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Saturday 26 January, 2008
Entry #2
GAMEPLAY
My second hour of gameplay was much more fun than the first. It was essentially the same kind of pattern of talking to bystanders, fighting fiends, and watching cutscenes, but the game became much more developed. New characters joined the party bringing new magic spells, physical techniques, and personality. I got a nice feeling of community when the party began to get larger. It was really interesting to see all the different character personalities interacting both during battles and in the other modes of gameplay. Also, some of the bystanders and sales people became recurring characters, and it was nice to get to talk to them in different areas of the game about the gameworld’s current events.
I stayed pretty happy and entertained while I was playing this time around. I think it must have been largely due to the beautiful landscapes and soothing music. As soon as I started feeling like one section of map was starting to get boring, it would always end or change. Also, the story’s narrative progression kept me absorbed in the plotline.
DESIGN
The Blitzball tournament added an especially unique gameplay element. This was an underwater team sports game that the main character and one other character and his team play together. This is a good feature of the game because it provides a kind of minigame that can be revisited and expanded upon at every save point.
A great design element of this game is the fact that it has an epic battle about once an hour in which an especially powerful fiend must be fought. These are probably the most fun parts of the game because they allow and encourage the player to make use of all of the different battle commands and develop more complex strategies than regular fiends require. This keeps the game interesting by keeping the player motivated to keep their stats up in order to defeat these larger opponents.
The game creates conflict on many levels, the first and most obvious being the conflict of the main character Tidus wanting to get home to his original dimension. Aside from that there are lots of small plot conflicts like Kimari’s quarrel with the other two characters of his species, Wakka’s challenged views about Yevon, the religion, and the conflict between Yuna and the other summoner she meets along the road.
The game makes good use of space in the gameworld by making the view locked on one angle so that you are always seeing the best view. Also, backgrounds are never reused and always very artistic. The paths, which are more 3D than the other sections of the game, have moving elements on them like plants as well.
The game does have emergent complexity in the battle system, but it develops slowly from a unique upgrade game feature called the sphere grid, which allows you to use spheres gained from battle to give your characters new stats and abilities. Complicated tactics can come out of high-stat battles. These tactics are the emergent aspects of the gameplay.
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