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Feb 9th, 2008 at 02:37:17 - Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (PS2) |
GAMEPLAY (2)
Since I always start off this section with Story/Character Development, I'll just do it again...SO3's story is generally quite good, but not really stellar or anything in RPG terms. At the beginning of the second disc (yes, there are two DVDs for this game, not dual-layered though) there is a story "twist" which many people seem to dislike...however, it made me think about game worlds in general more, so I thought it was quite fine. The story varies in slow and fast sections, but generally keeps you well interested enough. Fortunately, it is not the only part of the game that keeps you into it.
The character development is just a small notch above the story. Although most of the characters are a bit stereotypical, they do each develop and gain there own charm and depth. Also, the English voice acting is good enough to help bring out the characters, and the character's mannerisms and motions are well animated. Also, you have to choose 2 out of 4 optional characters at some point, yet all four (despite being optional) are well developed and you wish you could take them all. Private actions (which I will discuss in design) also help develop individual characters in situations outside of the main storyline.
Now, all that isn't even like a fourth of what the game really has to offer...Although much of the rest opens up a good way into the game (kind of a shame), if you like the game enough to get that far, you have a bundle of great side-stuff to start doing soon, and continuing with the story only opens up more options. First comes Item Creation (once again, more in design) and more freedom in exploring, complete with optional dungeons and hard areas you aren't supposed to be in yet (but can brave for fun, curiosity, loot, challenging fights for lots of experience etc.). Quite a bit later you reach the "city of mini-games" as I like to call it (I believe there is one in every Star Ocean...at least the one in SO2 was called "Fun City"- so appropriate) which is not as expansive in variety as the one in SO2 (aka. Star Ocean: The Second Story), but is still a giant ball of side-stuff to do. Then, much later, like after you "beat" the game aka. finish the story, there are more crazy hard optional dungeons to do after that. Let's not get into the other difficulty levels and replays for different optional characters even, you probably could play this game until the end of time, but one full play-through doing everything you want to do will probably be more than enough (that's what I'm trying to finish doing in the future anyway). So, let's move on to...
DESIGN
First of all has to be Item Creation; this is a hallmark of the Star Ocean series and one of its best and most innovative strengths (even today, long after the first Star Ocean, its systems stand unique and well-polished in the crowd). SO3's Item Creation (IC) system is very different from SO2's however. Although it seems a little harder to grasp since for most types of IC you only select the price instead of materials like in SO2, prices do (usually) uniquely correspond to one item and writing these down allows you to control what you make to the same extent as in SO2. I will leave the details for the game to explain, but I wish to point out the many new awesome additions to IC that SO3 added to make up for its increased learning curve/difficulty to grasp. First of all, although SO3 has lost the amazing skill/talent system in SO2, there is newfound fun in recruiting NPC inventors and competing with ones you haven't recruited to "patent" creations. Also, it is super-neat that items invented show up in shops for sale after a while, and will run out until someone makes more on the "market". It is great that you begin receiving "royalties" for items you have patented on the market at regular intervals outside of town as well (so you can't run around town forever getting money), but also there is the tension that an unrecruited inventor will patent a good item before you (you want to patent good items since you get discounts buying them from shops as well as the "royalties") outside of town. This item creation "race" creates even more incentive to work hard on item creation. Plus, recruiting NPC creators through different ways is always satisfying as you work toward your imminent monopoly...bwahaha! Also, one can spend hours and hours fiddling with the "factors" on their weapons (like randomly shooting fireballs, or automatic MP recovery) to create specialized weapons for whatever purpose. The only reason I can think of that this was not also allowed for armor and accessories also is because it would be way too powerful with even more than 8 slots of factors to customize (and you can put defensive factors on your weapon as well, anything on an accessory or armor you can also put on your weapon, so the thing is to put factors you do not already have on your best armor/accessory or factors that work well with the ones on your other equipment). The sheer amount and types of items you can create is great as always, Star Ocean has always had the most variety and number of items in any RPG series I've played. Although some of the more fun types/items from SO2 are missing (like "forged contract" and "bounced check"), SO3 makes up for it in a better designed item list/sorting system, which is very important for a game with so many possible items...the system in SO2 could get annoying at times. That all said, the game's difficulty starts increasing near the end of disc 1 and onto disc 2, and although you can always get by with store bought items, the game kind of pushes you to do some IC...but then again it's so great once you get into it, so whatever.
Next, I have always wanted to rant about battle trophies...Why? Cause SO3 had them before Xbox Live Achievements, AND they are better. Why are they better? Cause getting lots of them actually does something other than boosting a semi-meaningless gamer score (due to vast disparities in how difficult it is to get points in different Xbox games). Getting lots of battle trophies unlocks new character costumes, new difficulty levels (unfortunately you have to start a new game for these, presumably so you can't get lots of levels on Earth(Easy) mode and then switch to 4D(Super-Hard) mode to make 4D mode easier), and best of all(IMO) a sound test mode! (I love most of the music in the game, though what was Sakuraba thinking with that one rap-like boss track, didn't fit at all and made me lose a little faith in him...). There are 300 trophies of all sorts: some will happen automatically with continued play like "Kill 100 types of enemies", others require skill/preparation like "Defeat X boss in under 1 minute" or "Defeat X boss without taking damage" (this only applies to the character you are controlling, since you usually can't help it if AI controlled members take damage), others really require skill/preparation like "get a 500 hit combo", and some (my least favorite) just require persistence, luck, or single-sighted pursuit of that goal like "Kill X super-hard optional boss in 4D difficulty with only Charge" or "deal exactly 777 damage" or "Kill X boss at level 1"(the worst...sort of). But either way, most nice stuff can be unlocked with the easier trophies, and the harder ones are more just for the proof of that accomplishment. These add great side-goals to pursue for dedicated players while rewarding them with actual stuff. The trophies viewer even has a (bad) snapshot of the moment the trophy was gotten and its description. This is just another way this game was innovative for its time and it is way better than the sound clip collection system in SO2, which was based on luck way too much.
Alright, now we get to private actions, which deserve praise and criticism. Unlike in SO2, where you could decide to initiate private actions outside a town (which means your party members split up an do their own thing inside a town - hence the name), in SO3 they happen automatically. Also, unlike in SO2, you cannot pair up any two characters in the ending, you only affect your own pairing...then again, this was hard to do in SO2 anyway. Anyway, the prevailing problem of these gets a little worse in SO3. This problem is the extreme difficulty in knowing what each response/event will do to each character's opinion of you or your opinion of them. Even weirder in SO3 is that many more PAs affect characters not even involved in the scene, almost as though your responses form what kind of person you are, and other characters judge based on that; this does however, prevent the player from being a hypocrite to get the best opinion from every character...a good moral lesson I guess. Also in SO3, mistakes cannot be fixed by fighting many battles together, PAs are the only factors in determining relationships...also more unforgiving. Also, some PAs are hard to avoid/easy to miss or do not have a part where you choose a response, so you may not think it is a PA, yet still affect relationships just by seeing them. Others are just an exchange of text; one rule that is generally true is: if Fayt(who you control in town) talks outside of a story cutscene, it is probably a private action. Overall, a summary is that the player does not have enough control over the ending pairing since it takes a lot of work to figure out what is going on at all...that said, PAs are excellent in terms of providing character development that is specialized and outside the story.
Next, the Dictionary deserves a small mention, although it is not as good as say, the databases in Xenosaga Episode I or III. It is simply good for a game to have a separate information source that fleshes out the world and chronicles terms, people, and places in the world that may or may not be a major part of the main story. It allows the rich vision of the writers/creators/developers, which may not have been completely expressed in the final product, to be brought out somewhere. It makes a great spare time read, and there are some entries that you can miss getting in this game, so thoroughness in finding everything in the game gives you more about the game! I just always love little extras like these...
Last, but not least, the battle system itself deserves special mention for being fast, fun, and frenetic, yet still requiring skill and strategy - an ideal goal for an action RPG. Core to this is the HP, MP, and Fury (Guts in the JP Version...hehe, this is Star Ocean classic) consumption systems. The details are for the game to explain, but simply summarized, there is always a trade-off between safety and damage capability. Any offensive action (such as normal attacks) or movement uses fury, and you lose your 100% fury shield that protects against weak attacks; if you run out of fury, you need to stand still to recover - this prevents mashing and encourages balancing offense and defense. Battle Skills use HP and Magic uses MP, both are more effective than normal attacks most of the time, but run out of either HP or MP and you are knocked out. Many people disliked this 0 MP=knockout, but it makes sense: if you're extremely fatigued physically or mentally, you are likely to lose consciousness. Also, with an "MP Damage" system, there are now two ways to kill your enemies as well as two ways you need to protect yourself - it actually makes mages hardier in some ways and allows you to target an enemy's weak point of the two. There is also the Rock-Paper-Scissors-like relationship between weak attacks, strong attacks, and the fury shield combined with sidesteps and running to dodge. Plus, there is chaining battle skills/magic (for dedicated mage characters) which allows damage bonuses (this is central for doing high-damage)...well, you can imagine the results of all these aspects combined. The magic in SO3 was finally balanced well after being too strong in SO1 (from what I heard) and too weak in SO2 (Although is still a little weaker in SO3 than battle skills, but dedicated mages can use it to good effect). Another thing is the fact that you can control any character in battle and each character has very different capabilities...in normal attacks, battle skills, magic, stats, even basic stuff like running speed, sidestep speed/distance, speed of item use, and knockdown recovery time. Each character has a very different feel and set of strategies/strengths/weaknesses on the battlefield, and if you get bored of one character, I highly suggest you try mastering another - it's harder, and more fun, than you think.
Anyway, sorry that was so long. This game just had so many Design qualities I wanted to talk about - that was probably the main focus of this entire game log. Anyway, with so many interesting design qualities, I demand this game by put on the classics list...NAO!...J/K.
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Feb 8th, 2008 at 22:55:50 - Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (PS2) |
NOTE
Again,(the last time, I promise!...I think) a note by the blogger: It seems like I'm going back in time with each Gamelog I've done; in a way, I am, but other games are also in-between >_>. As with my other RPG logs, I have been playing this for a while and am still playing it. Also, the starting date for this game is probably way off...I am pretty sure I started a good while before my estimate. I developed a bad habit of not finishing my current RPG before I started another one in the last few years, and now I'm trying to finish them all...Anyway, I've gotten further in this than FF XII and definitely want to "finish" it (since I'm not sure you can define "finish" for this game sometimes-hehe, the name fits). Again, I am sure of my ability to remember my impressions and experiences from even the beginning of the game, since I am still in the middle of it. I will once again split my entries based on memories of my initial impressions of the game and then later developments while playing the game.
SUMMARY
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time is the third in the main Star Ocean line of action RPGs created by tri-Ace (it is often abbreviated as SO3, SO:TtEoT, or SO3:TTEOT, etc. I will call it SO3 from now on, since that it the shortest). Like some other RPG series, it is set in the same universe as the other Star Oceans, but far enough removed that you can easily play it alone and only miss some references/similarities to the other games. You play Fayt, a seemingly normal human living in the futuristic, sci-fi universe of the game; he is simply vacationing on a resort planet with his parents and childhood friend Sophia. Of course, something like a hostile alien race has to attack and change the course of his life...maybe not for the better, but for the more exciting at least.
GAMEPLAY
The game boot-up sequence for this game is one of my favorites, and arguably more inspiring than say, the FF XII's opening even. Sakuraba's "The Dawn of Wisdom" is such an appropriate track for it too, in melody and name. Too bad the actual game doesn't start in as glorious a fashion as FF XII. SO3 starts off fairly slow, even for an RPG, but at least the ramp-up pace never drops like in FF XII (Okay, enough comparing now, I know - Sorry, FF XII was the last Gamelog I wrote).
One good aspect about the lead-in to the game is the ability to skip all the battle tutorials; of course, I do not recommend this unless you have played before/read the manual thoroughly since it is very important to get down the basics of the fast battle system. Also, make sure you make a Battle Trophies file or import your previous game's in the Battle Tutorial area: this is your only chance to do so (Battle Trophies explained in design later). Most other tutorials are also skip-able, and you can also mess around with options in the config. menu, including one to skip cutscenes (For replays or game overs maybe). A small bit of user friendly design here...
Anyways, after a bit of just moving and talking (during which you experience the game's new automatic Private Action system - just Star Ocean's fancy term for interactions with other main characters, ones with response choices...WARNING! these affect the ending, more in design), stuff happens and you are thrust into your dangerous adventure. Despite the awesome sci-fi opening sequence, much of this game takes place in a more fantasy-like setting in true Star Ocean style. Even for me, who expected this from a Star Ocean game, this was a little disappointing after the opening scene completely wowed me. Either way, as long as you like fantasy as well, this game makes up for it more than enough ways.
Near the beginning, you are quite limited and can pretty much only continue with the story. However, the story is pretty interesting and the sheer fun of getting into the battle system and learning new battle skills to experiment with/practice with makes it easy to continue on. After you get more than one party member, not only does this open up more character interaction/development, but combat becomes even more fun since you can switch the character you're manually controlling with the press of a button. At other times, members you're not controlling are handled by AI. Now, the AI in this game in funky - first of all you can "level" it up with skill points by upping the "Attack" and "Defense" levels out of your four "status" skills, this does seem to increase the AI's smarts, but also affects how aggressive/defensive it is based on the balance of the two. Also, there are AI patterns you can set for each ally and you can set which spells the AI is allowed to cast in battle (all spells will still be available in manual control, and battle skills are always limited by slots and CP regardless). Lastly, just from my experience, whenever you change an ally's battle skill set, it is best to control them manually and use the skills as you want the AI to use them...and the AI seems to pick up your preferences a bit somehow...very cool.
The only small side jobs you can do near the beginning are completing maps (some have areas you can't reach, so if you're stuck on a percentage less than 97%, it probably isn't doable then); if you explore/see 99% of a map (luckily the game isn't anal enough to make it 100%) you get random bunny statues that you can sell after the first (it is good to keep one for the bonus it gives) for large chunks of cash, which is hard to come by early in the game. Other than that, the story, battles, and playing around with new characters are likely to keep you going until you reach the parts where the game starts really opening up...
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Jan 27th, 2008 at 03:09:01 - Final Fantasy XII (PS2) |
GAMEPLAY (2)
So, once again starting with the story and characters, the story moves along very nicely and keeps you quite thirsty for more for a good while. This nice pacing and development continues until around the point where you have gotten all your party members permanently...at which time the pace of the story begins to slow exceptionally. This occurs through longer required trekking/battling/exploring segments before the next story development, combined with shorter/less actual events or developments upon reaching the next destination/objective.
The same occurs with the characters, they are each introduced well and given interesting stories and personalities - heightened by the exceptional English voice acting (unfortunately rare, though improving these days) and well-animated movements and mannerisms. Unfortunately, the lack of conversation or interaction with them outside of cutscenes/events begins to hurt their overall memorability a little. Some people may like this lack of text, but it could at least have the optional conversations in town more often. I am still debating to myself whether it would have been better or not to have talk in battles as well. Overall, the slowdown in character and story development in this game, which is completely opposite to the usual increase in most traditional RPGs as one progresses, is what led to my hiatus from the game when something else grabbed my attention. I still want to know what happens at least (meaning the story is still good), it just takes too long to reach the next tidbit.
Luckily, there are other things that keep you interested, if in a different way. Although it means even more time spent before the next story scene (I might forget what's going on here sometimes), one can begin spending lots of time taking on new hunts, exploring optional areas in the ever-widening world, leveling, finding rare items or enemies, customizing their characters with the license board and gambits (both explained below) etc. The game world certainly grows richer with possibilities even as the story slows down. This leads me to the first aspect I wish to discuss in...
DESIGN
I think Square-Enix was trying to make a MMORPG-like experience for a single-person, console game. In this vein, I think they succeeded, especially with the gambit system, which I will discuss later. The expansive, open world full of random chests, rare monsters, and optional discoveries is well-done. Although taste has turned away some who were expecting a traditional RPG from the long line of Final Fantasies, I personally feel the game is a nice change of pace - though I don't want traditional RPGs to die out either. The only part I can criticize is the downgrade of the story pace to molasses-level MMORPG style. Especially with the well-done story objectives system on the map mentioned previously, this was completely unnecessary. You don't have to take EVERYTHING that comes with the territory; especially since it is already lacking the actual social aspect of MMORPGs, it NEEDS character interaction and story development to make up for it. Square-Enix could have taken advantage of both the strengths of the console-style RPG and the strengths of the MMORPG for this single-player RPG to make it brilliant. Instead, it only succeeded in making the MMORPG style of play work in the single-player framework.
This, of course, is an accomplishment in itself however. The main component that makes the MMORPG-style play work with one player is the gambit system, which is a way to "program" your party members on how to react in battle situations. Each "gambit" consists of a condition such as [ally has less than 30% HP] and a reaction to that condition such as [Cure] or [Potion]; these combined would cause that character to cast Cure (or use a Potion) on an ally when that ally is below 30% HP. Then you prioritize which gambits are more important. For example, if you have a healing gambit above an attack enemies gambit, the member will stop fighting to heal the ally; if it's the other way around, the member will fight until all nearby enemies are killed before healing the wounded ally. People complain ridiculously about how the game "plays itself" this way. Well, first of all, who said you had to use them? You can manually input every command if you want. Second of all, you will have to change your gambits for certain enemies and bosses if you want to survive - you cannot rely on them all the time either. Lastly, it adds another aspect of the game to play around with and master; it takes some careful planning to get a great working gambit with the limited slots you have. In my opinion, the gambit system allows you to remove tedious constant commands while keeping you in control of what you want to do manually; it also gives a semi-illusion of having self-acting other party members and being able to give them suggestions over their own actions, thus making the MMORPG feeling more "correct" with a single player.
Okay, I promise this will be shorter. The License Board system is a great way to customize your characters; who cares if it doesn't make sense? When have RPGs made sense? What with levels, every new town having better equipment, monsters dropping money (which this game makes more realistic with selling loot) etc. Remember FF X? With that funky grid and all the spheres? When did that make sense? This is just a new kind of not making sense, so people have to complain about it. Also, yes you can make all the characters the same combat-wise, but you don't HAVE to. People complained about the Sphere Grid being too restrictive in FF X, so Square-Enix made a more customizing friendly "expert" grid in the International Version (these are ironically only in Japan); then when the license grid is perfect for customizing in FF XII, people complain that the characters aren't different enough battle-wise, so the FF XII International Version had a more restrictive system...go figure. The point is, it is great for customizing...take it or leave it. I'll leave the details for the game to explain since my rant was too long already.
Speaking of what the game explains, it does mostly everything in the in-game tutorials except Mist Quickenings...which you must look up in the manual for some reason...and even then is is confusing and takes actual practice to figure out how to do it right. However, overall I advocate reading manuals, and Quickenings aren't all too useful past getting more MP unless you get them early on. That's another nitpick...perhaps because limits and summons were so useful in previous FFs, they have been overly weakened to the point of being almost useless at the later stages of the game. This is due to Quickenings (FF XII version of limits) and summons using massive amounts of MP, which is usually better spent on healing/support since Black (damage) magic has also been weakened in general. This was also changed in the International version, this time to better effect, in my opinion, than the License Board change.
To end on a good note, one can certainly see the game is very well polished. The polygons may be lower than in FF X, but the textures were given the main focus this time by Square-Enix, thus the close-up details in the world and characters are excellent. The game runs smoothly and with a great cinematic quality. Overall, despite some shortcomings, it is still a game to recommend...and worthy of being a Final Fantasy.
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Jan 27th, 2008 at 00:52:44 - Final Fantasy XII (PS2) |
NOTE
Once again, a note by the blogger: I have also been playing this game for a while, this time the starting date is more of an estimate than last time since I'm on a little hiatus from the game. I am still sure of my ability to remember the game and its world since I do intend to return to where I left off. I will once again split my entries based on memories of my initial impressions of the game and then later developments while playing the game. Also, I belatedly realized this is going to be late, but I still intend to do it. If it cannot be used for this assignment, I would ask if it could be used as the next "classics list" assignment for me, please?
SUMMARY
Final Fantasy XII is the latest released entry in the well-known RPG series, and is stand-alone/self-contained like most Final Fantasies. The Battles are more MMORPG style than traditional Final Fantasies (FFs from now on); the battle system is styled after the online FF XI, with many changes of course. You follow the story of many characters in the small nation of Dalmasca, which has its sad history revealed in brilliant glory in the opening moments of the game (I'm NOT going to spoil this). The story develops and changes, of course, as the cast tries to find a way to bring Dalmasca out of the oppressive grip of the Archadian empire. The game supposedly takes place in Ivalice, the same world introduced to series veterans in Final Fantasy Tactics, only many, many years apart.
GAMEPLAY
As previously mentioned, the opening scenes upon starting a new game are brilliant - not to mention the nice start-up sequence with the latest incarnation of the nostalgic FF theme. The recent history of Dalmasca is told in fast, almost too fast (for me), suspenseful cutscenes and you'll barely notice the tutorial in-between for sheer desire to see more. I have to say, this game had one of the best lead-in sequences in the series, if not in RPG history. Shame to say it was a little wasted...
After the glorious start, you'll get to the present...where you're killing rats. I'm not kidding! Whether the contrast was intentional or not, the starting of the "real" game - with good old level one, worst equipment, etc. and more tutorials - was slower than it had to be in my opinion. The starting climb of getting money, fighting and other standard RPG events is more tedious than most, probably because you only have one party member at first. Setting the battle speed higher helps a little, but you'll probably want it back down after you start getting more members/abilities.
Luckily, after some required introduction to the game world, the story gets interesting once again. Also, getting new party members and abilities quickly heightens the speed and variety of battles, lessening the starting strain of building your characters up. Stealing is also less stressful with other party members around to take damage and heal you up, which makes getting loot (which you sell as the primary means of getting money, gil as in most FFs, in this game) easier. Continuing with the story exactly when you want is easily done in FF XII thanks to your next story objective being clearly noted and marked on your detailed area map in the main menu/select button map.
On that note, the game is surprisingly open from the start, even when you only have one party member. If you don't want to continue with the story, there are a few hunts (sidequest bosses basically) already open and you can travel out to many places before you're "required" to. Most people will be stopped or surprised by the fact that you can find monsters that can easily one-hit kill you right at the beginning (one is particularly infamous, but also freaking obvious in my opinion. Yes! I would advise saving before you poke a dinosaur with your dinky sword at level one! If you must satisfy your reckless curiosity, save first!). However, if you are smart/skilled/lucky enough to get around some of these, you can really get around a bit before you reach the real "you're not allowed to go here" barriers. Both these aspects are a little unexpected in traditional RPGs, but definitely more common in MMORPGs.
Continuing on...
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