Oh man, do it. I loved my Xenogears replay two years ago.
Well I'm glad you're getting reacquainted with Bravely Default and having a lovely time. Once I finish Tactics Ogre, I may try to bum rushing my way to the ending of the 4 Heroes of Light since I'm pretty close to the end of the game. Then I'll check out Bravely Default. I've honestly been thinking about restarting Xenogears to be honest. Though I've attempted to in the past, it's been a long time since I've done a complete playthrough and I feel I'm overdue.
They're worth a watch, tbh, so I hope you get to them soon! Meanwhile, I've finished my 100% story FFX-2 playthrough. Overall, my opinion stands. I'll just add that the Mascot is probably the most emblematic of the problem this game's battle system has. It's hands down the best class in the game, to the point that you won't be using any other one because everything about is just so much a cut above the rest that anything else is obsolete. I'd really much rather that the girls had started out as a freelancer that could later be customized, a la FFV, instead of this, because these things are just broken with no effort. It's pretty much a necessity for the optional dungeon you wanna do for 100% story completion, but like, it completely trivializes the rest of the game so eh So now that I'm done with that, I've decided to shake up my gaming schedule a bit. I'm putting the games I\ve been playing (or rather, replaying) on hold to focus on games I have but have never played. Starting with Torment: Tides of Numenera which looks very interesting so far, courtesy of the one and only Chris Avellone. The others I have lined up are things that were given to me during the recent sales, so Ys VII and Trails in the Sky. Very excited to dive into both series. For my handheld gaming, I've decided to replay Bravely Default, mostly as a palate cleanser after X-2 since it has a job system that's actually, you know, good. Now that I've booted it up, I'm honestly falling in love all over again. The job system is fantastic, as it's basically a refinement of the FFV system and I love how pretty much every single job (sans I think Merchant) is a classic FF job - one of the factors that made me cry and go "they did it! They made a classic FF again!" when I was first playing it. The atmosphere in the beginning section is just superb, and of course, the soundtrack is stellar as always and I feel it's pretty safe to say it's still my #1 gaming OST of all time. And now that I'm coming back after playing the sequel, I can already tell how much better this game's writing is. The dude that wrote BD's script is responsible for this little VN/anime gem called steins;gate and even though BD is very much a classic FF story with a lot of tropes, I feel it's still one of the better told games of its ilk. It's got a lot of nuance to it that I feel goes over people's heads and makes them appreicate the second game's much more... anime story better.
Yeah, I haven't watched his retrospective on FFXII yet, but he paid it some heavy lip service for his Vagrant Story one. I'm debating about listing to his monstrous three part discussion on Xenogears. I liked his retrospective on it, but not sure if I want to listen to him and a few other guys try to dissect the plot. I'd rather read a transcript than listen to them.
Yeah, though I imagine our backgrounds are a bit different in that regard, considering he often mentions he’s a sound designer by profession, which I honestly know nothing about (and I do disagree with some of his takes on the music). Still, I do enjoy watching him occasionally. I was very pleasantly surprised when during his FF retrospective series he reached XII and had a lot of praise for it.
I figure you would know this guy, especially since he seems to care a lot about the musical scores of games which reminded me of you.
Because it is the one bad track in a rather superb soundtrack that also happens to be the one track you'll hear the most. Granted, I don't hate it quite as much as FFX's battle theme but of RPGs with good OSTs, it is noticeably bad.
Resonant Arc is pretty cool. Though I feel he makes some grand sweeping statements at times, overall I think he’s pretty diligent and thorough in his videos and has a very nice voice I will also forever fail to understand why people hate this theme so much
I've been listening to a YouTuber named Resonant Arc who is reviewing a bunch of old Square games, and he brought ot my attention the funniest, if also most appropriate description for the CC Battle theme Gale. "This is the song you hear when you get molested by clowns in hell" I'm now going to imagine Pennywise molesting me every time I hear this track now.
It looked very pretty in the documentary series, well until the actual war part started and we saw bodies and concentration camps. Hell they had interviews with a lot of people in the war, including the general who was convicted of war crimes a few years ago and drank poison at his sentencing. The documentary was done about six months after the peace accords done by the Clinton Administration, so there is a host of info that hadn't been discovered yet and I believe a few more years of skirmishes and fighting. I feel the most amusing part was how every time you thought you knew the good guys, they turned around and did something reprehensible. Like the Croats plotting behind the Muslim Bosnian's to carve up their territory with their sworn enemy the Serbs, or how the Muslim Bosnian's started off protecting themselves from the aggressive Serbs only to turn around and want to keep the war going once they actually started winning with the backing of the Croats and UN. In fact it's amusing how often that part actually happened. Or how the Serbians, who kind of kickstarted the whole conflict under Milosevic, ultimately were the ones trying to stop the conflict in Bosnia. Yet their Serbian counterparts kept getting too greedy for land and purging the Muslim/Croat populations out. It was interesting to revisit the details after so long since I vaguely remember the war in my childhood. As for Tactics Ogre, I've been reintroduced to why I hate aspects of the job systems once again. I finally unlocked the Fusiler Job and I'm trying to level him up along with the Princess Job, before tackling the very final dungeon. The fact equipment is based on levels is stupid in this game and simply punishes you for using new classes. I mean I got a gun expert class and he can't even use the most basic of guns until Lv. 15. What the smurf? They should have either dropped the level/equipment mechanic or simply allowed new jobs to start at a level equivalent to the party average. It's not like it would be broken out of the gate since you still wouldn't have any skills for the class or new recruit.
