveling a class is much easier in the post game when you can farm the same easy missions over and over again and several classes and gear are practically impossible to get until the final chapter, and even then, you'll need to grind a better party to get through them. I understand that a lot of the changes made were to help improve the fact the game was built for pick up and go gameplay much like the Tactics Advance series, but like the problem I have worth that series as well is that I find Tactical RPGs are more of a niche and frankly invested gameplay experience, so trying to fix the format for a group of people who may only play three missions a day while they're commuting is aggravating for us who don't play it like that. None of this would have likely been a problem if I hadn't started playing the original via emulation since finding a legitimate copy is an act of god if you don't want to break the bank. I honestly had more fun with it because the game played like the middle child between Ogre Battle and FFTactics, often combining my favorite aspects of each. S that largely hurt the game for me and is a large part of why this game didn't make the list.
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I have a feeling that once I finish a playthrough of the original, that will actually make my list because I feel the narrative and player choice are incredible for this game and you can really see the Tactics team coming into their own with this entry, but the remake just has so many nagging issues with the gameplay that keep snowballing into bigger problems. This game could have saved itself a lot of headaches by just letting units have individual levels instead of classes. Would have saved me a lot of headaches and I prefer how the original sort of made you more invested in your individual units by specializing them isntead of the new set-up that makes it more obvious you should treat your units as expendable commodities. I do appreciate what the remake did with the better translation, additional scenarios, and I actually do like the ability to go back and replay missions from alternate paths. There is a lot of good in the remake and I'm sure most of my gripes are more personal than anything universal.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6265-WK-s-Top-100-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Tactics-Ogre-Let-Us-Cling-Together <![CDATA[WK's Top 100's Lost but Not Forgotten List: Silent Hill 3]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6262-WK-s-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-List-Silent-Hill-3 Sun, 03 May 2020 00:37:59 GMT Is this honestly the first non-RPG on this list?
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Well I fell into the Silent Hill series rather late. By the time I had played the series, the "glory years" were over and fans were knee deep in Konami trying to take the series in a different direction without Team Silent. I was a huge fan of the first two entries of the series, being instantly sucked into the second entry and surprised how much I really enjoyed the first one. So it came as a bit of a surprise that the third entry, which is often regarded as being equally good as SH2 just wasn't doing it for me. It took me close to three years to finish the game, and I seriously powered through the last third of the game just to get it over with. SH3 is ultimately a strange game for me. I can see why fans love this entry, but it also has so many nagging issues that I just can't place it in the same category as the first two entries.
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Silent Hill 3 is the story of Heather, a typical high school girl in [strike]Japan[/strike] the good ole U.S. of A. who has spent an uneventful day at the local mall. The game begins with her having a prophetic dream of an eerie amusement park and her untimely death while being chased by monstrous creatures. She calls her dad to tell him she is finally coming home but notices she is being followed by an older gentlemen who eventually confronts her and reveals himself to be a detective named Douglas Cartland who has been hired by someone to find her. Creeped out, she ducks into a bathroom and tries to escape the mall through the back halls but soon encounter strange monstrous creatures and an eerie woman named Claudia Wolf who acts like she knows Heather and is happy to find her. Soon after, she disappears and Heather finds herself in the Nightmare realm and finds the mall transformed into a dark twisted version of itself filled with the nightmare creatures she faced in her dream. From here Heather tries to escape and find her way home to her dad while fighting through monsters and the uneasiness of being stalked by some unknown assailant.
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Since I don't mind spoiling a game that is almost twenty years old, when Heather finally makes it home, she finds her father has been murdered by Cluadia and that we've been playing as Heather Mason, the grown up baby from the Good ending of the first game. Claudia is connected to the cult that tried to have Alessa give birth to their cult's god, and as her reincarnation, they are now trying to do the same with Heather. Partnering up with Douglas, who feels guilty for alerting the Order to Heather's whereabouts, the two head back to Silent Hill to put an end to the cult.
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The narrative of SH3 is a mixed bag for sure and there is a part of me that feels like the development team had meant to go in a different direction than what we got. On the one hand, the cast of the game is quite good and Heather might be one of the most endearing leads within the franchise, she hits a nice middle ground of being your typical vulnerable horror heroine, but also grows into a mouthy, sarcastic badass that would make Ash Williams proud. Honestly, her commentary on a lot of the weird stuff going on in the game gets pretty hilarious after awhile as she gets desensitized from all the SH nonsense and gets fed up with its bulltrout. It hurts the horror aspect of the game a bit, but it also makes Heather relatable and fun. The rest of the cast are also fairly well rounded though it was a shame that Harry Mason is killed off screen, but he lives on in his notebook he leaves behind. Claudia is the right amount of creepy and psychotic that is befitting the leader of a cult and her partner Vincent is equally sleazy and deceptive. I only wish there plotline had been fleshed out better and this here is the rub of the game.
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The pacing of this game is off and suffers from being a bit back loaded on plot. two-thirds of the game is essentially just Heather trying to get home. She gets introduced to most of the cast in this part, but it doesn't really make sense why someone like Vincent would be there and both he and Claudia don't exactly get a lot of screentime here. Instead it's just Heather taking the most contrived path home ever with her being in a mall, subway station, sewer, construction site, apartment building and finally she makes it home. Most of these sections have a normal and nightmare world as well, dragging out this whole scenario where little happens to move the plot along making it a real chore to get through.
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What is really disappointing is when she finally makes it to Silent Hill, she ends up being stuck in the part of the town from SH2 instead of being able to revisit locations from the first game except the Amusement Park and the final section being a redo of the Nowhere dungeon. In fact, wandering through Nowhere with it's callbacks to places from the first game sort of drives the knife in about the games lost opportunity to have Heather explore a PS2 remake of the first game's locations where Heather could have learned more about her past self, instead the game kind of dodges this issue but I this was not the intention of the developers. According to Yamaoka, SH3 was meant to be a stand alone title, but fans demand concerning loose ends from the first game made some of the heads of staff go this route despite protest from others within the staff. This likely explain why a lot of the connections to the first game feel a bit forced and mostly dumped on the player towards the end. Which is a bit annoying how the Order power struggle subplot is all revealed and resolved in the final dungeon more or less. Would have been more interesting to see Heather explore SH more and be manipulated more by Vincent into taking out Claudia so he can take over. It's the overwhelming flaw of the game being the fact you spend two-thirds of the game waiting for the plot to actually begin and then the disappointment of having most of it stuffed into the last three areas of the game.
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On the gameplay front, SH3 takes more cues from the first game than the second. While many of the monsters in SH2 are fairly iconic, they were also pretty passive for the most part and often fell into the Resident Evil Zombie issue where you would realize it was often more practical and easier to just run past everything than waste any ammo or effort on killing them. SH3 on the other hand tries to make combat a bit more involving with the enemy A.I. being a bit more aggressive and more enemy types designed to force the player into confronting them. Enemies like the lumbering Closer and Insane Cancer will often block Heather's path and can soak up quite a beating. Double Heads and Pendulums are incredibly aggressive and will make short work of Heather if they are not dealt with, and the sexy Nurse monsters are back from SH2 and now have guns, making them a much bigger threat. The game introduces more weapons to use, and has now introduced new mechanics like side stepping and the slowest and most useless block move I've ever seen in a game short of Crisis Core.
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What's funny about the combat is how the game sort of jerks the player around with it, as getting the games bad ending involves killing most monsters you encounter over the course of two playthroughs, which feels a bit discouraging considering the heavier emphasis on combat. Whereas unlocking the game's hilarious UFO ending involves killing as 31 enemies with the Heather/Sexy Beam attack you get from her Sailor Moon style costume transformation before reaching her apartment. Combat overall is not terrible fun, but that's the norm of this franchise in general. Of anything, the more aggressive enemies and roadblock types that appear everywhere are far more annoying than rewarding. While the combat in the first two games is terrible, it was easy enough to avoid enemies that combat never became aggravating, whereas I feel SH3 makes it unavoidable without putting in a lot of effort. So combat does drag the game down since you're forced to do it more often. On the bright side, the puzzles in the game are still fun and mind twisty. There are a few that will have you screaming bloody murder as you look up a guide, but overall the game doesn't feel as backtrack heavy as other entries outside of the Mall and Nowhere dungeons.
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The other area that hurts SH3 is its stuffy linear nature. Heather doesn't even make it to Silent Hill until almost 2/3rds of the way in and up until then the game is a bit of a linear slog. While the individual locations certainly maintain the series usual feel and are fully explorable and require backtracking for puzzles, the lack of an open area to "cleanse the palette" so to speak, hurts the game overall. It's difficult to maintain tension constantly and eventually you just get exhausted instead and I feel that played a large part in why I kept putting the game down because I couldn't be bothered to maintain the heightened tension it asked for and it made coming back more difficult cause I needed to build it back up. It's sort of like watching a horror movie where the music swells as though something happens and then instead of either fulfilling the excitement or doing a fake out before the actual reveal, it just keeps going for another ten minutes. By the time the punchline gets there, you're too exhausted to care, and that's what the level design of the game ultimately feels like. It would have been nice to have a few more breather spots within locations before going all Otherworld on the player.

Of course people play these games for the horror and atmosphere of it all. Here SH3 really doesn't disappoint. We move from Jame's Otherworld of drowning and water back to a blood and rust design from the first game, but it's much more visceral and filled with even more sexual imagery than SH2. The Otherworld emphasizes blood and bodily flesh more than the one from SH1. Womb level doesn't even begin to describe some of the locations. This plays into the heavier emphasis on the type of horror specific to women that the team was going for as the center of their design. There are themes of unwanted pregnancy, body image, and most of all stalking as centers of the game's horror and it's female protagonist. James' enemies often had a heavy emphasis on sex and disease symbolizing James's hidden sexual desires for his ill wife. In SH3, many of the humanoid monsters are distorted creatures resembling body image issues. Insane Cancers bear a resemblance to the Venus of Willendorf and the Closer wears a dress based of Aleesa's old outfit and may even represent her abusive mother. Another running theme is stalking which shows up in several dungeons. The subway has this really cool sequence where the camera switches to the perspective of someone watching Heather that is very eerie and the Brookhaven Hospital has an entire puzzle based around a patient named Stanley Coleman who leaves behind letters and dolls speaking of his obsession with Heather.
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The ultimate form this theme takes is with the game's resident monster Valtiel who takes on a similar role to Pyramid Head acting as a recurring figure that is deeply connected to the the main characters connection to Silent Hill. Valtiel is never fought, nor is he very antagonistic like PH was, instead he is an eerie figure that constantly shows up and quietly stalks Heather, usually caught doing some kind of eerie act that can usually be best described as "violation" though not necessarily violent or as graphic as PH was in SH2. I especially like how sometimes when Heather dies, you'll see a cutscene where Valtiel drags her body away into darkness. Really creepy and sinister. The feel of the game is certainly unsettling and keeps you on your toes with lots of memorable sequences like the the roller coaster, the subway, and the mirror room in the hospital. Hell, even the haunted mansion in the Amusement Park was pretty fun until you get to the awful end section where you're chased by a red light that instant kills you. In fact, SH3 has a high number of instant kill sequences where not acting fast enough will see poor Heather get murdered in no second flat. Kind of amusing the first time it happens, a bit annoying and repetitive around the fifth time the game pulls it on you and especially aggravating on the sequences that are easy to screw up.
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Finally, to complete the atmosphere we have Akira Yamaoka's amazing soundtrack with wonderful vocal styling from Mary Elizabeth McGlynn who also voiced Claudia. The soundtrack is easily on par with SH2's and flips back and forth from the series trademark industrial sound for the tense moments as well as more quiet and jazzier pieces to punctuate the powerful character moments in cutscenes. I was so happy that the PS2 version actually came with the soundtrack because I ended up buying SH2's after I finished that game. The music works beautifully with the overall game helping to strengthen the horror aspect while also just being a fantastic listen on its own with tracks like Lost Carol, End of Small Sanctuary, and Please Love Me...Once More to name a few. It's real obvious that Yamaoka hit his stride with this entry and solidified the overall sound of the series. His use of industrial and more contemporary styles works really well despite the strange disconnect. Honestly, even if you have no desire to play the game and simply like good music, I'd recommend this soundtrack to people.
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Overall, I found SH3 to fun, if a little disappointing. This is certainly a game where I wish I liked it more cause I love the cast and atmosphere but it just often felt like the game was taking too long to make it's point. None of this is helped by a stuffy design and trying to make the least likable aspect of the game, the combat, more important. Maybe I'll be able to come back to this and discover why it's so well loved, and I still do enjoy it, just not as much as the first two. I still have the fourth entry to play, so who knows how that experience may change my evaluation.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6262-WK-s-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-List-Silent-Hill-3 <![CDATA[WK's Top 100 Lost But Not Forgotten: SaGa Frontier 2]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6260-WK-s-Top-100-Lost-But-Not-Forgotten-SaGa-Frontier-2 Sun, 05 Apr 2020 01:32:23 GMT I was having a serious reservation about whether I was going to add this to my Top 100 list or place it here. I decided it would go here for now, but part of me feels it could be like Demon's Souls and make the jump to My Top 100.

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SaGa is a weird franchise. A JRPG series made for enthusiast who feel they've seen it all. From the Gameboy entries where you built a ragtag group filled with robots and monster to climb a tower/tree to visit radically different worlds that span classic medieval settings, to destroyed Tokyo, and even Edo era Japan. The Romancing SaGa series drove it into a new direction with the introduction of randomly sparking techs in battles, to choosing among eight different heroes to go on an open world quest that eventually leads to saving the world. If you go into this franchise expecting Final Fantasy because of the way the game's look, you'll be in for a serious wake up call.
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Granted, even SaGa has its fair share of odd ducks in the franchise with the third Gameboy installment being helmed by a different team, and thus coming across as more conventional than most entries. All the way to the opposite spectrum of Unlimited Saga, which tried so many new elements that the game to this day is still considered to be a franchise killer. SaGa Frontier 2 is another odd man out among the franchise, bearing more in common with the second Romancing SaGa title as opposed to SaGa Frontier 1, which contined on perfecting the "choose among eight characters" style that was introduced in RS1 and refined in RS3. Instead, the weird element of SaGa Frontier 2 is that it is one of the more story driven entries of the series and tells a tale that spans almost a century of time. While it maintains the series tradition of loads of characters, the tale of SaGa Frontier 2 follows two men who end up changing Sandail forever in different ways.
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SaGa Frontier 2 is a generational story spanning close to a hundred years in the land of Sandail. This is a world permeated by a force called Anima which every living thing is said to possess. Anima allows people to use magic, and is best transmuted through natural materials like wood and stone. Ancient civilizations capitalized on this power and developed Quells. These are weapons or artifacts that have an almost unlimited supply of Anima harnessed into it and made of materials that will never deteriorate. Yet said civilizations eventually collapsed for unknown reasons, and left behind the megaliths which still house great Anima power that attract monsters and adventurers alike. Those who make a living combing these old husks in search of Quells are called Diggers, but after centuries, all but the most dangerous of places have been excavated.
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The Kingdom of Finney, led by Gustave XII, has been at war with the region of Otto, led by the Marquis Cantal of Otto. When news breaks out that his wife Sophia has given birth to his first son, he races home to see his new heir, and names him Gustave XIII. At the age of seven, Gustave XIII undergoes the Firebrand Ceremony where the coming heir of the kingdom touches the Firebrand Quell and ignite its Fire Anima to prove they are worthy. Despite being a simple formality, Gustave XIII fails the ceremony and shorty after, its revealed that he was born with no Anima to speak of, making him a rare muggle in a world of wizards. Angered and distraught by the shame, his father disinherits Gustave XIII and has him banished from the kingdom. Unable to cope with the lost of her firstborn, Queen Sophie chooses to go with her son in exile to the Kingdom of Jade. The two live in poverty for several years and Gustave XIII grows to be a restless and angry fellow due to the taunting he receives for his condition. His His reckless behavior and foul temperament only get worst after the preventable death of his mother, and he vows revenge against his father and the world for casting him aside. To channel his anger, he becomes a blacksmith apprentice in hit teens and learns about Steel, a powerful metal that is stronger than most weapons made from natural material, but is shunned by most warriors due to its incompatibility with Anima use. Gustave makes himself a steel sword, and uses his mother's good connections with the Jade family to enter in the service of the Kingdom of Wade, where he begins to plot his political and military ambitions. His story unfolds to show him as a fantasy counterpart to Alexander the Great as he eventually creates one of the largest empires in Sandail's history.
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Meanwhile, the other tale to tell involves a young Digger named Wil Knights, who is now starting on his own in the business. He was raised by his aunt and uncle after the mysterious death of his parents from a expedition to a far off megalith. His journey to strike it rich eventually has him confront the mystery surrounding his parents, their former partner Alexi, and a mysterious Quell known as the Egg. His journey takes him across the lands where he does eventually strike it rich, but soon comes into confrontation with the Egg which proves to be no ordinary Quell. The Egg possesses sentience and may have orchestrated the terrible events surrounding the Knights family life. Eventually his battle with the Egg will be picked up by his descendants including his son Rich, and granddaughter Virginia. The conflict with the Egg eventually crosses over into the historical drama unfolding in Gustave's life, and the entire world of Sandail will eventually become embroiled in a war that has far greater stakes than most people know.
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Interspersed between these two characters are a few smaller tales connected to both characters, though their stories are relegated as small one note chapters. Some of these chapters come in the form of side characters telling their own small personal stories like Nebelstern, stories pertaining to some of Wil's Digger companions, or one involving an assassin named Johan who becomes Gustave XIII's bodyguard. The game has about 22 playable characters, though only Wil and Ginny ever assemble a full party. The game basically takes you to a menu to choose to play through historical events within Sandail's history. Completing these events, and also talking to certain NPCs, will unlock more events to watch as you see the history of these two men unfold. Gustave's story is far more story driven with only a few dungeons, and being incredibly cutscene heavy as you deal with political machinations. His unique element are the returning war battle scenarios from RS3, though in this game they take on a grid style turn based mechanic not unlike the ones seen in Suikoden II, with a little of Suikoden III's design as well.
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Wil's plot is a bit more straightforward and only gets complicated once you reach the third generation, and start crossing over into Gustave's political mess up plot. With that said, Wil's scenario is also the slowest to take off. His first chapter begins with his first expedition, which has him assemble his first team, and check out his first ruins with little fanfare. While the mystery of the Egg starts making his tale interesting, it sort of resolves itself early before coming back in a vengeance for the last third of his scenario. Between the main plot with the Egg, he just has some minor misadventures that range from pretty boring, to really good ones like his travel north with another Digger named Wil that takes you to your first real Megaltih and first exposure to how crazy and dangerous these places can be. Wil's scenario is more dungeon focus and he gets access to having a full party, and all of the elements of the battle system like magic.
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There is a very heavy Final Fantasy Tactics flavor to Gustave's scenario as he deals with politics and conquering foreign lands in his quest to forge his own kingdom. The only real problem with his scenario is that the plot is a bit muddled. Part of the issue is the stilted writing, which may be due to a poor translation, but experience has also shown me that Kawazu has never been as interested in writing linear story pieces. The biggest issue to this is due to a lot of important details about the narrative being left in the game's Perfect Works book, such as the significance of a few characters in the political scene, the fate of a few characters, and the actual details of what the Egg is. This leads a bit into the second issue of his scenario, which is how characters kind of just come and go in the plot with no real closure when they leave, and no info to catch you up to speed when they first show up. This gets especially annoying midway through the game when the story starts having character following the naming scheme of previous characters, such as the infamous Philippe III, who you would think is related to Philippe I, Gustave's younger brother, but no he's not related to him through Philippe and is rather the son of Marie, Gustave' sister who bows out of the plot pretty early in. This makes some of the succession crisis within the plot a bit confusing as it leaves out details like how Kelvin marries into Gustave's family. This gets really weird around the time you get to Ginny's chapters because with the exception of Roberto, every member of her team including herself is attached to a major player in the plot, but a player may not be able to understand the details such as Gustaf and Primera's lineage. The game really could have used a Datalog to help the player keep the characters and setting straight. With that said, the basics of Gustave's plot are really good, his plot just sometimes reads like a first draft of the story we really should have gotten. Wil's plot is a slower burn and honestly I don't feel it really picks up until you reach the Tycoon Wil scenario. If Gustave's scenario feels like a Matsuno style Tactical title, Wil's plot feels like something straight out of JoJo's Bizarre Adventures, not helped by the whole theme of it being about a generational battle against an immortal enemy that happens to resemble the Stone Mask when it finally evolves into a real body. In fact, my favorite part of Wil's story is the leap to the second generation after Wil retires. We're introduced to a decoy protagonist Eleanor whom is actually the third cross over event with Gustave's scenario as her story is about her gaining intelligence info for Kelvin. She has a team of Diggers helping her including a few who were working for Wil earlier, and one new guy named Rich, who later turns out to be Wil's estranged son. His scenario is where the Knights arc gets more interesting because Rich is a bit more my style of a character compared to boy scout Wil. Rich's scenario of trying to overcome living in his famous father's shadow is more interesting, and the Egg finally transitions from being an artifact of evil the bad guys all want to actually showing off its a sentient presence that controlled all those villains in the first arc makes it more compelling. There is some really twisted stuff in the scenario. Finally Ginny's plot in the third generation serves as a tie in that brings in both scenarios as she fulfills her family's legacy of hunting down the Egg while finally spilling into the political turmoil of Sandail that the Egg itself has embroiled itself into for its master plan. SF2 certainly ends on a much higher note than it begins with. What is disappointing for me is how the plot has the potential to be really epic, and yet it always manages to fall short. It still has some great moments and characters, but its always dogged by a sense of "what if?" concerning the execution. This game honestly could have been a great gateway entry into the franchise.
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SF2's gameplay follows series tradition of being really different. It brings back the weapon breaking mechanics from the Gameboy SaGa entries, though now with the option to repair them at blacksmith shops. It brings back SaGa Frontier 1's combo system where the best way to do high damage is by having your party combo high level techs and spells together. And it still retains the spark commands from the Romancing series, where new moves are learned randomly in battle based on the techs being used and the enemy level. The two new additions to the game are Duel battles and Roles. Roles are the easiest to explain, they are support elements you equip to a party member that offer bonuses to them. They serve as a replacement for the formation system from the Romancing series. These roles can increase a characters speed by 20%, improve their chances to combo abilities with other party members, or lower an enemies spell arts.

Duels are the real new mechanic in the game, and one you'll either love or hate. When your party engages with an enemy unit, you can opt to have one party member tackle one of the monsters in a one-on-one duel. Instead of having just access to your normal skills, you choose which weapon to fight with every round and combine the move set of the weapon in a series of combos. Certain combos have a high chance of sparking new techs, and each tech and spell in the game has a certain combo to activate them in duels. On the one hand, it's an easier way to control getting a specific tech or spell, but the spark rules are still in place, so just because you know the combo doesn't mean it will guarantee the tech to spark. In fact many of the higher tier techs for weapons and spell arts utilize the same combo setups of earlier techs, so you can just as likely have them activate the weaker tech instead of sparking the one you want. Duel battles are the only means of acquiring the Hybrid Arts, which are weapon techs that also incorporate magic into the move such as Cyclone Slash. What is interesting is that some enemies can be quite a handful facing them with a party while, the enemy is a bit of pushover in a duel, so there is a bit of strategy in using duels to avoid unnecessary hard battles.
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Two other new elements to the game is how LP works and how magic is acquired. LP still mostly works on the same principle as older entries where having the LP of a character depleted removes the character from the party. Unlike previous games, it doesn't outright kill them, but rather just makes them unavailable for the duration of the scenario. Assuming they return in later scenarios they can still be recruited again. What's new is that LP can be used in battle to restore a character's full health. There are no healing items in the game, and only a few healing spells. This mechanic can be used in regular battles, but is mostly used in duels since healing is very difficult with the combo system. To compensate for this new reliance on it, characters tend to have pretty generous LP pools compared to previous installments.

Magic is also a bit different in this game. In earlier games you could simply purchase magic from shops and train a character in their use. While the game still retains affinity mechanics, magic is now tied to your equipment. All your gear is made from different natural materials and which ones you have equipped dictates which elemental spells you can use. A wooden staff grants you access to Wood spells, Obsidian to fire, stone to well stone, and then a few items that access water, tone, and beast. Magic still uses SP to be cast, but it will also deteriorate your equipment much like using a weapon normally. Thankfully it can also be repaired by a blacksmith, and most items have a fairly generous number of uses. This also makes Quells really useful because these items will never break, and all of them grant some elemental affinity. Another newish mechanic is WP and SP regen. All party members have a default WP and SP regen which allows them to restore a portion of both stats every round of combat. Certain equipment will boost SP regeneration, especially Quells, but Steel equipment will actually reduce SP regeneration for a trade in higher physical defense. Its an interesting balancing mechanic which makes a few one-note party members rather exceptional such as Diana, Ginny's mom, who only appears for one dungeon but sports the highest WP regen of any character in the game. It also grants some interesting customization options, because characters like Cordelia and Primiera either be outfitted with Steel gear to imrpove their defense and turn them into a pure melee character at the cost of making their magic skills situational at best, or you could opt for a more balance approach to keep them as a Red Mage type character wearing weaker but more magic friendly gear.
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If this all sounds incredibly complicated... well it is. There is a lot of information to keep track of. While SF2 does a better job than most SaGa titles of giving you the necessary information, it still follows the series tradition of failing to give good item and equipment descriptions. I highly recommend getting a guide if you choose to play this entry. The game also follows the series tradition of being fairly easy to coast through most of the game before hitting a serious difficulty spike toward the end. Not that the early sections don't have issues, especially in Wil's scenario where the game isn't afraid to throw a few seriously tough enemies at you on his first mission. But compared to the end game boss gauntlets, the early chapters feel pretty easy. The game never gives you a real tutorial for any of these mechanics either, so getting the hang of all the new mechanics and shifting party can be really daunting to players more familiar with having more control over all of their mechanics. The gameplay is incredibly rewarding once you get the hang of it, it's just getting past that initial high learning curve that may cause issues.
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The two other big changes in this game from its predecessors are the graphics and music. The graphics use a gorgeous water color style not too different from the one used in Legend of Mana which Kawazu was also working on at the same time as this game. The graphics lend to the game's heavy Germanic vibe by giving it a very fairy tale vibe to the whole experience. The set pieces are absolutely gorgeous, I only wish the character animations were better as they feel a bit janky in places. I've mentioned before how this game is the opposite of Wind Waker where that title always looks ho hum in screenshots but becomes absolutely breathtaking in motion. This game looks incredibly in screenshots but is pretty awful in motion. Tech and spell arts looks impressive though. The weird pseudo 3d sprites for duels also look really off, not helped by the game using character modeling similar to FFTactics and to a lesser extent, FFVII with weird body proportions. Not helping things either is that the game can sometimes be rather poor in giving directions. The maps have a very PS1 era pre-rendered linear format to them, so while it may seem like you can move anywhere, you'll quickly find you can't, and getting lost can be a bit easier than you think despite a room having only three ways in. It just becomes difficult to discern what is an actual door you can use versus ones that are there for show.

The music is a bit weird here too as this game marks the first time Kenji Ito had not scored the game, and being one of only a handful of SaGa titles he didn't write the score for with only the original SaGa 1, and Unlimited Saga being the other two. Instead this game's soundtrack was handled by Masashi Hamauzu who had previously worked on Chocobo Mystery Dungeon and Tobal no. 1 and would later help score Final fantasy X with Nobuo Uematsu and Junya Nakano, and later Final Fantasy XIII. He would also work on the score for Unlimited Saga of which he has the distinction of creating the only thing most people would agree is actually good about that game. Hamauza's style marks a departure from Kenji Ito's more hard rock influenced scores in that it combines elements of large orchestral percussion with synth pieces worked in. The game also makes liberal use of his favorite instrument the piano. SF2's score is fairly good, though not as toe tapping as Ito's scores. The soundtrack is surprisingly peaceful and mellow, in fact it really feels like it has more in common with Hiroki Kikuta and Yoko Shimomura's scores for the Mana franchise than something you would hear from earlier SaGa games which swayed back and forth between hard rock and fantasy epic. One interesting note is that in fitting with the game's heavy Eastern Europe influence, all of the tracks are named in German, which is made more interesting by the fact Hamauzu was born and raised in Germany initially. Just a little shout out.

SaGa Frontier 2 is a game of two tales. On the one hand, this game really has a lot to offer to JRPG fans who may be interested in jumping into the series proper, but would rather wade in a pool that still places a lot of emphasis on why most people like the genre such as good characters and a strong narrative. Yet it fails to stick the landing on most accounts. The plot is actually really good and I really ended up loving Gustave XIII who comes across as a very complicated figure. He's no hero, but he's hardly a villain either. He's given a very hard hand in life, but winds up using his disadvantage to change the rules and with it the world. He does some unscrupulous things like cozy up to a child king so he can eventually usurp him, he kills his half brother, and he personally leads a purge of a local and mostly peaceful cult when some of their members are discovered to be in connection to a political assassination Gustave isn't happy with. Yet he also does some pretty good things as well such as building a rather prosperous kingdom of his own, buries the hatchet between his surviving siblings, mediates a deal between pirates to bring them into an honest living as merchants, and shelters the ex-assassin Johan. What I also love is how his situation is so interesting among JRPG protagonists as he lacks any magic ability but in addition to discovering how useful steel can be, it also lets him see the world in a way others can't. The character of Johan is part of an assassin's guild who use the power of anima to cloak their presence from others to carry out their assassinations, but their skill has no effect on Gustave since he can't sense anima to begin with. Eventually Gustave the Steel shares a legacy not too dissimilar to Alexander the Great from real world history, including the fate of his empire. It was just interesting to go through the story of a character who felt so human. Likewise, the Knights family generational story has its own highlights and the wealth of the most fun party members. I genuinely missed Narcisse and Tyler when they both retired from old age, and I managed to keep Cordelia alive to become Wil's future bride. Rich was still one of my favorite parts as it was interesting watching him run away from his family's legacy only to be dragged back in, and basically served as a hero who prevented the Egg from starting to really upset the world balance by another fifteen years. The game has a pretty good staff, I just wish more of them had more screen time and I wish I knew the fate of some of the other cast mates such as Gustave's childhood friend Flynn who just kind of disappears from the plot altogether after a certain point.
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The gameplay is fun, if a little overly complex in places, but I really enjoyed it once I got past the learning curve. Of anything, SaGa Frontier 2 was a game I really wanted to love, but it turned into a real uphill battle for me as I dealt with all of these minor issues that kept piling up one after another. I did eventually come around to really enjoying this game, but it's a hard sell. I feel a bit bad for this game because I feel the first SaGa Frontier got a little more love and attention riding the coattails of FFVII's success and the explosion of JRPGs on the market, whereas SF2 came out later when the market had become more saturated and when I felt like a lot of people introduced to the genre by FF had decided to just stick to FF. It sort of just slipped by most people like a lot games by SE released in 99-2000. I had always been intrigued by it from what I read, but it was almost a decade later before I would get a copy of the game for myself, and nearly another decade before I would actually get around to playing it. Yet despite all of my gripes, this game has really stayed with me since I finished it. I always keep in mind the games that do that. There is something really magical about the whole experience despite the issues. For now, I'm leaving it here on the blog, but if I get around to playing a NG+ with it, maybe I'll end up elevating it higher. It will probably help that I will finally know what I'm doing as opposed to the first time.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6260-WK-s-Top-100-Lost-But-Not-Forgotten-SaGa-Frontier-2 <![CDATA[My Top 100's Lost but Not Forgotten: Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6255-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Kingdom-Hearts-Birth-by-Sleep Thu, 30 Jan 2020 20:17:11 GMT You know the drill… Attachment 76769 (http://home.eyesonff.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=76769) I mentioned this in my Chain of Memories entry for my Top 100 List, but Kingdom Hearts and I have a really awkward history with each other. This is a franchise that has always been more... You know the drill…

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I mentioned this in my Chain of Memories entry for my Top 100 List, but Kingdom Hearts and I have a really awkward history with each other. This is a franchise that has always been more of a guilty pleasure for me than something I actively love. Funny enough, it’s not even the basic premise that bothers me. While Final Fantasy meets Disney mash-up sounds contrived, KH has always managed to make it work since this has always been a series about hitting those nostalgia buttons hard for me. I may bitch to high heavens about KH1’s awful camera and platforming sections, but I still get as giddy as a schoolboy when I’m exploring Agrabah with Aladdin, or visiting Halloween Town to beat down Oogie Boogie. So the cutesy nature of the franchise has never bothered me and I honestly find it really endearing, assuming I have some nostalgia love for the worlds I visit. My major gripes have always been a two-fold issue of the series gameplay and story always undermining a lot of the entries. Which is why it’s interesting for me to be discussing Birth by Sleep, because in a lot of ways, I feel BbS embodies everything I love and hate about the series in one fell swoop. I sometimes worry when I do these blog entries that I may have been too hasty with my Top 100 List and forgot a real gem. That’s at least how I felt about Demon’s Souls, but having replayed BbS recently, I feel a bit vindicated for leaving it off the list. That’s not to say it’s a bad game, but rather it has enough nagging issues for me to make it difficult to justify here.
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BbS is set about ten years prior to KH1 and follows the story of three keyblade wielders who all dream of becoming Keyblade Masters. Terra suffers a bit of an inferiority complex that he tries to hide behind a shaky sense of bravado and thirst for power. Aqua is the most level headed of the three but has a difficult time balancing her feelings versus her sense of duty. Ventus is the youngest and most naïve of the three who has a bit of a mysterious past that only got more complicated with Union X, as well as an older idol brother complex with Terra. The game begins with Master Xehanort delivering a dying Ventus to Destiny Island to live out his final moments. Ventus undergoes the Dive to the Heart sequence where he speaks to a new heart that helps Ven fill the void of his missing heart. As Master Xehanort begins to leave, he sees Ventus summon his keyblade.

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Years later, we find that Ventus is living with Master Erauqs along with his new master’s two apprentices, Aqua and Terra. The three have grown close since the days Master Xehanort brought the comatose Ven to the Lands of Departure. The trio all dream of becoming Keyblade Masters and the game begins the night before the Mark of Mastery Exam. Here, the player has the option to choose which of the three they will play as. The following day the exam takes place, and to mark this occasion, Master Erauqs has invited his old but estranged friend Master Xehanort to witness the test and help past judgment. Xehanort manipulates the exam a bit to witness all three of the characters abilities. During the final duel, Terra begins to lose heart as Aqua fights him back and he summons a bit of darkness before suppressing it, which catches Xehanort’s interest. At the end, Aqua is granted the rights of being a Master, while Terra fails. From here, the game’s plot slightly diverges depending on which of the three you’re playing as. Terra is distraught about failing, but Xehanort comforts him and tells Terra that just because he summoned some darkness, doesn’t make him less worthy of the title of master, of anything, his old friend Master Erauqs is simply too bias from his purist mindset against darkness to not see that. Terra and Aqua learn of a new scourge afflicting the worlds called the Unversed a well as Master Xehanort’s disappearance. Master Erauqs tasks the two with investigating the new threat. Terra is the most gung-ho after Master Erauqs proposes that this could be a second attempt for him to become a Master himself. Meanwhile, Ventus is feeling bad for Terra but meets a mysterious masked boy who tells Ventus that the Terra he knows will soon be gone. Worried, Ventus goes to see Terra, but not knowing about the Unversed issue, Ven is shocked to find Terra leaving their world in a hurry. He blindly goes after him which forces Master Erauqs to task Aqua with trying to bring Ven home, though he also secretly tasks her with observing Terra to see if the darkness is actually taking hold of him as he fears.

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From this point, the Disney Worlds open up, and we witness an amusing formula that plays out for all three characters. Terra usually shows up on the world first and usually gets mixed up with the villains and causes problems in the world. Ventus usually comes to the world second and has an adventure with one of the comic relief characters of that world that sometimes exasperates the conflict as well, though usually unaware of his part in it. While Aqua always seems to appear last and ends up cleaning up the mess the other two causes, usually with the aid of whichever character represents law and order in that particular world’s setting. Terra’s story follows a theme about accepting who he is, weaknesses and all, and being manipulated by Master Xehanort for his dark purposes. Ven’s story follows a theme of achieving ones dream but then begins to change into one about friendship and self-discovery that leads him to a very dark place for a game that has Mickey Mouse and the Fairy Godmother in it. Aqua also follows a theme of friendship and learning to trust people. As a prequel story featuring new characters no one had ever heard of until this point in the franchise, it’s obvious to say that BbS’s story does not end well for any of the characters involved.

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Yet BbS has at its core a very powerful and emotional story. It can be tough to really see this only playing through one character’s story, but as you make your way through all three journeys and unlock the final chapter; you’ll really grow to feel for these characters. The Final Chapter, unlocked by finishing all three character chapters and obtaining all of Xehanort’s secret reports is especially grueling, but has quite a few nice callbacks to earlier games including Chain of Memories that I’m sure no one was expecting. The three main characters are likable though the fans tend to blow out of proportion some of their faults. Terra really only gets duped maybe twice in the entire game by a Disney villain, while Ven’s only real gullible moment comes at the beginning from Vanitas; and yet the game establishes that Vanitas and Ventus have a bond that goes beyond words that makes the contrived nature of the plot work a bit better. Aqua is the standout of the three due to not really feeling like an expy of another character and for also being a strong female character in a series that is terrible with under performing female characters. On the other hand though, I do also feel that Aqua’s situation as a strong female character that stays relevant beyond her initial game has birthed a disproportionate love of her that is in stark contrast to how engaging she really is. I don’t think I’d rank her that high if I was ranking strong and awesome female characters in gaming as she can be rather dull in places, but compared to the few choices in KH, she’s a welcomed outlier for sure within her own series. Part of the issue here may also be the VA work and dialogue. Of the three main characters, Jesse McCartney performs the best since he’s the veteran of the trio, but he also has a hard time really working out some of the game’s cringy dialogue. Contrast this to Mark Hamill’s Master Erauqs or Leonard Nimoy’s Xehanort, who both really steal the scene whenever there characters show up. Hell, Haley Joel Osment delivers a pretty stand out performance as Vanitas and I honestly hope he gets a chance to play villains more often in the future because I feel you can tell he had a blast doing it. These three pretty much show off their acting chops by really showing how good acting can save even the direst of shlock writing.

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This kind of brings me to the plot. In broad strokes, BbS has a pretty solid and somber story going for it about the breakdown of a group of friends who find themselves manipulated and dragged into darker and more surreal circumstances than they were trained for. Yet the devil is in the details and when you start to really take closer looks here is where the story starts to feel more narm than charm. KH fans often joke about the series overuse of its key terms like hearts, darkness, and light; but BbS is really where I feel this conceit within the writing truly begins to run thin. Part of why Jesse McCartney’s performance feels underwhelming here probably lies solely on the fact that Ventus, like Sora, tends to drop all those stock phrases about light and hearts into every conversation. Unlike his character Roxas who oddly stays clear of these issues in the games he appears in outside of the whole Nobody nonsense, so he sounds like a real human being whereas Ventus sounds like a tool to convey the series message. The dialogue in this game can be really rough and difficult to take serious. While the core story of the trios friendship is a pretty good one and the real tragic endings for each character leaves a powerful mark, I can’t help but feel the villains plan and motives just feel off. One of my biggest issues with the franchise is how it keeps changing the goal line. The nature of Kingdom Hearts keeps changing and the rules for finding it get even more contrived as the series sputters on. BbS introduces a third method to “obtain/reach” Kingdom Hearts and this one comes with the silly notion of the χ-blade and the conflict of forging one that sits at the heart of Ven’s plotline. While I like the dynamic of Ven and Vanitas, it also raises too many questions for me. I’m also just annoyed we now have a third method to get to the true Kingdom Hearts, and even more annoyed when 3D retcons how the χ-blade needs to be forged despite appearing in this game before Ven’s sacrifice destroys it. That becomes a major issue of the game’s writing is how later entries kind of make a lot of things that happen in this game meaningless in both just changing the rules arbitrarily or simply making a downer ending into an even more downer ending by relegating everything the characters do as meaningless. While the main plot can be hokey, it’s the series inconsistent planning on the overall story that ultimately hurts this game in hindsight.

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On the gameplay side of things, BbS is a title filled with good ideas that seem marred by a combination of technology limitations, and the series usual inconsistency for difficulty. I honestly love all of the gameplay elements of this game, and that’s what largely saves this game from other KH titles, but my issue stems from these systems never performing as well as I would like them to. While I have a lot of issues with KHII, I can at least agree with the fans of its combat that KHII plays incredibly smoothly. It was a bit jarring coming off of KHII Final Mix and jumping into BbS Final Mix and feel how wonky the characters control. While I’m not as bothered by this as the games detractors are, I do feel that elements like the Command Styles could have had more variety and flow to their move sets had BbS remained a PS2 title instead of being switched over to the inferior PSP. Same deal with the Command Deck, which is a great idea and fun to customize your characters, but there is a real sense of disconnect with all of the game mechanics. The core fighting feels basic, the Command Styles are powerful but feel self-contained, and the Command Deck feel like their own thing. There is little synergy between the systems and in that way, the game feels closer to KH1 where basic combat, magic, and special moves never felt like they worked together well. It gets annoying how I would try to combo these elements together only for them to kind of buckle under each other. I blame the hardware more than anything as I felt the mechanics were all too intricate for the PSP to handle, but part of me feels had this game been built for PS2, as originally intended, these mechanics may have had a better flow to them. I still like all the system as Style Command kept battles feeling electric, and the Command deck offered deep customization. Of anything, I have to give the devs props for making all three characters play differently enough to be noticeable. Aqua as a squishy mage has a hell of a time in the early game, but by endgame she’s can wipe out hordes of Unversed in a heartbeat. Terra is more slow and powerful, with a skill set tailored for boss encounters, while Ventus strikes a fair balance as a speed based character who can switch back and forth between crowd control and dueling on the fly. Their unique Command Styles are also just fun to witness as well. Shotlocks are also a neat idea that tends to get underplayed in the main campaign but at least sees a lot of use in the Mirage Arena where the tough as nail bosses can be trivialized by them. The D-Links are an interesting way to handle summons, which I appreciate, though I can agree with most players that its execution leads much to be desired. They are super useful in the early game, and the Mickey D-Link is super useful for leveling for the optional challenges, but the system feels underwhelming considering all the other options you have.
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I feel the biggest problem with BbS’s combat is how inconsistent the difficulty is. The main campaign is insultingly easy, while the optional content is difficult due to its obtuse nature. The main game difficulty doesn’t feel quite as brain dead as KHII’s combat gets, but it really doesn’t take long before your character gets their hands on some room clearing commands. Part of the issue is the low enemy count of areas, which again, being made on a stronger system could have rectified; but also just how overpowered everything feels in this game even on higher difficulty modes. I wish the enemy types had more options to stop you, such as the Balloon type Unversed who only take real damage from being struck from behind, or some of the teleporting or flying enemies that make locking on or using combos ineffective. I don’t think this bothered me as much the first time through the game since I felt it was narratively justified in how we were finally playing as trained users instead of watching Sora derp his way through the games. Yet it can’t really stop making victories in this game feel a bit hollow. This gets exacerbated with the optional combat. KH has always seemed to have this issue of creating optional bosses that require a different play style than the one the main game allows you to use which can be really annoying. It wasn’t even until this last playthrough that I learned the Imprisoned Unversed in the Mirage Arena can be stun locked if you use Firaga on them. Likewise, bosses like Vanitas Remnant completely wreck Terra’s play style while Ven has the biggest advantage against him. The Unknown is notorious for being so bulltrout in his A.I. and hit detection that the least frustrating way to beat him involves exploiting the invincibility frames found in two Command abilities. I haven’t even tackled the two new bosses added in the Final Mix version, but I can already tell they are equally bulltrout in their own ways from just watching videos of them.

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As for the other side content, I enjoy the Command Board mini-game. It’s a slow in some ways but I like the variety of elements they give with each board having their own gimmick and some of the AI elements involved. The racing mini-game is also fairly decent. I could live without the Fruitball or Ice cream rhythm mini-games though. The Mirage Arena itself is interesting but feels too disconnected from the rest of the game for my taste. I also don’t appreciate having to play through so many of the other mini-games multiple times to complete it. Did we really need to have to make the command board and rumble race part of the deal? Not to mention that the prices for getting all of the stuff in there is steep. The whole thing just feels like an exercise in time killing as opposed to a real challenge, and it’s a shame so many good items and a few superbosses are stuck behind this thing.
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As for the world selection and level design, BbS does a fairly good job in this department. I know some fans weren’t excited to go through the Fairy Tale Disney worlds but I feel BbS delivered in these sections the best with all three characters having really distinct paths to explore in each world. I was also happy to see Lilo and Stitch get some love and despite having a strong dislike for Peter Pan, BbS has my favorite incarnation of the setting within the series. While the original worlds don’t get as much love as I would have liked, I enjoy the aesthetics of the Land of Departure and Keyblade Graveyard. The real treat was Radiant Garden and being able to explore this setting before the fall. About the only world besides the Mirage Arena I wish had been dropped for something else would likely be Hercules world, which just never felt like it added anything besides fanfic fuel for the FF character subplot for Cloud X Sephiroth that never went anywhere. I really feel the missed opportunity here would have been to have Sword in the Stone. Especially considering the crippling insecurity of the main trio would have been a perfect fit for the setting. I commend the devs for constructing the worlds with enough differences to make them feel unique for each character, but I do feel the nature of the game still causes a bit of burnout after a while. Perhaps this could have been remedied by only having a few of the worlds visited by each character and letting some of the characters visit a unique world or two. Again, not likely on the PSP, but I’m still impressed with what we got here.

I’m sure most of this article may give off the impression I hated this game, but I honestly still had a lot of fun playing through it, I just feel it has too many flaws to simply be ignored for what I feel it does right. Of all the KH games, I feel this game and 358/2 are the most deserving of having a proper full remake because the ideas were sound, the tech just didn’t feel like it was there for the gameplay front. The story has its cringy moments, but the characters and their struggles shine through despite the silly dialogue and crazy silver age comic book plot. I feel the fact the game can still be so endearing to me despite all the problems is kind of a testament to how good the game is.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6255-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Kingdom-Hearts-Birth-by-Sleep <![CDATA[My Top 100's Lost but Not Forgotten: Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6244-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Xenosaga-Episode-III-Also-Sprach-Zarathustra Mon, 30 Dec 2019 21:56:12 GMT Top 100 List Blah blah blah…. I ended up re-writing this entry because the original was a little more bitter and more like just a genuine rant than a review. With that said, a little backstory is in order. ************************************************************************* Attachment... Top 100 List Blah blah blah…. I ended up re-writing this entry because the original was a little more bitter and more like just a genuine rant than a review. With that said, a little backstory is in order.
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Continuing my trend of snubbed entries in franchises, we now come back to a series that was very near and dear to me. At this point in time, the story of Xenosaga’s creation is probably more interesting and infamous than the series itself. Xenosaga began as a reboot of my beloved Xenogears that was crafted by Tetsuya Takahashi and his wife Soraya Saga. They along with most of the Xeno team that didn’t go freelance formed Monolith Soft a few years after Square cancelled future Xenogears projects. Their studio was picked up by Namco who wanted the ex-Square prestige of the team help them build a killer RPG franchise to rival Final Fantasy. What began as a six episode series that was supposed to span the entire scenario detailed in Xenogears Perfect Works ended up running into similar problems that had sunk Gears at Square. The series was simply too ambitious for the rookie team and they quickly ran into the harsh realities of trying to keep a company running. Episode 1 was a fantastic title that fell short of the original vision of the team in both content and sales. The game sold well, but not to the heights of FF that Monolith Soft and Namco wanted. For Takahashi and his creative team, Episode 1 was meant to cover Shion’s entire story but barely managed to cover 20% of the plot already planned. The infamous 8 min. 8 sec. trailer even featured scenes that were left on the cutting room floor or appeared in Episode II with major alterations. For these reasons, Takahashi was removed as director and placed in a more consulting role for the next entry of the game. Despite the stories told, this wasn’t due to Namco’s meddling according to interviews with Takahashi and Saga, rather Monolith Soft itself chose to sideline their ambitious founders in order to keep the company floating by dropping his meticulous style for someone who could make the series more profitable in the West.

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For this reason, Episode II turned into a massive departure from the slower but better constructed Episode I. The graphics tried for something closer to realistic characters similar to the direction Final Fantasy had gone over the pure anime aesthetics of Episode I and Xenogears. The battle system was overhauled to be more interactive, and the overly convoluted character building mechanics were overly simplified. The plot was also streamlined and made to be more action packed. The tone and feel of the game was radically different from the vision the husband and wife duo had wanted originally. Several design decisions also rocked the couple such as dissecting the script they had written and choosing to split it all up into multiple titles instead of trying to finish them with the second entry and keep the original story length somewhat intact. Saga infamously blogged her frustrations about everything they cut from the game. I was fortunate enough to be on a Xeno forum whose owner followed her blog and translated it for the rest of us. Saga wrote a script for Pied Piper, a cell phone title that took the section of the script that told Ziggy’s plot and set up more of the world’s politics including Yuriev’s Life Recycling Act, the origin of Voyager, and more about the Pilgrimage Fleet. Afterwards she left the company and went freelance, only working two more times with the company she helped find. Takahashi felt dejected at this point since he lost control of his flagship series, but during this time, he had an intriguing idea for a game about two giant gods who kill each other and then has new life emerge from their body’s eons later who continue their war…

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Episode 1 may not have set the world on fire, but it at least garnered a loyal fanbase. Episode II on the other hand was such a radical departure from the first game, and felt so stripped back compared to the plot heavy first entry that it largely flabbergasted the core fans, and its questionable graphical choices and being released in Europe despite the first episode never being released there sunk any chance it gained any new fans like the creative team had wanted. Saga’s emotional rant and the announcement of Pied Piper furthered soured the franchises chances of success. At this point, the heads of Monolith Soft restored Takahashi’s position for the series. Unfortunately for him, the company was starting to see that Saga was just not going to pan out like they wanted, and Takahashi seemed to agree. Episode II largely squandered a lot of time and resources to tell the story he wanted to.
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Teaming up with the director of the series short lived anime adaption, Takahashi released a DS remake of the first two Xeno titles as a way to garner interest again among the fans who left the series, while the main development team worked on the final entry. This entry used simply 2D graphics to cram in the plots, but Takahashi used this as a chance to try and fix Episode II which was heavily re-written in this entry and introduced several important characters and scenarios to help set the stage for Episode III. Unfortunately for us Western fans, the game was never translated and brought outside of Japan. Even to this day, it has never received a fan translation. As Episode III got closer to its release date, Takahashi chose to cut another segment of the plot and release it as an episodic visual novel online called Xenosaga ~ A Missing Year. This sequence showed the origin of Nephilim and what actually caused mankind to flee their home world of Lost Jerusalem, as well as introduce Scientia which had been hinted at in Pied Piper. This was not translated in time for the final entry, but has been translated since then.

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Finally in 2006, Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra was released in Japan and North America. Takahashi and his development team knew this was likely going to be there last chance to tell their story, so they crammed everything they could to finish Shion’s arc and not leave the series as a “what if” mess like Xenogears. Ironically, I find that Episode III suffers from many of the same issues that plagued Xenogears infamous second disc, ultimately feeling like what that disc would have looked like had the development team had another six months to work on it. What I mean by this is that Episode III feels very rushed and often like a an abridged versions of events. Episode I had an in-game encyclopedia fans could read to immerse themselves better with the tech and politics of the world, but Episode III’s winds up being massive info dumps of the plot that either was denied to non-Japanese fans (like a summary of Pied Piper and A Missing Year), and just stuff Takahashi’s team didn’t have time to implement. Unfortunately, Xenosaga takes a different direction than Xenogears did in how this final act was portrayed. While Gears cut out most of its content to finally deliver the main story about Fei, the Zohar, and Lacan’s backstory. Saga tries to finish as many loose plot threads as it can, leaving little time to flesh out many of them that had only been hinted at in earlier installments. The two arcs most negatively affected by this are Jin Uzuki’s subplot and most damning of all, Wilhelm, chaos, and KOS-MOS’s stories which were touted as the main mystery that tied Saga together.


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To give a brief summary of Episode III’s plot. After the events of Missing Year where Shion discovers that Vector has been keeping the secrets of the U.M.N.’s connection to the Gnosis crisis and the big secret of what happened to Lost Jerusalem (Earth); she quits the company and joins the anti-U.M.N. organization Scientia. In the game’s intro, she’s using her connections with her former Vector colleague Miyuki as well as Realina Federation officer Canaan to hack into one of Vector’s mainframes to dig up dirt on what else the company has been hiding. When she finishes the job, she learns from her other friend Allen, that the KOS-MOS project will finally be ended and KOS-MOS will be put out of commission. She heads to Fifth Jerusalem to discover what’s going on and the dealings with the new Omega project and T-ELOS programs the Federation are bankrolling under the influence of returning human scumbag, Yuriev Dimitri.

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Meanwhile, Jr’s forces are investigating a strange landmass that has appeared out in space that may be a piece of Lost Jerusalem phase shifting back into their reality. Their investigation gets cut short when Ormus arrives to protect what they claim is holy land and the whole landmass disappears along with the Elsa crew. To reopen the dimensional space, Jr’s team determines they’ll need KOS-MOS for the job and head to Fifth Jerusalem also. The two teams meet up and do a daring rescue mission to save KOS-MOS from the scrap heap while deepening the mysteries of what Yuriev, Vector, and U-TIC organization are up to. From here, the plot basically turns into a major roller coaster ride of revelations and final confrontations with every big bad and secret the series has hinting at since the first game. The largest and best change is that it’s all playable. So people who hated Gears’ artsy narrative direction with it's infamous second disc will likely sigh a bit off relief. Yet, as I mentioned beforehand, there is a real sense of rushing and urgency that follows all of it, especially the farther you get into the game. The entire opening of the game feels a bit like a massive info dump to get the player caught up on the universe and the myriad of changes that has happened within the game’s minor time skip. Like Gears’ second disc, a large chunk of the game is dedicated to a massive flashback sequence that finally explains one of the biggest moments in the series background. In gears, it was Lacan and the Solaris War; in Saga, it’s the Miltian Conflict. There are problems in both of course, for Gears, the sequence has enough content and depth that it could have been its own game, and being unplayable and having some of the most interesting parts relegated to Perfect Works is certainly a huge sore spot against the game. The Militian Conflict comes across better from a gaming standpoint, but has different narrative issues. Mainly what caused the sequence to start feels a bit out there and more like something Futurama would have pulled than the more hard fantasy/science of Saga. Secondly, its presented as a strange “time travel, but really all a dream” which makes the whole sequence feel a bit contrived just to finally let the player see the biggest mystery actually well told in Xenosaga. From here the plot dives into the end of the Yuriev arc, which is a little rushed but actually works well since even the main games have done a decent job keeping his story up, and it works better if you kept up with all the Japanese exclusive content as well. Unfortunately, all of this ends up taking up about 4/5ths of the plot and the last fifth tries to finally unload onto us the truth about KOS-MOS, chaos, T-ELOS, Kevin Winnicot, the Pilgrimage Fleet, Jin, Margulis, Heinlein, Ziggy, Canaan, and Voyager, and how the hell Shion, Nephilim, and U-DO fit into all of this and more Gnostic history lessons than a Dan Brown novel. To say that’s a lot to cover in the course of what was basically the final dungeon brings me to my point. It’s pretty much here where a lot of the plot and drama falls short.

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To this day, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how any of these bombshells would have worked even if the game had an entire disc to explain it, but I digress, it is here that the executive meddling of the franchise really shows its damage. There is potential for greatness here, but for every moment of success Episode III pulls off, there is another moment later that falls a bit flat and its all because the team was trying to salvage a squandered idea and try a Hail Mary pass at the very end. What’s even more annoying is how playing all three titles back to back is how many things hinted at back in Episode I ended up getting serious call backs in Episode III. Every location in the Miltian Conflict Encephalon Dive sequence in Episode I show up in the actual Miltian Conflict sequence in Episode III. Rennes-le-Château was actually being hinted at all the way back in Episode I during Shion’s dream sequences in the game’s opening. Even Yuirev’s role in the series was being alluded to at the beginning. When you read the whole of the series along with their Perfect Works sequences, it becomes all the more apparent how deep and complex this series was meant to be, but also shows how too many cooks lacking a unified vision, diluted the series. The Perfect Works for Episode I seem to contradict a few things that happen in later installments such as the nature of how Sakura died, with Episode I, II, and the DS remake of both each giving a very different account of what happened. Its ultimately why I walked away with a different opinion of the series, elevating Episode I more as the full potential of it was still its strongest point, but docking Episode III for having to try and stick the landing to a plane that by that point was already missing the wings and landing gear, and could only manage a rough belly flop. Its not the game’s fault, and if I sound a bit hyperbolic, I would say that I am, but Xenosaga’s plot could have been so much more interesting and epic. Where Gears got things right is that it focused on what was most important for its central story and stuck the landing better, even if it had to make some controversial choices to get there. Saga tries to do better, but ends up hurting one of the core plot elements in the process, making the game end on a sourer note than it had begun. The fact it accomplished so much though is impressive to be honest. In fact, most of the game’s plot is pretty great if you’ve been following along the series since the beginning, but it ends on a more disappointing note that is only punctuated by the series death which everyone saw coming.

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To change gears though, let’s focus on the gameplay side of things. Episode III’s combat system and character building can be considered a nice compromise between the previous two titles. It brings together elements of what was neat about the old games with one glaring omission and finds a nice balance between Episode I’s overly complicated mechanics and Episode II’s overly streamlined ones. The game drops the series trademark combo attack mechanics and gives the player a more basic menu driven system from more conventional RPGs. Tech Attacks are back from Episode I, but are now treated like Ether skills with the player choosing which ones to use from a menu as opposed to assigning them and using a combo system to activate. From Episode II, the break gauge mechanics are back but now the gauge is filled by landing power blows and special tech skills that specialize in break damage over damage. Breaking an opponent effectively disables them for a few rounds and lets your party get in some time for healing or setting up major damage with techs and ether. The Boost system returns, and like Episode II, it is a shared party mechanic as opposed to individual ones like in the first game. New to the game is that Boost gauge carries over in battles, so you can save them for boss fights.
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What is sadly missing from the game is the Event Slot mechanic which was one of the best features of the first two installments and really set the game apart from their peers. The event slot displayed a particular bonus for each round such as guaranteed critical hits, boost to magic, boost to the Boost gauge, and bonus XP if you killed an opponent on that event. This made the boost mechanic incredibly important and a large part of the strategy of the first two games was to manipulate turns order to maximize the benefit from this system. With it, gone, battles feel a bit more stale and ho hum. In fat, while Episode III’s gameplay is overall solid, it feels incredibly safe and sterile compared to its more divisive and interesting predecessors. Not helping matters is that Episode III’s difficulty feels a bit toned back compared to I and II which were both surprisingly challenging in an era where I felt RPG difficulty was getting really soft. Again, this was something I probably didn’t notice when I first played it, but after marathoning the series, it was obvious the game felt a little easier than I would care for.
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Character building also gets unique spin and serves as a bit of an early version of a system Xenoblade used. Your characters have the option to use Tech Points to purchase skills from one of two skill tree paths. Each skill tree offers unique abilities that will shape what the characters role will be in combat and each tree is more or less unique to the character. Characters like MOMO can be made to either be a healer or offensive mage with a few powerful Break Attacks, while characters like chaos can either focus on being a Breaker specialist or red mage type deal. Learning all of the skills of a tree will allow a character to learn a special super mode tech that usually has a high EP cost but makes up for it by being utterly broken Shion and MOMOs skill that gives them perfect evasion, or KOS-MOS and Jr’s super-modes that dramatically increase all their damage. These skills are so broken, you’re almost encouraged to pick one skill tree and stick with it until you get one of them before sacrificing tech points for the other tree. In addition, your party can also acquire special skill packs throughout the game that unlock a third tier of skills for players to even further add customization options like players who feel Jin would be even more awesome if he could use ether spells. It’s a great system overall, and gives a nice amount of personality to each party member which is much appreciated after Episode II made them all into skill clones. It has some balancing issues, but at this point, that’s par the course for the series.

Where Episode III does excel is in Gear combat. The A.W.G.S. in the first game were interesting but marred by too many scrappy mechanics against them and some serious game balancing issues in the titles later half. The E.S. units in Episode II offered a serious reprieve for those who hated the games drawn out regular combat system, but the gameplay for them was way too simplistic (Imagine playing FFXIII but occasionally had sections of the game where the combat was changed to DQI’s for inexplicable reasons) but Episode III finally gets them right and makes them feel unique in a good way. In fact the series trademark combo mechanics make their return here. Mechs utilize action points and deplete them based on which move they use. This is determined by the mechs equipment with things like heavy cannons and double handed swords costing more to use than dual wielding laser knives or machine gun fire. In addition, each mecha has missiles and other small arms to serve as a basic “light” attack which will help boost the accuracy of subsequent attacks when used. Mechs can also regenerate health by guarding instead of attacking and the game has auto-counters in place which are based on your actions (like guarding) or whether you have light weapons equipped over heavy ones. As your characters land blows, they fill an Anima Gauge which once activated makes them enter a super mode. In this mode, actions cost fewer points, dodge, regenerate, and counter rates go up, and the mecha gains access to some super attacks that will shave off a good chunk of health. Like Xenogears before it, it’s in the mecha portions that I feel Episode III really shines, as many of the Gear battles are far more memorable and challenging than the on foot battles. Largely because there is more factors to contend with, fewer game breaking exploits, and simply smarter bosses designed to punish you for coming into the battle with the wrong party configurement. The wealth of shout-outs to Xenogears in these portions also helps. Case in point, the game has to optional superbosses, one for player characters and one for E.S. units. The PC one is a joke, especially if you’ve gotten a handful of some of the characters super skills at the end of their skill trees. The E.S. one? Even with the best gear in the game, that fight is brutal if you’re not careful as should be expected of fighting System ID. The redesigns for the units were also nice, though I’ve always liked the series mecha designs.



Dungeon crawling is another aspects this game does better than its predecessors. Enemies can be seen on the screen and will rush you If they see you, but you can use traps to give yourself bonuses or avoid the fights all together. In the first two games, traps were located in pre-determined places in the game, but taking a cue from BoFV, you can carry them around and set them up at your own discretion in this game. Just remember your traps are limited and you’ll need to buy more in shops if you run out. Level design is also much better than previous installments with less linear layouts, good puzzles that don’t require heavy backtracking, and a good ratio of dungeons to story in general compared to the first two games. The game still retains towns and they still remain pretty charming which has always been a series strong point even if none of the games have more than three of them. Sidequests are also nice, and a hell of a lot less frustrating than Episode 2’s G.S. Campaign. There is a min-game called HaKox which is basically a Lemmings simulator using the party as the lemmings. The Professor and his fight against the Dark Professor Super Robot Drama is also present in the game and nets you’re the series broken Erde Kaiser Summon as usual. Despite the main combat feeling safe and a bit stale, especially with the Event Slot Mechanic removed, Episode III largely delivers on the gameplay side of things. I’m still partial to Episode I’s system more since I loved the deathblow style evolution of the core gameplay and I like the AWGS, just felt they were poorly implemented.
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Graphics and Music are a bit divisive for me. Graphically, the game is superior to its predecessors in terms of better character models, colors, and visual styles. It doesn’t have the sterile art direction of the first game, nor does it have the ugly designs from the second one. It returns to a more anime vibe with the character designs which is much appreciated. My only issues with the game’s visual come from noticeable poor quality of the cutscenes. Most of Episode I’s story scenes were full cutscenes and they had a steady framerate. Even Episode II, which had several sections use the game’s awful in game models had better framerate and more animation. Episode III had to cut corners here. Most story sequences are voiced but now use static models and close up character portraits for most of the dialogue sequences. Again, I’d point out this was not something I really paid attention to the first time I played, but became very apparent in my marathon playthrough. The full animated CGI also has noticeable quality issues as well compared to the earlier games, which is a damn shame cause often those games wasted that quality on mundane sequences whereas most of Episode III’s full animated scenes are pretty stellar. These are minor gripes though, but I’m sure tech heads will find this infuriating. Another minor gripe are some of the new outfit designs. Most of the cast get some pretty cool new threads, but Shion;s outfit and KOS-MOS’s new designs have some questionable elements to them. I actually missed Shion’s outfit from Episode II which actually looks great on her when you look at the raw character art that still uses an anime aesthetic. KOS-MOS always looked like she was in lingerie, but there is a part of me that feels her new designs were really more fetish fuel than needed. Not that this series hasn’t had its controversy with sexualizing its cast. Still this is what you get when you finally let your character designer who started off in the hentai industry a chance to go hog wild. I still love Shion in her Vector Uniform the most.


On the musical front, taking feedback from the disaster that was Episode II, Monolith Soft dropped Shinji Hosoe who provided all of the in-game town and dungeon themes in that game, to just let Yuki Kaijura, who had worked on all of the fantastic cutscene/story scene music to just have full musical control. She delivers a really strong score, and it’s honestly better than even her work on Episode II. Hepatica (KOS-MOS), Abel’s Ark, godsibb, promised pain, and the return of Fatal Fight from Episode II, are all excellent tracks. My only complaint is not even a real complaint, so take this with a grain of salt, but I felt Mitsuda’s work on Episode I worked better for the games feel. You can tell the games feel were designed with his music in mind, and while Kaijura is easily his equal in quality, her style is just a bit too more flashy and forceful than Mitsuda’s. They both love their choir pieces, but Mitsuda shows more restraint in using it, whereas Kaijura will use them for any big piece she sees fit. Course with that said, since Mitsuda wasn’t used for these sequels, I can’t think of a better artist than Kaijura to take his place and she never disappoints. My other complaint would be that she and Monolith Soft chose to never release the full soundtrack. They didn’t with Episode II as well but in that case, most of Shinji Hosoe’s score was lost in that decision and instead we were treated to about fifteen extra tracks by Kaijura that never made it in. With Episode III though, she selected which tracks would appear and while we still got two great discs of awesome, we’re still missing a ton of great tracks. Tracks like Minor Boss Fight, Battle with Yuriev, Battleland #2 (which actually samples Mitsuda’s version of Albedo’s theme), and Abel’s Ark are only going to be found in the seedier parts of the internet.



Overall, Episode III is a wonderful if disappointing end to a promising series. My few hang ups with it kept it from landing in my Top 100 but this is still a fantastic game and a great series I still urge everyone to play. The series was recently denied an HD Remaster, but maybe Namco Bandai will release the original PS2 games on the PSN network so a new generation can try this misunderstood gem. I’ll leave you with the ending theme of the game, “Until Tomorrow” which feels just as bittersweet now as it did in 2006 when the series ended and lyrically embodies what I imagine Tetsuya Takahashi must of felt when it ended as well.


]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6244-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Xenosaga-Episode-III-Also-Sprach-Zarathustra <![CDATA[My Top 100's Lost but Not Forgotten: Suikoden IV Part 2 ~ Suikoden Tactics]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6235-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Suikoden-IV-Part-2-Suikoden-Tactics Mon, 17 Jun 2019 05:25:03 GMT
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So in my last blog, I talked about the black sheep numbered entry of the Suikoden franchise, Suikoden IV. Today, we're going to look at Rhapsodia, better known as Suikoden Tactics in the West. Tactics is a gaiden title that serves as both prequel/sequel side story to Suikoden IV. What makes it really standout is that the game is no longer a turn-based RPG about collecting 108 heroes, but instead a Tactical Turn Based RPG a la Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, and Disgaea fame.
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The game begins a few years before the events of IV, and stars a boy named Kyril who is on a journey with his father Walter and their entourage which includes his two body guards and wards of Walter Seneca and Andarc, as well as the mysterious goat woman Yohn who can speak with the dead. The group hails from the Scarlet Moon Empire and have been sent to the Island Nations on a secret mission to discover the secret to the regions powerful Rune Cannon technology. While there, they encounter young versions of Lazlo and Snowe in the back streets of Razril and end up gaining the ire of Reinbach II smuggling business. These turn of event lead Walter and his team to work with pirates of the region, namely Brandeau, Kika, and Edgar. They come into conflict with the dread pirate Steele who is the current possessor of the Rune of Punishment. The whole exchange ends with the deaths of Steele, Edgar, and Walter; Brandeau being cursed with the Rune of Punishment; the discovery that Rune Cannons have a side effect of causing people to transform into monstrous fish men monsters; and finally Kyril gaining a massive phobia against killing fish men that is going to make you hate the guy for half the game.
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The game picks up several years later after the events of SIV, Kyril is now a teenager still trying to lead the investigation and trying to pick up the cold leads his father uncovered before the Island Liberation War upset the region. Kyril meets a strange arms dealer named Iksas who helps lead them to the discovery that the Rune Cannons are made from the repurposed remains of monsters from the World of Emptiness that were summoned to their world for alchemical experimentation. Things become more complicated when Kyril's team rescue a young girl named Cordelia that Iksas is after. Turns out Cordelia is the youngest daughter of the prince of Kooluk and that Iksay is a member of the Patriarichal Faction of Kooluk which is made up of the elected political officials of the empire whom are trying to wrestle control from the Imperial Faction that controls the empire through right of their bloodline. Iksas plans on using Cordelia and his knowledge of Rune Cannons to win this civil war himself.
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Kyril and his team are caught in the middle but gain some help from the new Island Nations who have been keeping an eye on the boiling political climate of their adversary to the north. Of course not helping things is the Scarlet Moon Empire's own interference who learned that Walter had gone rogue concerning the original mission before his death and now are trying to manipulate Kyril and hit team to follow through with their real task: industrial espionage.
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Suikoden Tactics' story has a lot going on for it, which is pretty standard for the tactical RPG genre. But sadly, it also falls into a lot of the problems I find with it as well. Namely, the game has an A Plot, and a B Plot, and one is way more interesting than the other, but the game largely focuses on the least interesting one. In this case, the political intrigue of Kooluk and it's eventual implosion due to in-fighting between the factions of the government often takes a serious backseat to wandering around aimlessly looking for those gosh darn dangerous Rune cannons that turn people into fish monsters. In fact what is really annoying is that the Rune Cannons on their own are already a dangerous weapon, but the party and main villain seems more obsessed with the rune cannons side effects than just using it. The allegory to nuclear weapons and radiation are as subtle as a brick to the face in this game, and its here the game loses some of its momentum and logic. In fact, its kind of strange how the main villain utilizes the side effect in his grand scheme of things to ursurp the royal family when it probably would have been faster to just use the actual weapon itself.
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The court intrigue is fascinating, especially as you slowly get to see more of Kooluk unfold, but the game just never wants to focus on it and instead keeps dragging us back to those silly Demon Eyes and fish people. Yet there is some good content here as well with Kooluk having an internal struggle between its two main political factions with one being there by birth right and the other restricted to being elected officials tired of having the country dragged into conflicts because of the inept royal family. The royals are certainly misguided but are also treated as pretty decent figures in the story, not being as bloodthirsty as Luca Blight, but not also being so ideologically singular in their goals like the Godwins in SV.
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There is also a subplot dealing with the Scarlet Moon Empire's stake in all this which sadly never gets as much time to develop as I would hope, but its addition is some of the game's more intriguing political fun. Much like its other half, Suikoden IV, there is a real sense that this game got seriously edited down before release for some reason. Whereas we could say SIV had a budgeting issue, ST doesn't feel quite the same. I imagine the story's obsession with its poor allegory was largely boosted to appeal more with the domestic market and thus the B-plot was never given much attention outside of being a framing device as normal. Yet I stand by the fact that I feel the game would have worked better had the Rune cannon thing be the framing device for the more richly inspired political narrative at play here.
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On the gameplay front, we run also into a very mixed bag of ideas and concepts that had the potential to be amazing, but terrible decisions and some poor foresight ultimately cripple it. For the most part, Suikoden's basic mechanics blend perfectly with the Tactical RPG genre, maybe even more so than Final Fantasy and its tactical series. The easy magic system, Co-op attacks, and large "gotta catch em all" recruitment mechanics are a perfect match for a genre that likes large army battles and works best with simple but deep customization options.
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The game also took some notes from the reception of SIV and brought back a huge swatch of Runes from the earlier games, finally giving the cast of characters more personality. In addition the rules of the genre helped to really give more meaning to characters based on their weapon and class types with melee and mages having a more distinct split and different melee weapons having more nuance and use with spear users having range advantage, axe/greatsword users being slower and having lower accuracy, and single sword users being the basic generic unit that's good at everything but excels at nothing. Once you really start recruiting people and playing around with them, it becomes really easy to see how perfect Suikoden is for this genre. As a side note, this game also brings back one of my favorite fetures from the early games and takes Suikoden II as the best example. You can load a Suikoden IV safe file into the game to get a few bonuses, the biggest one being bale to recruit the main hero of SIV, Lazlo into your party who has his game breaking True Rune. You also get Snowe but not every Save data thing is a winner.
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Three new elements were added for this game compared to the mainline series. The first is the Buddy System, certain characters who have story significance with each other tend to get some nice bonuses when working together which can be further boosted by using the talk command within battles. Buddy's may take a fatal blow for an ally or most often do a follow up attack with them if they are close to each other on the field. This really adds some nice depth along with Co-op attacks for team builds as not everyone can be a buddy to everyone else and certain characters tend to work best with a buddy with them.
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The game also brings in Mounts, which is not necessarily new to Suikoden but was always much more insular in those series with only certain characters being able to take advantage of it. Tactics brings in several types of mounts like Kagacorns and Giant Owls which help add some variety to battles and help you get around the game's large maps much faster. Even better is that some of the game's new runes involve the Mounts and add even further specialization and customization. It's really easy to ignore these elements but they are actually pretty useful, especially because maps and party sizes tend to be quite huge in this game.
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The biggest addition in the game is the element system, which is easily the most important tactical tool at your disposal. Every character and monster is aligned with one of the series six main elements. Using magic or certain co-op attacks can endow the map with one of these six elements. If a character of the same element is standing on these squares, then they get an overall boost to their attack and defense as well as a regen effect at the end of battle. If they are the opposing element, well obviously the opposite happens with a stat debuff and poison effect instead. So a huge part of battle is trying to control this element field effect. Most runes now offer an ability that simply changes the tiles around a character to the runes element affinity, and bosses can be won or lost by not paying enough attention to this. The computer A.I. is very quick to abuse element field effects as well and I don't need to tell you that a boss with hundreds of HP getting 10% of their health back every turn is a bad thing. There are also special wisp enemies who are simply a moving spiritual embodiment of these elements who change the tiles field effect wherever they move, so keep an eye on them, especially since killing one will have them explode and change a huge chunk of the map to their element.
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Runes have also been expanded for melee classes as most runes now have three skills instead of just one and if you want to see the real Falcon Rune, you'll need to keep Kika properly leveled to unlock that third skill slot. These expanded abilities give the classes a lot of options for the most part with a few glaring exceptions. Spear and Archer classes are especially wrecking balls in this game.
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Besides a huge chunk of new and old runes coming back, the game also brings back Suikoden III's skill system. It has been overhauled to be far more balanced, and feels a bit closer to the new skill system added to the remake of Tactics Ogre on the PSP, in that most of the skills are absolutely imperative to success in the game as having low accuracy or critical hit scores can spell the difference between being a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield or a complete liability. Unfortunately, unlike Suikoden III and frankly the main line series in general, leveling up characters is pretty time consuming int his game and while there are plenty of side missions and quest to do so, its still daunting with a cast of around 40 playable characters to fully outfit and level properly.
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This kind of brings me to some of the game-play's biggest Achilles' heel in terms of some bad design choices that do more harm than good. The first issue is the heavy handed segregation of the games unit types. There are three unit types characters are categorized into. Melee, Mage, and Support. The first two are pretty self-explanatory but; support classes can't use magic or fight in battles. Instead they have supportive or non-combat roles which range from pure healers like the two doctor recruits, to stat boosting or item mule. The most important one is probably Rene who was attached to a treasure hunting mini-game in Suikoden IV. In this entry, she has a similar role, basically being a unit who can find hidden items on the map. She's actually very important for a few missions involving the game's big optional dungeon. Support units are not the problem is, it's the heavy segregation between Melee and Mages from what what most players know from the main series.
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Basically, in the main game, outside of available rune slots and weapon specific runes, you had free range to equip a character with any rune and many characters often fell into a red mage style classification. In this game, the only magic rune melee classes can use are the Elemental weapon runes which simply add an elemental property to their weapon or give them defensive bonuses against certain elements. Likewise, Mages are the only classes that can use actual spell runes. Where the problem lies is that his seriously hurts a chunk of the recruitable party. While Suikoden IV is hardly the worst offender of this issue, the game has a serious overabundance of 1h sword users as recruits, and their weapon specific Viper Rune is garbage. This leaves a lot of these characters kind of feeling like a copy/paste job and when I get to the later issue, you'll see the real issue here. So unless the character is fortunate to have some good Buddy partners or happens to be one of the rare characters who can use the Mount creature runes, these characters tend to be all the same in their builds with a few minor exceptions. These guys make up a rather large portion of the recruitable class so its easy to start ignoring a lot of them since most players will likely just stick to the early ones since they've had more time to be leveled and geared properly. What's even more annoying is if you us
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The true issue with the game is perma-death and its poor execution within the game. You can tell the devs were looking at Fire Emblem when making this game. I have no real problem with perma-death the issue is that it only affects non-story characters. Plot relevant character can never die, and you get more than you need in this game to make a full team. Now there is a skill that lowers the likelihood of a character ding, but that uses up a precious skill slot that story characters can use to make themselves more powerful. So yeah... what's the point in recruiting a large cast of samey style characters who can always be potentially killed when the game hands you a dozen overpowered story characters who can't? Even worse is that the game's two hidden characters being Lazlo from SIV and the Quest Guild leader are horribly overpowered and also have perma-death immunity. Seriously, once Lazlo is recruited, there is never a reason to have him leave the team. His true rune is a beast, and unlike other melee characters, he can still use the magic from his run like in the main game, though he still can't use other magic runes.
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Another minor gripe is the VA work. While most of the original cast return for better of for worse, Konami of America definitely cut some corners here. Kyril is voiced by Mona Marshall, who is a very talented voice actress who also voiced Izzy on Digimon and Musashi in Brave Fencer Musashi. She often voices young boy characters. Works great in the first third of the game when Kyril is a little boy, feels a bit awkward when after the time skip, he sounds like he hasn't had puberty yet. Again, a minor gripe, but it does get irritiating since he talks a whole lot more more after the time skip. Another minor gripe is that Kyril gets aserious nerf in the game for story reasons. Now, I'm usually all for these kinds of things, but here it does challenge my views on it. Due to the trauma from the end sequence of the child era, Kyril can't bring himself to kill the Fish people. Okay legitimate excuse. Problem is, the game loves to use this enemy type and as traditional of this genre, landing a killing blow grants more XP than just damaging them, so Kyril finds himself in some leveling issues at certain points of the game becomes a bit of a useless unit when you get stuck fighting a whole map of these enemy types who are exploiting elemental map effects to regenerate generous portions of their health back. It can be useful for leveling up new recruits, but as I mentioned before, XP doesn't go as far in this game like the main line series.
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So yeah, a lopsides gameplay that has you recruiting characters you'll likely ignore over the main cast who can't ever be killed, and a story that sticks to the more ridiculous elements whiel kind of sidelining the better B plot largely hurt this game for me. I mean I really want to like this game, the music is good, the cast is decent, and their are enough concessions made in the gameplay to give it more potential than it's mainline title, but all of these issues add up to make a game that feels frustrating and largely explains why Konami chose to reboot the series after Suikoden V. I'd still recommend it to people. While these issues are annoying for me, I imagine some fans can look past these issues and find themselves playign a great game. I know I often did as my opinion of the game went back and forth throughout my playthrough because there are some real brilliant moments. For those wondering about the other spin-offs, I've yet to play them so I have no comment at this time.


]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6235-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Suikoden-IV-Part-2-Suikoden-Tactics <![CDATA[My Top 100"s Lost but Not Forgotten: Suikoden IV ~ Part 1]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6234-My-Top-100-quot-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Suikoden-IV-Part-1 Mon, 29 Apr 2019 05:53:19 GMT List, blah blah. Didn't make it, blah blah.
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I feel I have a theme going here. Like the BoF1 entry, anyone who took a quick glance of my list will know I'm a pretty big Suikoden fan, you'll also notice I snubbed one of the main entries and most of the spin-off/gaiden games. I'll say right now, that I have to actually play Suikogaiden due to lacking the proper emulator, which is why it was "skipped" but I know most of the plot and like it as well. Instead, let's discuss the fourth entry of the ill-fated Suikoden franchise, and as a first for these articles, I'm even going to dig into an entry that would likely not have made my list at all, but I feel is pretty important to discuss concerning the Suikoden franchise.
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Suikoden IV, despite the IV in the title, is actually a prequel to the whole franchise, taking place about 150 years before the first game far to the south of the Scarlet Moon Empire in an oceanic region that will be called the Island Nations by the time of Suikoden II. The region is filled with several independent island countries like the commerce focused Middleport, the Nay Kobold settlement, the culturally divided Na Nal Island, and the powerful Kingdom of Obel. The region is best known for both its powerful pirate factions who cause a lot of problems in the area. The Island Nations are also known as the source of the powerful Rune Cannons that make the region very difficult to conquer. In addition, the region is also known for its long history with the Rune of Punishment, one of the 27 True Runes that governs punishment and forgiveness, the Rune's destructive powers are well known, as well as the curse it places on its host. Unlike other True Runes, this one tends to kill its bearer over time, showing that even the one chosen by the rune is not safe from judgement. To make matters worse, the rune seems to have the power to warp ones fate so that the host is almost forced to use the rune's power, increasing the likelihood that the next use will be the host's last, making it one of the most sadistic of the 27 True Runes.
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Two nations also meddle in the region, namely the Gaian Duekdom to the West, which has set up a foothold base on Razril Island where their famous knights are trained to protect the mainland from piracy and the influence of the other nation, namely the Kooluk Empire to the north. Kooluk is a small dwindling empire that is in conflict to their more powerful northern neighbor, the Scarlet Moon Empire. Seeing their own territory constantly being raided and lost to the imperial expansion, Kooluk has tried in the past to expand its own territory in the south over the island countries. They were repelled from their last invasion a number of years ago before the story began.
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Our story begins in Razril where we are introduced to knights-in-training Lazlo (official novelization name of the Hero you can name yourself) and his childhood friend Snowe Vingerhut. Lazlo was found lost at sea when he was a very small child and taken in by the influential Vingerhut family, growing up together, the two are as close as brothers though certain feeling of inadequacy complicates their relationship. The two succeed in stopping their Commander Glen and Vice-Commander Katarina from taking their ship and passing their final exam so they can become full-fledged Gaian Knights. On their first voyage to sea, the duo are attacked by the dreaded pirate Brandeau. Fearing for his life, Snowe abandons ship at the first sight of conflict and it's up to Lazlo to stop Brandeau. Brandeau tries to kill Lazlo with the Rune of Punishment he wields, but Lazlo is mysteriously shielded from the runes power, which consumes Brandeau and then tries to attach itself to Lazlo. Commander Glen appears and takes the rune instead, realizing what it really was and not wishing for his most promising student to be cursed. Lazlo is rewarded by the commander for his bravery, while Snowe's reputation is sunk due to his cowardice. This creates a serious rift between the two as Snowe's family is the governor of Razril itself and thus Snowe has grown up with a certain sense of entitlement.
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Soon Razril is attacked by a mass armada of pirates wishing to avenge the fallen Brandeau. Realizing the knights could not repel the fleet by themselves, Commander Glen locks himself within the Hall of Knights with strict orders that no one enter and uses the Rune of Punishment to decimate the fleet, but Glen was right in realizing that the rune's power would be too much and it begins to consume him. Shocked by the power unleashed, Lazlo breaks the commander's orders and enters the Hall of Knights to check on him, unbeknownst that Snowe follows behind. Here Lazlo gains the True Rune from the dying Glen, who had wished to die alone and keep the rune from passing onto one of his students. Thanks to the commander's death, Snowe's testimony, and now possessing the cursed rune; Lazlo is falsely accused of murdering the commander to get the rune and subsequently banished from Razril.
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Lazlo is thankfully accompanied by two of his fellow knights who defect out of a strong belief in Lazlo's innocence (which you get to choose) as well as a Nay-Kobold named Chiepoo that Lazlo had befriended earlier. From here Lazlo has a few misadventures where he encounters a sea monster, gets stranded on a deserted island, helps a mermaid, and encounters an undercover Kooluk ship that is scouting the area in preparation for a new invasion. Finally Lazlo and his group are rescued by the residents of the Kingdom of Obel.
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The ruler of Obel is much more sympathetic to Lazlo's plight, especially considering the late queen had been a former bearer of the Rune of Punishment before it took her life and the life of the heir of Obel. Lazlo is recruited to help Obel thwart the Kooluk invasion and tries to gather allies among the island nations, but no one really wants to believe Kooluk is going to invade until they topple Obel itself. Turns out Kooluk has gotten their hands on Rune Cannon technology thanks to an arms dealer named Graham Cray who has returned to the region in search of the Rune of Punishment. Thankfully, the King of Obel had prepared for war early and gives Lazlo and his recruits’ access to a special warship the Dauntless before Kooluk took the island and now the game starts proper with Lazlo sailing about the islands trying to convince the petty and often boneheaded leaders of the various islands to actually band together to repel the invading empire. I feel it says something about the island nations that the pirates are the first ones to answer the call to arms.
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In 2002, Yoshitaka Murayama, the main creator and driving force behind the Suikoden franchise, left Konami to go freelance which was a plan he had set out for himself when he first joined Konami ten years earlier. Despite the fact that Suikoden III was the most commercially successful entry in the franchise, he still went through with his plan leaving a vacuum for the series direction. When the time came to make a follow up, the series fell into the hands of Murayama's longtime collaborator Junko Kawano, who had helped Murayama conceive the original Suikoden as well as supply the character designs for that entry. Suikoden IV is a bit of an oddity among the franchise. With Suikoden III, Murayama had started to shift gears on the franchise, dropping the silent protagonist and exploring the conflict through multiple viewpoints, as well as expanding customization options and trying to add a bit more tactical know-how to the series. By contrast, Suikoden IV feels like an extension from the first entry Kawano had worked on.
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Kawano tried to update the tech of Suikoden with the fourth entry. I'm not sure if it was her idea or if Konami was looking at the success of FFX and X-2 and simply told her to do a little "following the leader" while giving her a meager budget to do so, but IV brings a few interesting technical elements to the franchise. It’s one of only two entries to be built for progressive scan TVs, the other being Suikoden Tactics. The game tries to update the graphical quality to something closer to Square-Enix's efforts to mix results. Things like the water effects and some of the lighting elements in cutscenes are noticeably impressive when they show up, but the attempt at high detail and the skill of the art team along with Kawano's character designs do not always match up and so graphically the game somehow manages to look a bit worse in places than its PS2 brethren. An example of this is the use of motion capture for character animations, which adds fluidity to some of the Unite Attacks and duels, but with the cartoonish designs of the characters, sometimes falls into uncanny valley territory. In fact Lazlo has the distinction of having one of the worst looking running animations in the series, always looking like he's running with his pants around his ankles. The game also introduced full voice acting to the series with mixed results in the English translation. The lack of a budget and a strong development team makes IV consequently feels a bit regressive compared to its two predecessors, and is often compared to the first game the most.
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Suikoden IV drops the controversial battle mechanics from Suikoden III which unfortunately included the awesome, if overpowered, Skill system. Instead SIV returns the franchise first game, while retaining a few minor elements from SII. It retains the Rune Affinity mechanic from SII as well as the ability to equip multiple runes onto certain characters, but most of the cool new runes introduced in SII and III are mostly removed for unknown reasons, in fact Suikoden IV only has one more rune than the first game with a total of 35 distinct runes. To put this in perspective, SII featured 87 distinct runes, while SIII featured 71, so the reduction is quite noticeable.
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This also leaves very little room for interesting customization and worse of all, many of the missing runes from previous entries were special runes used to help characters feel distinct and add personality to them like Genshu's Swallow Rune, Cecile's War Horse Rune, and even Pahn's Boar Rune. This goes a long way into explaining another issue SIV is often accused of among Suikoden vets, which is that SIV is often regarded as having one of the weakest casts of characters among the franchise. Of course there are bigger reasons for this as well. Unlike previous entries, Lazlo doesn't get saddled with the same type of entourage previous heroes get and even the ones he does have are mostly hit or miss among fans. The four cadets you can recruit are lacking in any meaningful characterization outside of a novelty trait to make them feel distinct. Chiepoo has a lot of personality, but many fans can find the Nay-Kobold to be incredibly abrasive since he's both trying to be Mr. Exposition for Lazlo and comic relief in a title that sometimes takes itself a wee too seriously at times. Other characters like Flare get quickly sidelined for most of the game and several of the other characters feel a bit too novelty than others. Other characters can either sink or swim depending on the game's voice acting which ranges from serviceable with several of the characters I listed above, to laughably bad. It's hardly the worst I've seen in a game, but it does get annoying that so many character feel like they're being voiced by maybe five to seven VA overall.
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Granted there are several exceptions to this rule such as Kika, Lino en Kuldes, Eleanor Silverburg, Chiepoo, "lone returning character" Ted, and of course the first physical appearance of series long running gag Schtolteheim Reinbach III. Probably the best character is the ability to recruit Ted, McDohl's best friend from the first game, whose entire story exists to partially fill in a minor plot hole from the first game and to serve as one of the game's several shout outs to fan favorite entries. Yet there is a real feeling of the cast just kind of being here and very few characters get as much of a spotlight outside of a handful to help flesh out the story. This isn't helped either by coming after Suikoden III, which took great strides in actually trying to make most of the 108 Stars of Destiny feel important to the main plot. In some ways, even the first Suikoden feels like it does more to make the cast stand out than this entry did. Other issue are simply the fact the plot feels a bit bare bones compared to other entries and some of the strange transitions and cuts in the cutscenes almost gives the impression that IV's plot had to be cut down considerably to either fulfill some arbitrary deadline or fall within the game's budget, likely a combination of both sadly.
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Another change to the game that doesn't do it any favors was removing SIII's controversial "Buddy System" and simply reducing the party to just four members instead. This causes way more problems than the Buddy System, as it drastically reduces the playable cast, especially since Lazlo can never really be removed and the game continues the trend of saddling you with certain story characters making it difficult to even bother using the characters you recruit. Personally, I feel the attempt at up-scaling the graphics probably made using a six party team technically infeasible as the Buddy system was said to be a work around the developers had implementing the team dynamic in SIII. To help alleviate the issue of the limited team builds, the game does allow you to make two additional parties you can switch to when sailing on the Battleship. Course the game doesn't do a great job of explaining this to you, but this is pretty much the only way you're going to really get to use a large part of the cast and learn all of those Unite Attacks, especially the game's lone four member Unite Attack.
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"Learn Unite Attacks?" you may be asking. Yes, in this game, simply getting the right team together isn't enough anymore to activate these powerful moves, now you need to play a number of battles with the characters together in a party before they'll learn their Unite Attack, and even then, you'll need to kill a certain amount of enemies with said Unite Attack to level it up enough to actually do respectable damage which is also new to the series but likely implemented because Unite Attacks are kind of OP in this series. It's a bit annoying because it forces you to rely more on guides in some ways as the game doesn't always give you strong enough clues to know who actually has a Unite Attack together. What I found a bit more disappointing though is the sheer lack of variety in them. Several of the Unite Attacks follow the same motions and simply change out who is in the party showing that despite the game utilizing motion capture for some of the animations, they really didn't have enough resources to build any variety with it. One area I will praise them is using the Unite Attacks shared by Lazlo and Snowe to convey their character growth. The original Friendship Attack has Lazlo do most of the work while Snowe delivers the coup de grace. It's a decent attack but more than anything, it really showcases their relationship. If you do everything needed to recruit Snowe by the game's end and witness his humiliating character arc, the humbled Snowe and Lazlo now see each other as equals and their new True Friendship Attack features both of them giving their all and also happens to be the strongest single target unite attack in the game.
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Another minor gripe I do have with the game is that despite the attempt at higher quality In graphics, so many of the concession this game makes ends up hindering one area you almost would expect the new graphical transition to shine, which is spell effect animations. SIV's magic animations mostly look underwhelming and this in turn hurts any feeling of "weight" they should have. Even the original Suikoden got this right with high tier spells looking impressive and the Soul Eater had both visual and audible cues to make it feel like an overwhelming force despite often not being any stronger than more conventional magic spells. The Rune of Punishment by contrast, outside of the awesome scream cues the spells make, feels really underwhelming in comparison. Hell, the higher tier elemental spells look like the starting spells in a typical Final Fantasy game. I never realize how much I look forward to this kind of stuff until I'm presented with a bad one. The other gripe is the game's slow ass battleship you use to get around combined with the game's abnormally high encounter rate. Viki and the Champion's Rune can't be found soon enough for most players.
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Now, I know the last several paragraphs have me painting this game as some half-ass disaster sequel, but despite all of these problems, SIV is still a fairly fun game to play despite being mostly disappointing for series veterans. Part of this is that the game's strengths do work out really well in its favor. Part of this plays out in how much more emphasis the castle mechanic gets in this game. The Battleship basically serves as the "castle" where your recruits hang out and while the castle hub has always been surprisingly involving, SIV introduces several new tweaks and ideas that SV kind of borrows, but may have become more standard had the series continued properly. SIV introduces a crafting system. In addition to your blacksmith increasing the power of your party's weapons, she can now take materials you find or use in trade to build armor for your army as well. New additions include a tailor to also make new armor and several other craftsmen to build accessories and such.
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This all plays into the one neat idea SIV does bring to gameplay that SV thankfully took to heart, the concept of armor sets. In SIII there were three armor sets where if you could equip a character with every piece of the set, it would garner a few bonuses. Mostly just increase how much money you get or raise one stat a level, but SIV took the idea and ran with it. Armor sets can take even some of the blandest characters and make them feel unique and powerful as the sets will grant huge stat boosts in addition to special effects like the Ogre Set putting a character in permanent Fury status or the armor can dramatically increase the likelihood of parry and counters. Some pieces of gear can be found, but most sets will usually require one or two pieces to be made which is where the crafting system really shines. Going along with this is the changes made to the Trading Posts system. In previous entries, it was a balancing mechanic used to make farming money easier but here it serves another purpose as the materials you can purchase for trade can also be used to craft new items, but what the game fails to mention is that the quality of the materials increase the more you trade, which becomes obvious when you start to realize that some gear require high grade material you never see because you haven't traded enough.
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The other area where SIV is pretty fun is with the minigames. Rita-pon may be one of top five minigames in the series. It's more or less a simplified game of mahjong that gets super addicting after a while. My other favorite mini-game deals with the mysterious twins who grow mint and mushrooms on your ship and are constantly fighting over the rooms conditions since both things they grow require opposing temperatures and environments; if it hits a fever pitch, they begin a "war" to see which of their plants will prevail and it plays out exactly like the War battles from the first Suikoden game. Speaking with Eleanor also allows you to play the game's naval battles whenever you want as well.
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The naval battles are SIV's incarnation of the War system, and probably my second favorite in the series behind SV's RTS system. You acquire ships throughout the game as either story points or for playing well and recruiting the right people. Ships are placed on a grid system and take turns moving and attacking much like a traditional turn based tactical RPG. A ship is crewed by a Captain, a boarding party, and the Rune cannons gunners. While only a select few characters can be Captains, everyone else can be a boarding member or a gunner and their stats will combine to give the full offensive/defensive power of a ship. There are two ways to attack, you can either board a ship to kill its crew and thus sink the ship, or you can use Rune Cannons. Boarding parties work more or less like army battles did in SIII, with you choosing the party and their strength largely being dependent on their actual level and load out. One difference though is that the A.I. tends to avoid using rune magic, so mages are worthless here. Instead they serve their worth with the Rune Cannons which are the heart of naval combat and the actual fun part of it. You assign characters to a rune cannon and depending on which elemental runes you have attached will be the element of the shells they can use. The power of the cannon is fixed based on the character, but considering the magical nature of the weapon, mage based characters often pack more power over fighters. From this point, cannons use a rock/paper/scissors elemental system to work out. Both the player and enemy unit will trade fire when rune cannons are used. If the elements neither oppose nor are the same element then they simply trade blows and damage is calculated. If the element of the cannon is the same, both shots will actually collide in midair and cancel each other out. If the elements oppose based on the directional wheel, the winning shell will not only cancel out the opponents shot but then proceed to hit the ship for damage serving as a duel function of offense and defense. So checking the elemental properties of an enemy ship beforehand can help you decide the right strategy to win. It's a shame there isn’t that many naval battles in the story, but at least it also has a mini-game are to play to your hearts content.
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The other element of IV that serves as it's better quality while also highlighting it's weakness comes in the form of the story. IV has the misfortune of having one of the more disjointed and weaker plots in the series, not helped by the fact that Suikoden Tactics serves to actually fill in a lot of backstory for the setting and cast which makes some fans wonder if this was a result of the team trying to atone for the lack luster story of IV, or if Suikoden Tactics came to be from all of the story bits cut during development and is essentially the other half of the an original script in pre-development. While it's well established Junko Kawano helped create and write the first two entries in the series, her solo effort as the writer shows where her interests in the world lie. The political story of IV is fairly weak, and while it gets some much needed improvements in Tactics, politics still rank low on her narrative priorities. Kooluk is nowhere near as intimidating or opposing as the antagonists of previous entries. In fact background info discovered through NPCs, Tactics, the art book sources paint the Kooluk as more desperate than malicious. Not helping matters is that much like SIII; their involvement in the story is a bit of a ruse caused by the game's central villain Graham Cray, who uses the invasion as a means to flush out the True Rune so he can acquire it.
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Cray, for his part, is actually a fairly well thought out villain whose biggest issues really fall into him being off screen too often and having few outstanding moments when he does show up. Yet he's one of the series better developed and sympathetic villains. In essence he's a disillusioned former Scarlet Moon Empire nobleman who was once the bearer of the Rune of Punishment. Fearing for his life, he hacked off his hand that bared the rune and it transferred to his young son. His hometown was then the subject of a false flag operation his own country started which forced his son to use the rune to save the village but instead killed everyone except Cray. He now seeks the rune as it contains the last vestiges of his son's will. Pretty heavy stuff but it's a shame he doesn't get as much screen time to really chew the scenery unlike Luca Blight or the Masked Bishop. On the flip side, Troy, the champion of Kooluk is set up early in the game to be a powerful rival figure for Lazlo before he's completely put out of focus until the very end of the game, completing wasting all of the build up he's given in the beginning.
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While the politics are laughably simplistic and often times takes far too many cues from better entries in the series, the real heart of the story comes from the story of the Rune of Punishment itself. Unlike most True Runes whom you only often learn of one or two previous owners of, the Rune of Punishment has had several owners over the last thirty or so years and major story events within the game involve Lazlo being drawn into the rune to speak and free the souls of the runes previous owners which helps expand the lore and setting of the Island Nations. While the true runes have always had a strong focus in previous entries, IV is the one that truly makes the rune the central focus of the plot whereas other entries use the rune to kick off the game's events before focusing more on the real politick nature of the setting. For this reason, it's no surprise that despite the negative reception this game gets from fans, the lone exception comes in the game's main true rune.
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The other factor that makes SIV stand out though is it's good musical score. Suikoden has a pretty underrated OST but the true stand out pieces are from guest composer coba who is a renowned for his accordion expertise and has composed and performed with several international musicians like Bjork. He composed the games awesome opening theme La Mer, which is on par with Suikoden III's Surpassing Love and Suikoden II's Opening Theme as being a catchy and pretty epic theme, especially considering how rare it is to hear Calypso inspired music in gaming.
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At the end of the day, I don't really have any hard feelings against Suikoden IV. I was a bit disappointed when I played the demo, but was pleasantly surprised when I finally invested in the full version of the game. It’s also one of those rare titles where I do end up liking it a little more with each playthrough as it has its charming elements despite its problems. While I feel it has always been the weakest entry of the numbered series for me, especially coming off of Suikoden III which was a fun mess in itself and then being followed by the impressive Suikoden V; I also feel it has its merits and can still stand side to side with the other entries in the series. Of course, not helping things is the odd middle child in this whole thing which I'll get to when I do Part 2 and discuss Suikoden Tactics, a gaiden game of the Tactical RPG genre that serves as both prequel and sequel to Suikoden IV which fixes a lot of issues with IV while generating its own amount of bad choices.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6234-My-Top-100-quot-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Suikoden-IV-Part-1 <![CDATA[My Top 100's Lost but Not Forgotten: Breath of Fire]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6233-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Breath-of-Fire Sun, 14 Apr 2019 21:23:47 GMT Blah blah blah, made a list, blah blah blah, this is for games that didn't make it.

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Anyone who simply glances over my list will notice I have a strong affiliation with Capcom's classic and underrated RPG series Breath of Fire. They will also notice I left one entry out of the list, and while my BoFII entry hints as to some of the reasons, I figured I would lay it out here in this blog series.
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In the early 90s, Nintendo released the Super Famicom game system and RPGs seriously began to take off with the successes of titles like Square's Final Fantasy series, Enix's Dragon Quest series, Atlus' Shin Megami Tensei, and a myriad of other RPG classics we still act like they're hot trout today. Capcom saw all this and wanted in. Capcom was already a powerhouse with their Rockman series and was battling Sega for arcade dominance with the genre defining Street Fighter II. So perhaps Capcom felt a bit invincible and figured they could tackle the console dominating genre of RPGs. It couldn't be that hard right?
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Capcom set off their producer Tokuro Fujiwara (Ghosts and Goblins) and future series director and main writer Makoto Ikehara, and even Keiji Inafune was on the project for a brief moment before being replaced by Tatsuya Yoshikawa. The game had music done by Capcom's famous Alph Lyla which worked on many of Capcom's rocking OSTs in the 90s including Street Fighter II. The most famous member of this group being Yoko Shimomura and Yasaki Fujita. So yeah, this game had a pretty strong development team, but Breath of Fire is kind of an interesting example of how even strong talent can struggle when forced out of their comfort zone. I'll get to that a bit later.
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Breath of Fire is set in a world of anthropomorphic races who co-exist together. The most notable is the Dragon Clan, which are powerful and sentient dragons that take human form when not spending their time being all dragony. In the ancient past, a goddess named Tyr (Myria) came before the Dragon Clan and offered them great power and desire if they served her. This caused a great rift between the clan and plunged the world into a cataclysmic war that nearly destroyed everything. Realizing their hubris, the Dragon Clan sealed Tyr away using six magic keys. The Dragon Clan had split into the Light and Dark dragons due to the war and in the ensuing thousands of years, developed different cultures from each other. In the present day, the Dark Dragons have used their power to create a powerful empire that is slowly trying to take over the world, whereas the Light Dragons faded away to a small village clan who sealed most of their power away, even the ability to transform back into their true forms.
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When the story begins, Ryu is awakened to learn that the village is being attacked by the Dark Dragons who fear their old adversaries may once again try to stand up against them, unfortunately for the Light Dragons, only Ryu's sister Sara is the only one who possesses any of the clans former power, and she duels the Dragon Emperor Zog's second in command Jade (Judas) and is captured, but at least ends the attack on the village. From here, Ryu sets off on a journey to rescue his sister, and stop the Dark Dragon Empire who is trying to find the Six Goddess Keys to release Tyr. On his journey, he encounters and recruits several friends and allies from across the various clans that are being oppressed by the Dark Dragons including legacy characters such as the Wing Clan Princess Nina of Wyndia, a member of the Wolba Clan named Bo (Giliam), a greedy and selfish Maniloo Clan members named Gobi, and series badass and lazy snake goddess Bleu (Dias).
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For the most part, the plot is pretty straightforward and standard for the time. Go to new town, liberate it from the Dark Clans and possibly recruit a new party member. There are a few interesting scenarios here and there such as Nina's introduction which actually has you change character perspective and play as her for a short dungeon. There is also Jade's Four Deva generals who all have some unique personality quirks but it's Cerl and the story of Alan and the time stopped village that's one of the most standout stories in the game. Especially since it leads to the missing Nina quest, which itself is a pretty unique story that reaffirms Nina as one of the series legacy characters. Eventually Jade lives up to his Japanese name of Judas and betrays the emperor and tries to take Tyr for himself, and the party has the series traditon of a having amelancholic battle against a Dragon who is actually a close ally/friend/relative to Ryu.
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Gameplay is probably where BoF1 both shines and also really shows how ameturish the effort was. From a programming standpoint, BoF1's mechanics are incredibly simplistic, to the point where one could be forgiven for thinking the game is some early RPG Maker title. I'll use magic as an example:

In Dragon Quest, most spells do an allotted amount of damage. A spell like Frizz would do between 20-35hp of damage per cast, whereas Frizzle would do 75-100hp and KaFrizzle would do 200-250hp of damage and so forth. In BoF1, a fire spell will do 25hp of damage unless the enemy is immune to it. Guaranteed and always, there is no algortithm for things like resistance or enemy magic defense. Spells and techniques basically will always do the same damage unless the enemy has immunity or if the attack critical hits which does double it's damage. There is even an item in the game that makes your next move a guaranteed critical hit regardless of what ability it is. So a lot of the more nuanced depth of a typical RPG is kind of missing here which is truly fascinating but never really hurts the game too badly.
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What';s most interesting about the game, and something I mentioned with BoFII is that Capcom incorporated some unique ideas that really set this game apart from other RPGs at the time, incorporating some Zelda-esque shenanigans. The biggest one easily being the fact that all the characters have unique abilities they can use on the map or in dungeons. This in fact does lead to some pretty good value for some of the less than steller party members such as Gobi working as your team's "boat" and Bo being able to hunt food on the map that can be used for healing or sold for quick cash. In fact, my favorite mini-game is one that involves Gobi. There are two merchant bazaars in the game and once Gobi gets his mercantile license restored, he can set up shap at these places and trade items in your ivnentory for new gear. There is actually some interesting chain of deals shennaigans that will ultimately net you some of the game's best gear and the whole thing plays out very similar to Torneko's shop mechanics in Dragon Quest IV. Course BoF has a bad habit of not exactly explainging this so I missed it the first time I played the game, but it's been a real treat since I did learn about.
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Another unique mechanic which set this series apart from other games at the time was the dragon and fusion mechanics. As you progress through the game, Ryu can come across some wells on the map and if you use his fishing ability, he can acquire some of the legendary Dragon Clan armor and sword. The gear is pretty good for the most part, but their true purpse is to be taken to the various hidden Dragon Shrines where Ryu can undergo a trial and awaken his clans power to transform into a dragon. The thief Karn on the otherhand has some connection to an ancient power that allows him to fuse with other party members and transform into powerful monsters that can often be stronger than some of Ryu's own dragon forms. Both of these mechanics add some nice flavor to a generally stale and traditonal battle system that has all the basic attack, defend, and magic shenanigens associated with the genre. Varitey certainly doesn't hurt the game.
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What does hurt the game is some of the balancing issues. BoF1 has the second largest playable cast in the series but I guarantee your final team will be Ryu, Nina, Karn, and Bleu. Bo, Ox, Mogu, and Gobi are at their best, decent filler characters, and complete liabilities at worse. Not helping things is Karn, whose fusion skill makes him a permanent fixture on the team because as I said, he can often be your main offense. Ryu's dragon forms are also no slouch, especially since they cast a small amount of AP to transform and unlike every other game, Ryu remains in the form until your either change him back to human or the battle ends with no consequence. Ryu and Karn pretty much blow the rest of the team out of the water in terms of non-magical damage output and then Blue shows up to fill that gap. Nina is also the team medic but what really drives this home is that Karn can only fuse with Ox, Bo, Gobi and Mogu so that leaves the other three useful members completely free to stay on your main team. So party variety gets hurt big time the longer you play. I don't even need to mention Ryu's final Infinity form that fuses the whole team together and pulls off max damage every round.
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The other issue here is some of the strange enemy quirks, the most obnoxious being bosses having second winds. Basically you always see an enemy's health bar, but most bosses will onyl have like a tenth of their actual health shown by the bar and once they get K.O. they get back up with a sliver of their health on the bar and the other 9/10ths of their health tacked on. Was a real shock the first time it happens, gets old real fast when most bosses do it especially Tyr the final boss who has a ridiculously high health pool. For the most part, BoF1 may also be one of the easiest entries in the series, it doesn't take much to break this game and in fact the general design of the game practically encourages it


Overall, BoF1 is pretty by the book in terms of RPG conventions and the writing is rarely that stellar despite having a strong OST to really enhance some of the games better moments. Of anything, I feel it shows just how much of a serious leap in writing ability BoFII was after playing through this entry. It's as daunting as it would have been for North American fans jumping from the NES FFI to the SNES FFII(IV) in terms of scale and depth.


Of course, maybe the real issue here is the game's terrible localization and translation. Capcom USA didn't have the resources to translate an RPG, being more inclined to Capcom's more simplistic arcade style titles with excuse plots. So the company outsourced it to Square of all people who were not exactly known for their stellar track record at the time. Ted Woosely actually transalted the game around the time he was finishing up Secret of Mana. So who knows how much nuance got left on the editing floor table as BoF1 suffered through the issue of the time of tight deadlines and limited character space. So like any RPG at the time, it's almost surprising how well it did considering the odds against it. Even more annoying is that when Capcom ported the game to the GBA a decade later, they barely fixed the script.
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Despite all this the game has some other fun charm going for it like numerous Capcom cameos and references. There is a fun easter egg where Chun Li appears, houses have portraits of Arthur from Ghosts and Goblins hanging in them, and boss Goda not only looks like a Wily Robot, but even has animatiosn that are a reference to Yellow Devil from Mega Man. The game also shows off a lot of Capcom's strength at the time with some really impressive sprite work and of course the game has a pretty killer OST with some real great themes, many of which were re-used in the sequel.
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Breath of Fire is a fun if painfully basic first attempt at an RPG by Capcom. While the sequels were incredible improvements that pushed the series into FF levels of good for me, the same cannot be said of BoF1 which felt a bit dated despite it's unique traits even at the time of release. For these reasons, I couldn't really put it on my list, but it's still a pretty interesting game and I feel playing through it is great for eally showing off how much Capcom advanced and learned over the years.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6233-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Breath-of-Fire <![CDATA[My Top 100's Lost but not Forgotten: Dragon Quest VII]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6230-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-not-Forgotten-Dragon-Quest-VII Fri, 26 Oct 2018 04:42:32 GMT Attachment 75726 (http://home.eyesonff.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=75726) I feel like the year 2001 was an odd year in gaming. One of the first time where you really felt like the end of an era and the beginning of a new one was coming. Sony was gearing up to release the successor to the...
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I feel like the year 2001 was an odd year in gaming. One of the first time where you really felt like the end of an era and the beginning of a new one was coming. Sony was gearing up to release the successor to the smash hit PlayStation and if you looked around the gaming scene, it seemed like every company was jumping ship to get on board what the PS2 could do. Square had released their PS1 swan song FFIX even though they would still support the PS1 with ports like FF Origins a few years later, but most fans were feverishly waiting for Final Fantasy X. It's interesting how one of the bigger releases of this year was more of an anomaly than anything. Enix was finally going to release their long sought after Dragon Quest VII and for some of us Westerners, we were finally going to get the chance to play a numbered entry after nearly a decade.
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Some background info is in order then. VII was announced in 96, and was originally going to be released on the N64 peripheral system, but a few days later, Enix decided to switch to the PS1 due to easier and cheaper development costs and the larger install base. Like many of the stories surrounding the N64, the move to stick to cartridge based medium prompted most of it's third party support to jump to the competition. DQVII was expected to come out not long after it's release but due to Horii's perfectionism and the game's meager staff of 35 people, VII ended up being delayed quite a bit. It was meant to come out around the time FFVII was released but instead released the same year as FFIX in Japan. Despite the game looking like an early PS1 title, Square was so afraid of the game crushing their own efforts that they pushed back FFIX's release which was probably for the best because DQVII sold over four million copies in Japan within the first year and is still the best selling PS1 game in Japan. To put this in perspective, it took FFVII one year to make it to million copies including world wide sales and being released in most regions. DQVII did four times as much business in Japan alone.
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Course the game got a release in the West as well cause Enix decided to jump in on the RPG craze VII made but by the time the game was released in 2001, DQVII not only looked and played incredibly dated, but was also a brand that had little of a following in the U.S. thanks to skipping the 16-bit era and largely existing with the Pokemon spin-off series DQ Monsters on the Gameboy. It's not a surprise to anyone that VII tanked here. It's also interesting to see how FF really influenced Western tastes as you read reviews of the game at the time. The game nearly got a perfect score in Famitsu back when that meant something but largely got middling reviews from Western gaming sites who often complained about the dated gameplay and graphics as well as the game's incredibly slow pace. Despite all of this, since I was in my hardcore RPG phase at the time and was unlikely to get a PS2 for awhile (I ended up being wrong about that) I took the chance to play a new DQ entry.
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DQVII takes place on the small island nation of Estard. It is a peaceful kingdom that has existed as long as people remember and has never experienced any real problems. The people are mostly agreeable and the royal family is competent. Suffice to say, it's an incredibly boring place to be. At least that's what the Hero, his best friend the crowned prince Kiefer, and the mayor's daughter Maribel feel about it. So of course the kids break the one taboo of the island and explore the mysterious temple on the far end of the island. They eventually discover a chamber with several pedestals with strange broken tablets within that show a map. Intrigued, the trio of misfits scourer the island until they find the pieces to complete one of the maps and they are soon enveloped in light and transported to a dark kingdom overrun by monsters. Intrigued, the kids help the villagers to fight off the monsters that are ruling over them and have a grand adventure, even finding a few more of the mysterious tablets in this strange land. When they return through the portal to their home land, they discover the whole island is in a strange uproar. Apparently a new island appears not far from Estard. When the kids explore, they discover it's the strange dark kingdom they helped save. Thus there journey begins to find the tablets and restore the destroyed world that was nearly conquered by the Demon Lord during his climatic battle against God centuries ago.
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I feel VII wins the award for having one of the most inventive stories in the series, and an interesting look at Horii's own take on a time travel story when he doesn't have to deal with Masato Kato's meddling. What makes the story so engaging for this title is how well it fits with the episodic story formula the series has utilized since DQIII combined with how well the stories wind up being interconnected as locations from late game have subtle and not-so-subtle callbacks to events from the early locations in the game. VII also has quite possibly the darkest tales in the franchise, which isn't terribly surprising when you remember the lands you're saving were completely destroyed by their troubles. In fact, I kind of blame playing VII before V hurting the major player punch from that game because VII took the concept into a much more horrifying direction.
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The other thing I love about VII is the eclectic cast it contains. I mentioned in another thread how VII's cast feels like some NPC's from other games finally getting the chance to star in their own game. The hero is a dopey looking fisherman's son, Maribel is a bratty and bossy red head, Gabo is a wolf turned into a human and barely talks being a more animal like Dragon Ball era Son Goku whose story ends as soon as it begins, and Melvin is the Legendary Hero, who turns out to be a senile old man. Kiefer and Aria are the lone exceptions with Kiefer being a "jump to the call" adventure seeking prince, but he winds up being a temporary NPC. Aria remains as the lone exception but it's surprising how she's often the most overlooked cast member in the game in more recent years. This odd bunch of heroes actually makes the adventure feel a bit more amusing since you're not stuck with typical hero teams which was probably one of the best parts of the game because it made them feel fresh after a smorgasbord of dealing with samey RPG casts from the flood of RPGs on the PS1. In fact, I feel this makes the game more appealing even today as the trend of using stock archetypes has never really changed much.
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On the gameplay front, DQVII largely worked as a huge expansion of DQVI's mechanics. At this point it should be noted that the DS/3DS remakes of these two games took some serious liberties from these mechanics. VII utilizes a job class system, but unlike typcial Job Systems, a characters equipment isn't restricted by the class, instead it's the character. Gabo can never equip Staves while Maribel can never use swords or axes. This sort of adds focus to character building but it doesn't necessarily mean the characters are bad in classes that don't utilize their equipment strength. For instance, Maribel's staffs work well with the magic/warrior hybrid classes just as Gabo being a beefier hitting mage isn't a bad thing. VII added a few new classes such as Shepherd and Summoner/Druid as well. You start with basic classes like Fighter, Warrior, Bard, Cleric, and Mage until you master them and unlock advanced classes such as Pirate, Sage, and Paladin, mastering these classes unlocks the prestige classes Hero, Summoner, and Godhand (Champion? Seriously Remake?). In the original VI, you could recruit monsters on your team like in DQV, VII dropped this mechanics and instead changed it so your party members could learn Monster Classes of which there were 34 to choose from. The monster classes them selves also work in a tier system that can be unlocked as you master the proper jobs, but in addition to the slow method, it's possible for monsters to drop their Monster Heart's which would allow you to directly jump to that class, but I'll warn you that the drop rate is painfully low.
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One of the coolest features, which I don't understand why more games haven't incorporated this into it is the idea of Hybrid Abilities. Basically the order of classes you level can unlock a unique skill that combines the best of both classes. The in-game example is by mastering Warrior and Thief in any order, you would also learn Thief Hit which is basically DQ's version of the Mug skill. If you mastered Mage instead of Warrior, you would learn Rob Magic (MP Drain) instead. This made planning your classes more interesting, but sadly it mostly pertained to the the beginner classes. Mastering classes also granted a stat bonus whenever your character was that class.
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Where VII goes wrong here is how unbalanced the jobs can be. Unlike FFs job systems, in DQ, your character retains all their abilities as they jump through the classes, this creates some obvious balancing issues as well as some tedious menu searching for the right ability. Some of the skills are also pretty broken as I will tell you now that if you're playing the original, you should definitely have at least two people master Teen Idol and Dragoon to get access to Hustle (No Mp cost group heal) and Quad Hits (what it says on the tin) but on the other hand, I appreciate that most of the classes are pretty useful and sometimes being broken isn't a bad thing because VII can be downright brutal in places.
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Other features is the return of the Fashion Show minigame from VI where you can equip your party in themed items to win prestige and items in a fashion show, as well as a monster park where your Monster Tamer class can fill with monsters you beat in battle. New to the series is the Town building mini-game, inspired partially by DQIII's story event but expanded into a fun mini-game. Once you agree to help the town grow, you can talk to certain NPCs you meet around the world and tell them to move to the town. As the population grows, the town gets bigger and more features get added like better shops and churches to save. What is uniquely different from similar games is that you can build themed towns by recruiting only people who fall into a certain niche. If you recruit purely farmers and livestock, the town becomes a Farm Ranch that sells rare healing items. Only Clerics and Nuns? You get a Grand Cathedral that sells Holy/Religion themed items. If you recruit criminals and bunny girls, you build a massive slum with the game's biggest casino with the rarest of items as the prize. It's a pretty neat feature and the original even allowed you to trade citizens with friends via memory card.
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Now let's jump into why this game didn't quite make it to the list. For the most part, it's a one-two punch of pacing and density. DQVII is also game at points, not because the story arcs aren't interesting but due to the game's obscene amount of backtracking to fulfill the main quest of finding all the map shards to unlock a new region. It's not uncommon for you to spend a few hours finishing a new story chapter where you might find one or two new shard pieces, only to then finish the plot, talk to all the NPCs a second time to see if any of them may know where a new shard piece is, travel back to the current time and then proceed to chat with all the new inhabitants of the world you saved and revisit a few dungeons and locations just to find the other shard pieces needed to continue. These interlude's between chapters are momentum killers and a large part of why I feel it's best to approach this game with a guide handy just to shave off some of the down time. Speaking of which, the game is huge and has a lot of things to kill time with such as the mini-games mentioned above and classic casinos. There is so much to do, and a lot of it is time consuming that it's easy to pour an excessive amount of time into this game. When I finished the first disc, I had already clocked in over a 100 hours and by the time I finished the game, I had put in another thirty hours. In the time it took me to beat DQVII classic, I could have played through all three of the PS1 FFs. Hell, I could have probably beaten the first six DQ games. That time sink has largely been the reason why I've never really picked the game up again. Hell I'm just exhausted typing about it. Thankfully the 3DS remake has allegedly fixed some of these issues with Job Classes having lower battle requirements to level up, a helper character to make tracking down the shards easier, and the usual buff to XP/Gold gains to make grinding less important. Another strike against the game is that the CGI FMVs are hilariously bad. As I said, anyone playing DQVII classic would be dumbstruck to learn that it was a late arrival on the console as opposed to a year one title like it looks.
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If none of this has scared you off, then definitely check this game out, despite never really wanting to dive back in, my experience with the game was still phenomenal.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6230-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-not-Forgotten-Dragon-Quest-VII <![CDATA[My Top 100's Lost but Not Forgotten: Arc the Lad II]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6228-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Arc-the-Lad-II Tue, 27 Mar 2018 21:53:58 GMT You know the drill by now... ******************************************************************************* Attachment 75142 (http://home.eyesonff.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=75142) One of my all time favorite publishers in the 90s for video games was Working Designs. It was a... You know the drill by now...

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One of my all time favorite publishers in the 90s for video games was Working Designs. It was a company that actually tried to get a lot of cool JRPGs released in the West long before the actual JRPG boom in the last years of the decade. I've already spoken about their most high profile title they ever worked on, Lunar: The Silver Star Story, and this is actually one of two games they worked on that's on this informal list.
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So in the waning years of the PS1, Working Design was doing well with the release of the Lunar titles and a myriad of arcade shooters they released, yet one game series alluded them, Arc the Lad. Arc the Lad was Sony's killer app for the PlayStation, knowing the RPG crazed Japan would never accept their console if it didn't have at least one RPG on it, they hired G-Craft to help them develop one for their consoles launch. For those who don't know, G-Craft was the studio that originally developed Front Mission for Square, before Square bought out the company in the late 90s. One of the masterminds for the first two games in the Arc the Lad series is actually Toshiro Tsuchida who not only developed the Front Mission series for Square, but was the battle designer for FFX and XIII, so regardless of whether you know who this guy is, you've likely played some of his works.
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Anyway, Arc the Lad ended up becoming a Tactical Turn Based RPG, but due to scheduling conflicts and the ambitions of the team, the title ended up pulling a Persona 2, by which I mean the developers decided to split the game into two titles as not to compromise the original vision of the game. So Arc the Lad was released in 1995 for the PS1's launch and received lots of praise for it's interesting story and tactical gameplay. It did get nailed for being criminally short (the game can be finished in about ten hours) and ending on quite a cliffhanger. A year later, Arc the Lad II was released to much great acclaim with several design fixes, a meatier narrative, and quite possibly too much gameplay but I'll get to that later. The game was such a massive hit, it spawned an anime adaption, and a direct sequel. Despite all these accolades Sony of America refused to let anyone publish the game overseas, until the waning years of the PS1. Working Designs agreed to the tumultuous task of localizing the Trilogy. A task that turned into a huge deal if you ever watch the Making of CD that came with the collection.
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I picked up these games cause WD had a great record with me and I wanted me some Tactical RPG goodness, sadly, I've come to the conclusion that Arc the Lad and Disgaea may have both fed into my waning interest in Tactical RPGs, but I'll get to that later as well. I will tell you now, that AtLII is easily the best entry in the franchise that I've played, but it's difficult to talk about without first going into the other entries, so bear with on the info dump.
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Arc the Lad begins in the Sacred Land of Seriya, a prominent kingdom with many ancient traditions including the legend of the Ark and the Sacred Flame. The Ark was an ancient artifact that served as a covenant between humanity and the five elemental spirits after a great calamity nearly destroyed the world thousands of years ago. Nowadays, with the rise of technology, people have forgotten this and these stories are simply traditions and myths that younger generations play along with to placate the older ones.
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The White Clan of the Sacred Flame itself is tasked with protecting the Flame Cion and the priestess of this duty is also traditionally married off to the Prince of Seriya. Kukuru the future heir of the clan is not happy that her life has already been decided for her, and so with the advise of the mayor of her village, travels to the shrine of the Flame Cion to put out the Sacred Flame and abolish her clan's duties once and for all. After doing so, she begins to have a bad premonition and a blizzard hits the mountain where the shrine resides that hasn't been seen in ten years.
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Meanwhile, Arc prepares to leave his mother and his home to go on a journey to find out what happened to his father Yoshua. Ten years prior, when the last blizzard hit, Yoshua left for the mountain where the Sacred Flame resides and never returned. Most of the village presumed he died, but Arc believes he is alive and wants to discover the truth. When he reaches the mountain, he finds Kukuru, who has returned to re-ignite the flame after realizing her foolishness. Arc volunteers to light the flame for her and comes across an ancient demon that the Flame Cion had sealed off. It easily dispatches Arc and heads back down the mountain to kill Kukuru and her clan for sealing it away. Dying in the cold, Arc is awakened by the voices of the Guardian Spirits who tell tell Arc that his coming to the mountain was promised to them by his father, who made a pact with the Guardian Spirits. that his son would save the world and humanity. The Guardians revive Arc and bless him with their power in exchange for his duty to travel the world and save it from an impending ruin. Arc agrees and re-ignites the Flame Cion, which re-seals the demon and saves Kukuru's life.
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Meeting with the King of Seriya, Arc garners the king's favor despite the objections of his obviously evil Prime Minister, Andel. He gives Arc access to the royal airship, the Silver Noah, and Arc begins his journey across the globe to convince the Guardian Spirits to aid him and learn more about the impending ruin that will spell human extinction. During his travels, he learns that his father was Yoshua is still alive and that he is actually the brother of the King of Seriya who went missing when he saw a vision of the world's end. Arc befriends several eccentric heroes, discovers that demons and monsters have infiltrated humanity and are causing chaos across the globe, and that mankind's negligence and urge for expansion and technological advancement has started to take a toll on the planet. After gaing the Guardian's blessing, Arc is tasked with finding the Ark itself, but his progress is hindered when Andel kills the King of Seriya and sets Arc up as the murderer. Now a wanted man, Arc has to sneak his way back into his home country to uncover the Ark and receive it's blessing. In truth, the Ark is not an artifact of power, but instead a container for an ancient evil that nearly destroyed the planet thousands of years ago. The Ark is taken by Andel and Arc and his crew are arrested, but the removal of the Ark from it's holy site begins to cause earthquakes and unseals a sacred tower from centuries ago. In the confusion of the quake, Arc and his crew escape wit the help of the Silver Noah's crew. Kukuru remains in the newly emerged Tower to use her blessing by the Spirits and Ark to keep the Ancient Ones evil at bay while Arc sets out on a journey to stop the demons from awakening their master.
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What's interesting to note about Arc the Lad 1 is how it's initially a cliche storm of overused RPG tropes before the last leg of the plot throws a whammy at the player with several dark turns. This is kind of important to note because AtLII runs with this and what starts off as a typical hero's journey with elemental MacGuffins eventually leads to a deconstruction and subversion of all of these tropes.
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Arc the Lad II introduces us to a new hero, Elc. Elc is the last surviving member of a clan that worshiped the Fire Guardian and received his blessing in the form of pyromancy. When the game opens, Elc is having a PTSD nightmare of watching his clan being bruataly murdered with machine gun fire as they try to protect an ancient statue they were tasked with guarding. Watching his father and grandfather gunned down before him led to Elc awakening his pyromancy gift and he slaughtered some of the troops before collapsing and being taken on board the Silver Noah. Ten years later, Elc is now a Hunter, which are similar to Breath of Fire's Rangers or Ivalice's Clans, in that they are a mercenary guild that will do odd jobs for the common folk that ranges from house chores to monster extermination. Despite his nightmares of his childhood, Elc's memory is swiss cheese and he wishes to remember something important he wanted to do but his traumatic past keeps the memories buried. His other goal is to hunt down the world renowned terrorist Arc, whom Elc is convinced led the attack on his home village.
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Elc is contacted in the middle of the night for a rush job at the airport. A terrorist has taken hostages and is preventing airships from the Romalia Empire to enter the city. Elc is able to diffuse the hostage situation but the terrorist runs into one of the Romalia ships. In his pursuit, Elc encounters a girl named Leeza whom is accompanied by a Wolf Monster named Paundit. Confronting the terrorist, Leeza helps Elc battle the terrorist, who reveals that he is some weird human monster hybrid. He is then killed by members of the mafia organization known as the Cabal, who arrive to silence the terrorist for his connection to them as well as to take back their "cargo" Leeza. Despite being offered the chance to look the other way and leave as the Cabal takes Leeza, Elc has a flashback of a childhood friend named Maribel, who sacrificed her freedom to let Elc escape a place called White House. Elc helps Leeza escape and they journey to a nearby city to stay with Elc's longtime friend Shu, the hunter who found Elc in the desert and rescued him years ago. Trying to uncover what's going on, Elc discovers that Leeza was taken from her home village by members of the Cabal due to her unique power to communicate and control monsters. They intended to take her to White House and slowly Elc begins to remember his traumatic past of being an orphan at White House who was experimented on with other children.
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Meanwhile, Arc has spent the intervening years between games waging a one man war against Romalia and its machinations across the globe. Andel and several other prominent leaders across the globe are all secret agents working for the Roamlian Empire and are working towards both global domination and unsealing the Ark to release the Ancient One. While Arc prevents the worst of Romalia's travesties from occurring, it often results in severe collateral damage which simply feeds into the public opinion of Arc being a master criminal. When it becomes obvious that the Cabal and White House are both subsidiaries for Romalia's efforts, Elc and Arc eventually cross paths and the results are not terribly pretty. From there, the game spans a massive world and several plot threads from the first game are finally tied up along with the new ones introduced by Elc and the new cast. Yet the game subverts your expectations as it becomes obvious that for every victory the heroes manage to get, the villains seem to always get closer to their goals.
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While I won't spoil too much, I can honestly say that Arc the Lad II is a surprisingly dark game with a very bittersweet ending. It's interesting to watch goody two-shoe Arc from the first game transform into a more pragmatic heroe in the sequel who is willing to get his hands just as dirty to fight the bad guys as they are to him. Arc and his crew are called out on this by Elc's team but the game does a good job to show the villains as absolutely dangerous and rephrehensible monsters with the goal of gloabl extinction that suddenly it justifies Arc's more drastic battle tactics. Of anything, it can be best described as a cynical take on FFVII, or more correctly, FFVII is an idealistic take on Arc the Lad II since AtLII predates VII by a year. Part of why I say this is not simply because the game's have similar themes, in truth I feel WA1 has more in common with VII's plot than Arc II, but it's hard not to feel like Square may have been taking notes from this game while developing VII.
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Aesthetically, the Arc Trilogy takes place in a world that doesn't feel too off from VII's setting with small pastoral hamlets and Asian Pagodas sitting nice and neatly besides sprawling 20th century skyscrapers and cities. While Arc's crew are mostly stereotypical sword and sorcery wielding fantasy fodder, Arc II's crew are not afraid to recruit robots and use guns to get their job done and I honestly feel Shu and Shante would fit perfectly in VII's setting while Barret and Red XIII woudl hardly feel out of place in Arc II's world. The entire airport sequence honestly feels like something you would have seen in FFVII or VIII had it used 2D sprites of course. None of this is a criticism of course, it's actually a very difficult aesthetic to handle and people clamoring for a game in a similar setting as the RPG juggernaut may be pleasantly surprised with this series. There's even a Sephiroth looking guy who joins your team in Arc III, and his weapon is easily an expy of Cloud's Buster Sword. This mix of cultural and historical styles is further shown through the game's soundtrack which switches back and forth between suual RPG fair, music that wouldn't sound misplaced in Breath of Fire IV, and some really cool jazz pieces. It's a nice touch to have so much variation since most game music tends to sound homogenous to the game's themes.
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It's difficult to explain how awesome Arc II is without first explaining how different the game was from Arc I. In truth this is a first Assassin's Creed scenario where the first entry is adequate but not exactly amazing and then the sequel (which I'll remind ou came out a year later) is a complately different beast that impresses on all fronts. The original Arc game was your typical point and click Tactical RPG where you would get a map and either click on a point and either watch the next story sequence or fight something. There were some places you can walk around and talk to people like a typical RPG but they are all quite limited in scope. Your characters could only equip four accessoies, there were not shops, and characters gained skills through levels. There were seven party members and you used everyone in battle after you acquired them. So overall, Arc one was pretty basic. It's still fun, but compared the the subgenres usualy reputation for deep customization and loads and loads of options, the game is very underwhelming. It even has sidequests but most of them are just marathon battles with little variation.
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Arc II is a completely different beast. For the most part, the game is similar in execution to Shining Force rather than the usual menu-driven entries of the subgenre. There is a world map you can traverse, towns you can explore and shop in, and plenty of NPCs to chat with. The game plays like a typical RPG except for battles which are all tactical grid turn based actiosn like Front Mission or FFTactics. You'll even explore dungeons tough it has several rooms where you'll have to fight battles in. Wjhereas the first game had limited customization with all the characters being specialist in their own combat styles, Arc II allows characters to use different weapon that change their combat prowess like Elc who can use weak but defensive based spear, jack of all trait swords, or even heavy axes. The cast all take a Chrono Trigger approach of characters who are each a specialist in a single element and have a mix of offensive and defensive skills that add more variety to the battles. Eventually you can even teach characters two additional skills from a list of predetermined abilities for further customization.
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Equipment and even consummable items also have their own levels and occassionally they'll unlock special skills like improved counter attack chances or herbs that cast the regen effect in addition to healing. You can even level equipment faster by taking them to shops to and paying money to raise the levels instead of relying on battle XP. There are also shops where you can fuse equipment together to build stronger gear, so the game has a ton of character customization.
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One of the most underappreciated aspects of the game is that the larger cast of characters meant the devs now limit you to five party members per battle which greatly speed up battles compared to Arc 1's battles that got sluggishly slow towards the end of the game. In additon to the new cast of seven characters, you eventually recruit Arc's crew minus two members, making for twelve story characters, and then Leeza can add an additonal eight characters through her ability to recruit monsters. Monsters themselves can be evolved into their more powerful palette swap incarnations by reaching certain level requirements and they come with their own skills and quirks. Additonally, if you had the Collection liek I did, there is also Arc Arena, a side game where you and a friend could transfer your recruited monsters over to it and either battle each other or several of the game's challenges. This is actually a real easy means to get an edge in Arc II as you can transfer these monsters and any items you acquire back to your main file. So the customization is quite deep.

While Arc 1's sidequests were largely relegated to several variations of "fight a trout ton of monster battles" either in a torunament, a fifty floor dungeon, or doing a favor for the local Guardian Spirit by just engaging in the same three random battles a lot, Arc II's sidequestsa a re bit better refined. Every town has a Hunter's Guild and Elc can go there to take on missions, Most are battles, but they tend to have more of a story coponent to them which gives them more importance and variation. Additionally, the Guilds have wanted posters which often unlcok the chance to run into the creatures in one of the game's random encounter areas, story dungeons, or even actual Guild missions. These greatly expand the world, adds more clout to the Hunter's as a story element, and gives some great character moments for the cast. My personal favorite story mission in the early sections of the game involves a Necromancer your hired to shut up cause his chanting in the city seweres is keeping people awake. You promise to let him go if he'll stop summoning the undead, so this unlocks a new mission where you have to investigate a creepy guy in an rough part of the city who has been seen with children. Turns out it's this guy who is now turned into a doll maker and the "children" are his eerie creations. After thumping him again, he vows to find religion and leaves. Next mission involves dealing with some crazy monster cult... you can see where this is going.

For the most part Arc II is just a richer experience. The story is great, the cast is fun, and the world and setting are well told. So how did this not make the list you might be asking? Well this game is a committment. Apparently the devs took to heart the criticism of the first entries lack of content and basically did what they could to subvert this.
Arc II is a game that will test your love for Turn Based Tactical Grid battles. You will be fighting a lot in this game. Most missions involve fighting, dungeons eventually become ten to fifteen consecutive battles, and heaven help you if you try to backtrack. I love the Hunter Missions, but they will test you patience once they start incorporating dungeons into them. So early in the game, you bust into a mansion where the bad guys are apparently at. You have to explore the place and find a key to reach the main room and generally there is a battle in almost every room you enter giving you a total of seven battles total unless you accidentally walk back into a room you've already searched. Not a big deal cause this is all story relevant stuff. So after the dust clear, you get a hunter mission involving a rich couple puchasing the mansion and needing a Hunter to clear out all of the lingering monsters. So you go in an fight, you guessed it, seven battles cause there is one in every room there was a battle in during the actual story portion of the place. Finish that mission? New one pops up where the manison is under attack by a gang of thieves. Go back in and this simple mission is another seven battles. This is followed up by a third mission, so this quest chain is twenty one battles, and it's not even like you're fighting bosses or wanted monsters, the battles involve fighting basically the same group of two to three monter types. The story part is fun but these three missions can kill an evening since the nature of the genre means the battles can last up to ten to twenty minutes on average. You'll eventually pray that most of your unter Missions are one off deals or something where you only need to explore the first two floors of a place and not the whole dungeona again. Towards the end of the game, there is a series of these types of missions that involve going down a mine shaft that has about twenty levels to it. We're talking like seven to ten missions that involve traversing this dungeon over and over again and this wasn't even counting the Wanted Monsters who may appear on any of these floors. It gets exhausting really quickly.

So most people would say, "Well don't do the side content, and just play the plot." and this is where the stinger kicks in. Sometimes you need to play these missions to advance the plot, but the bigger issue is that Arc II tries to avert the usual issue with Tactical JRPGs which is that the games are all customization and no challenge. This isn't your FFTactics or Disgaea where the story mode can be finished at a fraction of the level cap. This was made by the Front Mission team so prepare to watch as the story enemies begin to jump five to thirty levels between story arcs. Those mineshaft missions I mentioned involved fighting enemies in their 80s. The next story mission area (which was the final area) had the enemies jump to Lv. 110 and up. The last form of the Final Boss has 9999Hp, in a game where my Lv. 100 best fighter can do 120hp of damge and the boss is set up in a way where there is only one spot of him that can take physical damage and he takes scratch damage from magic. This battle lasted oner an hour and since then I was pretty much done with the series. I don't think I even reached the end of the first disc for Arc III before I was simply just too burnt out to care anymore. So yeah, in a nutshell, the devs actually expect you to do all the sidecontent cause the main game is scaled for it. Another factor that's kind of annoying is that Arc II uses a Old Save Data transfer feature like Suikoden. So the levels and accessorries you acquire in Arc 1 can be brought into Arc II and III. Arc 1 caps the parties level at 60. In Arc II, there are several missions where you transport over to Arc's team or Elc's crew has to team up with one of the members. These battles tend to be scaled closer to what the evs beleive you should have the Arc 1 characters at because they expect them to be a crutch character, but if you failed to properly level them up, they are not going to be much of a help. Thankfully, I think the game does jump them up to a minimum level in case you did fail to properly level some of the characters but it still makes these fights a bit brutal if you're unprepared.

With all that said, the game is still fun and the story and characters are worth the investement but simply be preapred for a a game that's probably going to hit the 100 hour mark at minimum. I recently stopped my new playthrough to go through Chrono Cross again, and while I'm near the end of CC, the time for both games is nearly the same at around 35 hours. The differnence is that in Arc II, I'm probably halfway through the first quarter of the game. Part of me does feel you should play Arc 1 first, partly to take advantage of the Save File Transfer, partly to better appreciate how awesome Arc II is in comparison, and partly to get better background on Arc's and his team's personal stories. With that said, it's perfectly fine to skip the first game and just jump straight to the good one. Arc III also makes seeral great improvement over Arc II. It's very much a better game than Arc II is, but it lacks the gripping cast and story as the first two entries, largely because the first two games were designed as a single epic and Arc III's creation was made more out of fan demand than because the writers actually had some kind of story they wanted to tell. The game isn't bad either so I would recommend checking out the whole trilogy to be honest.

Arc the Lad is just one of those lost legacy type deals. The type of game that recieved local success in Japan but due to executive meddling, lost it's chance to shine on a global scale cause the powers that be simply didn't have faith in it. In this way, the game is similar to Final Fantasy III and even Demon's Souls which I've talked to. I know the trilogy is on the PSN network now, so if you ever want to play some old school Tactical RPGs with a great story, I'd recommend it.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6228-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Arc-the-Lad-II <![CDATA[My Top 100's Lost but Not Forgotten: Final Fantasy III]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6227-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Final-Fantasy-III Wed, 07 Mar 2018 20:10:17 GMT Blah blah blah Top 100 blah blah blah too many good games to list. Blah blah blah, games that weren't good enough for my list but still excellent nonetheless.

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Of the Classic series within Final Fantasy, FFIII was the last one for me to play, partly cause I didn't emulate very often and partly because I had hoped SE would come to their senses and re-release this title. Finally, they decided to remake the game for the DS and I was pretty excited. At the time of the game's release, I had caught a serious case of the flu and was badly bed-ridden in-between my violent bouts of disgorging bodily fluids from whatever orifice my disease ridden body felt like was a good place at the time. So you can kind of see how the small comfort this game brought me at that awful time was a blessing. I ended up liking the title for the most part, even if the Wi-Fi Moogle mail gimmick ended up screwing me out of all of the game's extra content.
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So flash forward a few years ago, I finally have a better gaming PC and I picked up a bunch of classic Japanese only games of yesteryear to screw around with. My desire to play the early MegaTen titles ended up causing me to pick up an NES/Famicom emulator and I figured it would be nice to pick up the original versions of a few FF and DQ titles while I was at it. I jumped into an FF mood at this time due to playing through FFIII again on the DS and felt it would be interesting to do a comparison by playing the original. What transpired was actually a watershed moment that not only led me to appreciate the classic as is, but kind of see where I hold a lot of problems with not just modern RPGs but SE's bad habits of changes they incorporate into their remakes/ports in order to appease modern tastes.
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So let's just start out by saying that I'm not a huge fan of the DS version. Most fans agree that trying to ham-fist more nuanced characters into an old school RPG with an excuse plot didn't do it any favors, but the other annoyances for me was curbing the games difficulty by largely lobotomizing the item management aspect of the gameplay and raising the damage algorithms of the classes and giving them consistency transformed a game that once had exhilarating battles into the typical trash mob random encounter nonsense we get in more modern games. Re-balancing the classes so players would have more control over them had the bad side effect of making players more complacent with their party configuration whereas the original would force you to experiment more often since classes would eventually become obsolete. Handing over the nerfed Ninja and Sage classes created an underwhelming experience for the player whereas the more broken 8-bit variations were a great boon you had to earn by traversing the incredibly challenging Eureka.
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The technical changes also hurt the game, the music feels more drown out with the new arrangements compared to the pulse pounding 8-bit beats, the 3D models forced the devs limit the amount of enemies on the screen to about four maximum whereas the original could have you deal with up to eight at a time. This alone caused a great deal of the above changes to be made because overwhelming odds was a part of the game's challenge. In the end, the DS version feels like a watered down experience that made several concessions to appeal to the modern RPG fans tastes instead of sticking to its guns as the niche old school experience that it really was. This is made even more baffling when you consider SE never made such changes to FFI or II who both retained their core principles for the most part and simply added easy modes for their games. In the end, we wound up with a game that doesn't really appeal to anyone. The game is still too archaic and "gamey" for modern fans who are use to story and character driven epics, and old school gamer fans have to deal with gameplay that no longer offers any real challenge.
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Playing the original opened my eyes to this travesty, and while the above paragraphs may seem like I'm seriously hating on the DS version, my real intent is to say that you should not mistake the DS version as the "definitive FFIII experience". In stead I implore FF fans to check out the original and judge it by itself. Granted, a lot of players are probably going to prefer the DS version over the original, and there is nothing wrong with that choice, but for me, so much of the game's mechanics and design are dependent on the older mechanics of the original.
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Normal battles are much more exciting and challenging. Part of this is because the Famicom version retains an old school D&d dice aspect to calculating hits and damages. What this means is that nobody can be consistent, and even your badass knight will whiff an attack and do no damage, dragoon jumps with miss, and often the best strategy for dealing with the larger enemy mobs is to lobotomize them with *gasp* status magic in order to give you a few rounds of breathing room.
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While several classes lack the thrills of their later versions, the game still makes it more worth your while to experiment. Warriors will quickly run out of decent equipment to compensate for the more powerful monsters encountered. While mages can stay relevant until midway through the game, it sometimes becomes more advantageous to switch them out for Rangers and Mystic Knights who can both heal and stand their ground as melee fighters. Melee classes are extremely weak to magic in this version so don't expect Knights and Monks to dominate like FFI's versions.
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While FFIII is not going to stand so well next to more later entries, in comparison to what came before, the game offers more improvements. The Fat Chocobo is introduced so players now have some leeway with inventory space which was a huge boon compared to it's predecessors which both had incredibly bad inventory systems. The dungeons are a huge step up from FFII's grind fests dungeons, the larger repertoire of jobs and the ability to switch them on the fly also granted a nice balance between FFI's more static and old school class system, and FFII's more jarring development mechanics. Smaller but incredibly useful changes include the ability for characters to re-target an enemy if their original target get's killed, so no more "Miss, there is no target there" messages like many 8-Bit RPGs of the time.
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While it lacks the stronger narrative of FFII, it makes up for it by having a more interesting world filled with more exciting NPCs and smaller story moments structures which were "borrowed" from Dragon Quest. I also just happen to really like the music of this entry better than most of the NES entries, with the exception of some of the battle themes of which I will say FFII's are better.
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For me, the challenge and eventual victory over this classic is one of my Final Fantasy high points, something I can't say I felt about the remake or even some modern entries. The only thing that makes me sad is the revelation that this entry would have likely been in my Top 100 had I played it closer to it's actual release as opposed to nearly twenty years later. Because of that, it's hard to rank this title above the nostalgia some of the other entries can give me. I remember beating it and thinking to myself, "wow, FFIV is less impressive to me now" but I can't bring myself to love this game more than a game that was a pivotal part of my boyhood days. That is the sad truth of the matter, Square waited too long and so FFIII will likely forever remain in the shadows of the franchise.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6227-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-Final-Fantasy-III <![CDATA[My Top 100's Lost but Not Forgotten: I am Setsuna]]> http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6226-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-I-am-Setsuna Fri, 23 Feb 2018 06:38:56 GMT So I did my Top 100 last year, and this year, I'm focusing on a few entries that didn't make the cut for one reason or another. I'll start off by saying that most of the games mentioned in this blog series are all worth playing.
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I am Setsuna is the freshmen effort from Tokyo RPG Factory. A subsidiary company of Square-Enix tasked with the insurmountable task of trying to make games "like the good old days". Objectively speaking, we can tell this is a fool's errand, and nostalgia is very tricky to bottle up and repackage. Still, I commend them for at least trying, and appreciate the fact that at least someone over at SE is willing to try to make a new IP while still remembering the fundamentals I grew up with.
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I am Setsuna takes place in a world plunged in perpetual winter and ravaged every few years by monsters whom rise up to nearly end mankind each time. To placate the beasts, a small town keeps alive an old tradition to raise a sacrifice to be sent to the Lost Lands and lose their life to placate the monsters. The journey is harsh, and many sacrifices never fulfill their purpose. Times have gotten so bad, and the monster surges happen so often that people eventually lost faith in the ancient ritual and whether it actually works or not.
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When the story begins, the player takes on the role of Endir, a mercenary from the mysterious and feared Masked Tribe who wear masks of monsters all their lives, and make a living as mercenaries. Endir is hired for a job to rescue some kids from monsters when he is approached by a mysterious old soldier who hires him to travel to the Village of Sacrifice to assassinate the new sacrifice of the pilgrimage. Taking on the job, Endir meets Setsuna, the young maiden tasked to be sacrifice. Endir is captured by Setsuna's bodyguard Aeterna who wishes to have him killed for the treasonous act of trying to kill the sacrifice before the ritual, but a monster attack on the village forces her to team up with Endir to save them. Impressed with his skill, and perhaps something more, Setsuna tasks Endir to accompany her along her pilgrimage, reasoning that she will die either way, and figures he can fulfill the ritual for her when they reach the Lost Lands.
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Their journey to the Lost Lands, leads them across a world on the brink of despair as the party encounters destroyed villages, broken kingdoms, and some uncomfortable truths about the monsters. Joining them along the way are several other heroes such as Nidr, a former pilgrimage guardian who is still shell shocked by his failure to keep his sacrifice safe; Kir, a young boy part of a tribe of magic infused humans whose great magical power comes at the cost of having incredibly short lifespans; and Julienne, the last living royal heir of the former Empire that once flourished across the land before it fell a thousand years ago, she dreams of restoring her kingdom at any cost. Dogging them as well is the mysterious Reaper, a man of strange dark powers who has been sent to make sure Setsuna fails.
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While the plot screams FFX, the combat is Chrono Trigger mixed with some elements of FFVII. Each character has about sixteen skills they can learn, but players can only equip a few of them at a time. Like Chrono Trigger, the characters all have defined roles and elements to them, with Endir being a jack-of-all-trades with a focus on physical offense, Setsuna is a healer who also controls Lightning and Light, Nidr is a brawler and so on. So each character brings something to the field and like the game it tries to emulate, you'll get a lot more out of the gameplay by "mixing it up" especially when you put in account the game has dual and triple techs. While several of these abilities are stolen whole-sale from Chrono Trigger, there are a few unique ones, and unlike CT, there is a bit more emphasis on buffs and debuffs with some of these moves which adds some more strategic layers to the gameplay. Helping ll of this is the games higher difficulty and better balance of skills, which manages to offset one of the larger problems in Chrono Trigger, namely the weak difficulty curve. That's of course up until you learn how to abuse the Flux system.
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Accessories are a bit weird in this game. They generally only offer minor stats changes and usually don't give you any passive effect when equipped, instead, accessories teach special abilities which activate when your character uses a skill. When the skill activates, there is a chance the ability will activate as well and be imprinted onto the skill permanently. So you use accessories to basically customize your characters skills, and it's actually possible to gain multiple versions of a skill that can be customized with different effects. This is poorly explained within game, but most likely was due to balancing issues as some of these passive abilities you can attach to skills can be downright game-breaking like giving healing abilities passive skills that fill up the ATB bar faster when used, meaning you can have your healer have multiple turns in a row. For most players who don't consult an internet guide, you'll likely not really understand this mechanic until late in the game. Another factor is that the game allows your skills to get a boost if you use a special command prompt when used, which often raises the chances of these fluxes from happening.
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An interesting mechanic in the game is how enemy drops work. Basically enemies carry several types of materials, but what you gain in battle isn't based on rarity values, but instead is based on what kind of move killed the creature. So physical attacks produce one type of item from a creature, while fire will produce another. This makes skills and tech abilities that inflict multiple damage types really useful for item farming. This is important because it not only forces you to use more of the party since no character can use every element type, but these materials are needed to actually make the characters unique tech skills. So if you see that a character is missing an item needed for a skill but nothing is dropping said item, it's likely cause you've been neglecting a character who uses a specific element to cause it to drop. It's an incredibly clever system, though I'm not sure if it would work out on a game with a larger scale to it's world and bestiary.
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For the most part, barring some poor explanations of skill acquisitions and what accessories do, combat is actually an improvement over Chrono Trigger surprisingly. The higher difficulty curve, combined with the larger assortment of Dual and Triple techs caused by making everyone have at least three of each with each character adds a ton of variety to combat and some good strategy. With that said, dungeons could be better. With a few exceptions, most of the dungeons are straightforward affairs and work just like CT with animals already on the map and seamless transition to battle, but I am Setsuna simply lacks variety in both enemy types and dungeon design. While the world of perpetual snow and ice has a lot of potential in terms of visual design, the team aimed pretty low, and the game has about five or six different environmental types. Enemy types fair a little better but not by much. The biggest issue being that the game largely gleamed too much from CT and the Mana franchise in terms of giving the game a kind of crapsaccharine world vibe like those games, but those games had setting that balanced the charm with the darker elements, which is something the game fails to do, making the cutesy enemies feel out of place in a world apparently on the brink of destruction because of them.
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Musically, the game is well known for sticking to a mostly solo piano style, in order to capitalize on the "sorrow" theme of the game. In this regards, the game excels as the map themes, town themes, as well as powerful character moment themes like Redemption and Forgiveness are beautiful tracks. In truth the music is mostly a success in conveying the somber theme of the game. It's only failing is with the battle themes which lack energy and sound awkward in general due to too many limitations placed on them to maintain a homogeneous musical score. The more intimate themes are gorgeous and powerful though, so the OST is still surprisingly good, but if your a battle theme junkie or not a fan of piano heavy scores, you'll likely be disappointed. For me, the soundtrack is what ultimately drew me in to the game.


The obvious weakness of the title overall is that it emulates better or at least more memorable titles and is often accused of lacking identity, but I feel this statement isn't kind of false. Yes the battle system is CT's but it's larger, has more options for better tactics, and is largely an improvement on a battle system that frankly was pretty damn good to begin with. Narratively, I feel the game is better than FFX and Tales of Symphonia in terms of being a story about a Pilgrimage to sacrifice a sweet all loving female lead. This is due to dropping a few elements that I felt hurt those other games, namely the game being pretty upfront about the heroines fate instead of Tidus being stupidly oblivious or the whole party kind naive to what "going to be with the angels" is in Symphonia. The other difference is the lack of the usual "religion of evil" that perpetuates the ceremony, of anything it subverts these usual stories by making the whole procedure played straight for once. This drops any poorly hidden plot twists when the party discovers what they are really doing, and instead creates a narrative that focuses more on the morality of sacrifice, how far one can/should go for duty, and better presents a world ravaged so badly that everyone is more concerned with survival than anything else. The game betrays certain expectations normally associated with these types of stories as more often than not, humans are generally more dangerous to the Pilgrimage than the hordes of monsters, and as mentioned earlier, the nature of the monster surge shifts when you realize that the longer the world goes without a sacrifice doesn't just mean monsters appear more often, but they actually start to gain greater intelligence with a particular dark subplot midway involving the party dealing with such creatures and learning the monsters are not so different from them.
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The biggest bombshells come towards the end, though they could have been explained and resolved better, but still gives the game an interesting twist I wasn't expecting that kind of gives a nod to Chrono Cross of all things. Most importantly, I like the fact the game does a better job of maintaining it's theme. Unlike Spira's weird juxtaposition of themes and visual design where people are suffering from a god being every few decades but can still find time to go watch sporting events, or Tales of Symphonia's more typical JRPG world, Setsuna does a better job of portraying a world on the edge. The snow and ice visuals give the impression of a dying world, the generally melancholic piano music does a great job of portraying the theme of sadness and sorrow, outposts are rare, humans are often desperate and generally more dangerous, and the game largely sticks to its guns, not ending on some last minute "let's save everyone" spiel that usually pops in these hopeless moments in RPGs. The ending is bittersweet at best and probably leaves you with more questions than answers, but I still had a blast going through the journey.
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It wasn't the second coming of Old School RPGs like many had hoped, but I knew it wouldn't never be able to live up to such lofty ambitions. When taken for what it is, I am Setsuna is a solid JRPG that's simply failed to live up to the ambition I feel people had for it. It will never be an Indy darling like Undertale, but I imagine I am Setsuna will likely be a cult classic in another ten years. One of those under the radar type games people scoffed at initially cause it was too much like better games despite being a pretty solid effort on its own. The is game really resonated with me despite it's shortcomings, which is something I can't say about Tokyo RPG's sophomore effort. Overall, while it wasn't excellent enough to crack my Top 100, it's still a great game overall.

]]> Wolf Kanno http://home.eyesonff.com/entry.php/6226-My-Top-100-s-Lost-but-Not-Forgotten-I-am-Setsuna