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Saturday 9 February, 2008
GAMEPLAY
Getting a little more used to the battle system now... Aside from the weak vs. strong attacks, there's also a magic system in place that I don't quite fully understand because, well, Serge only has one! >.< From what I can tell, you get these Elements, which you can buy, and equip them to your characters. Then in battle, after you've hit somebody and gained these in-battle levels (that I *totally* don't understand yet), you can use an Element (which is reusable, like materia in FFVII) and it will subtract a certain amount from those in-battle levels.
In the second gameplay session I had to go and get these scales from the CUTEST komodo dragons ever! It was a mini-game and I have very mixed feelings about mini-games, especially when they rely on very specific timing and you're stuck for ten minutes trying to jump off of a stupid ledge to land on a stupid dragon so it doesn't run stupidly away from you. Mini-games = awesome when they follow the rules of the metagame, such as the game has to be pleasurable and not insanely difficult. In fact, I'd posit that the latter is even more important in mini-games because often times the poor player just wants to move on to the actual plot! It took me way to long to get those scales, and afterwards I felt kind of disillusioned and then realized I had to hurry the heck up and write my gamelog!
GAME DESIGN
One of the more unique aspects of the game is certainly the battle system, more with the weak-to-strong stuff than the Element stuff, in my opinion. With a turn-based fighting style, it can be hard to break out of the box, and I definitely feel that the rhythm and focus is different from any other game. Related to the battle system is how you enter battles. Random battles can be great for experience, but they can get really annoying when you're just trying to move through an area, so I appreciated that you could see the monsters and choose to battle them. Except, of course, when they were in my way and to get to the treasure chest or dragon I had to do battle. *le sigh*
I love that there is such a huge cast of characters from whom to make up your party. Of course, I didn't get very far at all, but I imagine that that feature adds a lot of replay value to the game, as well as emotional value for the player, becoming attached to specific characters. Every character, whether you could play them or not, had something aaalmost interesting to say. If I was playing the game in my own free time and not under a deadline, I think I would have been more attentive to their babble, but as it was I kind of skimmed most of it.
As I mentioned in my first gameplay log, the aesthetics and score of the game are really, really pleasing to me. The bright colors (of this first place, at least) just make me *happy* and the score, while very typical of RPGs, is of the highest, highest quality. In fact, I may just have to get my hands on it!
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