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Saturday 9 February, 2008
GAMEPLAY
In the game a common side quest is a “hunt” where you go get a reward for killing certain monsters in the world. The first two I completed where fairly easy and I was happy I worked at them. The third one however was rather aggravating. After getting the monster about half way out of life he would run off to a different corner of the area you are in, usually with other mobs there. So in order to even have a chance at beating him I had to clear the whole area of any monsters. After doing this he still is a very hard fight, and after I got him to almost 1 hp he does some sort of attack that damages me for 1000 hp. This was extremely aggravating for me. First off I only have about 180 hp at my level, second it took so much time to clear that area and I had earned all the experience points, money, and license points for doing that. Then after all that I didn’t go back to town to save my progress because then the area would just be full of monsters again so I died lost all the LP’s, money and XP that I had taken so long to get. I stopped trying to kill that monster and continued on with the main story-line.
After being so frustrated with the hunt I was happy to be back on track of the story-line and found it much easier to follow the map and advance through the story. However in the second hour I played most of it was taken up by the hunt for the monster so I didn’t get too much farther into the story of the game. That whole hour was just about wasted and that is really frustrating for me, but I guess I’ll just continue on with the story and go back for that monster later in the game.
DESIGN
The design of this game is quite unique. It’s similar to the other Final Fantasys, I think, from what I’ve watched of them, but the combat style seems a bit different. But I like it more than the previous style. Instead of going to a cut screen you are there and there is a bar that represents your attack or your cast it is a really neat way to set it up. The graphics are also quite amazing especially in the cut scenes. It may not be as exciting to everyone else but the last console I really played on for an extended period of time was N64 so PS 2 graphics are years ahead of that, but the cut scenes for the game were fairly well placed and timed. They advanced the story and plot while keeping my attention.
As I play through the game I find myself growing more and more attached to the main character, Vaan, and his relationships to the other characters of the game. Any game that brings me into the story is exciting and makes me want to continue playing. By doing a good job on the design and story of this game the designers will make me want to purchase the next game in the Final Fantasy Series.
If I could change anything about the game it would be the hunts. The hunts are segmented by level of difficulty and the first 3 hunts were all level 1 yet the 3 hunt I was unable to beat and got really frustrated with so if I could change anything it would be correctly distributing the difficulty settings on the hunts or making the monster easier to defeat. If that had been part of the main story-line I most likely would have just given up on the game, which is a good design technique. This is because if a player can’t beat a side quest it isn’t that big of a deal because they can continue on through the story and have something to do and come back to that side quest later, after they gain more techniques and power.
Overall I must say this game is a great one so far. The reward structure helps in making it so, there are levels you can obtain as well as licenses you get by having the licenses it makes it so you can customize each character in your party to do exactly what you want with their skills. I am whole heartily enticed with this game and am now going to get back to it.
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