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Jan 29th, 2007 at 03:31:44 - Final Fantasy XII (PS2) |
I played two hours and a half today on my second section. It was much more fun for me. I still fought the same hard monsters at the beginning but than I began fighting a hunt boss. This hunt boss was a wyvern with huge wings that was not an aerial creature and it seemed to have steel armor and an insane amount of health points. I think fighting it was one of the longest single battles I fought. It took me nearly 45 minutes. It was amazingly fun. The design concept of an epic battle is very intriguing to me. On the one hand, it seemingly should get boring soon and yet during the whole time of the battle I was having fun. It is the switching of tactics in attempt to kill this beast. It is the barley staying alive and the suspense the battle that you feel ecstatic after winning. All of these elements are part of the epic battle. The epic battle is what you play to reach, though this was not a plot epic battle because the monster was so buff and I was not it was very difficult and unbelievably enjoyable battle. The fact that I constantly have to react to the screen, whether trying a new spell or swapping a different character in or using an item that I usually do not, epic battles are a large part of why RPG’s are fun. They make you strain the abilities you have as a player and the abilities of your characters to their outmost. Some people may dislike them for how hard they are but I truly believe that the majority of the people enjoy those kinds of fights a lot.
How to incorporate this into a game. In my RPG, I would have to somehow balance the effect of an epic battle with strength of the heroes that is expected and stats of the thing they are fighting. If a creature is too difficult to defeat than people will simply quit the game and unless they are very hard headed they will not play the game an infinite amount of times if they believe there is no way to beat it. On the other hand making it very tricky to beat while keeping it possible is a great addition to the incorporation of an epic battle. Making the battle easy to beat is neccery in the first few epic battles, where the player has yet to master the game very well nor his abilities and so must be able to win easily while having a sort of a boss fight. Later on the bosses should be a much greater challenge and much more powerful as compared to the player and yet still not very unbeatable.
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Jan 28th, 2007 at 22:45:55 - Final Fantasy XII (PS2) |
I played an hour and a half today on my first section. I started in Balfur port and fought my way through the crested area. It was interesting because instead of making the enemies very strong they simply made them bosses that I fought before. This is probably to make it so that they do not have to have too many different sprites. It was difficult which made it fun for me. I made it all the way through to the hunter’s camp in phon beach. I than talked to a game master who gave me a “rare hunt test” it was amazingly exiting when I saw about twenty treasure chests in front of the boss which like about 5 others was a large turtle with chains in it’s legs. I found it as somewhat of an annoying experience when the same graphical sprite was used for five different creatures, and even more when they all were very similar just growing in strength and all are bosses. I think that it is a large pet peeve of mine when the game has the same graphical representation when the game graphics allow for much more. I think I will attempt to make different voices and pictures for all my characters in my game. The test of killing yet another giant turtle was easy and except the excitement of getting many treasure chests with half actually giving me something useful. I did enjoy challenging units on the map that I had to fight instead of units that died excessively fast and easily. In the end, if I would have to rank my game play of the hour and a half I would say it was ok but certainly not exceptional in any way.
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Jan 28th, 2007 at 22:45:40 - Final Fantasy XII (PS2) |
sorry i clicked enter before i wrote the log look above for the actual log
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 28th, 2007 at 22:46:51.
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Jan 15th, 2007 at 22:48:47 - Final Fantasy XII (PS2) |
My next session was only 2 hours. I went to Burjahba to complete another hunt. This one was fairly simple as though there were many bugs near the boss using aeroga quickly killed them all and than I finished off the boss without too much difficulty by using decoy/reverse combo on Basch while having one mage constantly casting it and Vaan and Basch attacking the boss. I than teleported to Arcadia and started collecting sandals for no apparent reason other than to get to a place that I cannot get to otherwise. I believe that this is part of the culture aspect of RPG’s. Like most experienced RPG players, I know that any place that you cannot reach without getting something done to get there means you want to get there. It took me an hour of simply running around and talking to people in Arcadia to get enough sandals so that I may go to central. In central, I had to run after a cockatrice and talk to it. I told it that there was another cockatrice in Arcadia, and it gave me a free weapon. That again is an RPG culture aspect. You are given weapons such as a hand grade by an oversized chicken and most RPG players question not where that chicken got that hand grenade from.
Another aspect of RPG’s that is very popular is puzzles like the side quest I was doing to get my sandals that allow me entrance to central. I had to talk to people and match one person that tells me something with a person that would be interested in that information. This kind of side quests are a vital part of RPG’s. These side quests add an element of supposed freedom. It makes a person feel that they do not have to follow the actual plot but can just do whatever they wanted. In reality, these side quests add more realism to the game in a way that it makes you learn more about the game. After talking to all these people and having to match them with other people that may wish their information, 28 times I learned a lot more about the Arcadians in the way of their culture.
Gore is vital to games. I was thinking of the balance that Final Fantasy tries to achieve. FF has always been a teen rated game because a large amount of parents actually listens to the censorship advice on games. The question than is how much more people will play the game because their parents or religious beliefs allow them to play a teen rated game as comparison to the obviously more fun gory game. I am certain that had FFXII had more gore than it would be much more fun. When you currently kill a monster, it simply vanishes into a spirit/ghost. If instead you would have battlegrounds full of bloody bodies of monsters and have monsters bleed to death it would be much more popular among the more adult population as seen by games such as Dead Rising and Halo(1&2) which are rated mature. These games are though prohibited for many teenagers, kids, and people of religions like Mormons and in countries like Germany who do not allow gore. The question that I think must be the deciding factor in allowing or not allowing gore is worth it by the target people that this game is aimed towards. FFXII is ingenious in that regard for it is such an old saga that older gamers will play it without gore being present because FF saga is generally one of the best in RPG’s, and they get a large amount of people that cannot play these games otherwise play these games and therefore get a much larger audience. As game designers that may not be, designing a game as known as a FF I think the question still remains to calculate whether gore will increase the audience of a game more than not having it. Designers in the end are simply people that make a product that people want and they must figure out what would give them a greater audience.
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alon has been with GameLog for 17 years, 10 months, and 13 days |
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