A look back at: Alundra

Three in one month, let's go! And I do plan on doing the sequel game next.

This game is one that certainly has been on the backburner, and its strongest quality has to be its sensational music track. I'm familiar with Dust to Dust, the somber theme, Coastal Cave, as well as Kline's Nightmare from playing Doom wads for a while, so to actually hear them in the original orchestration was great. Better yet, the tracks can all be listened to in one room! Though you do have to progress in-game to get to some of this stuff eventually, that's fine.

On to the gameplay, and it's basically a Playstation version of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. A fine game in and of itself, so that's a hurdle that can't be crossed. But at least this game has plenty of hallmarks to coincide with its attempt at a similar yet different premise. Sword-swinging, arrows and bombs (here you get infinite ammo), medicines to heal, seven crests to pick up (like the seven crystals), life vessels (the heart containers), a religious sanctuary with a cemetery next to it, a swamp, lake, desert, and mountain, boss fights with strategy, just one village, upgrading weaponry, and plenty, and I mean PLENTY of annoying dungeon puzzles. What makes it even moreso here than in ALTTP is that you do have platforming and puzzles combined, and many dungeons actually feel way longer than they should because of these puzzle moments. If the music wasn't so good, I would have hated this.

I was hoping for a truly perfect playthrough of this, but unfortunately I capped out at 49 hit points and 49 Gilded Falcons. Three of each can be done in the casino section, and I got two, but for some reason, the roulette section was unfortunately completely bugged and I was in a dead-end room with no way out other than reloading, so that was the only one I couldn't get to. Also sometimes some textures end up disappearing when I try to save and load and speaking of loading, those loading times are quite annoying. So would I consider this a true action RPG? It's really complicated. There's significantly more immersion in this plot in my opinion, and the upgrades to weapons are certainly a thing. So I really could care less. This one does feel RPG enough to me.

A look back at: Shining Force II

A.K.A. Shining Force-but-with-a-different-plotline-that-isn't-exactly-original-because-a-hero's-hometown-is-destroyed-demons-did-it-a-princess-gets-kidnapped-and-also-many-character-names-are-recycled-and-the-gameplay-is-not-different.

Literally all this game is.in hindsight. It's seen as the better Shining Force, since you can actually progress in a nonlinear fashion at certain points, and have a much easier time to grind up your characters. Of course, this most likely means Egress'ing away from battle before you finish it, but there are some locations that trigger the closest thing this game has to random battles. The caravan is excellent for depositing items, especially those hidden Mithril pieces, but we'll get to THAT soon enough.

Yeah, plotwise, it's got the clichés I summarized above. And the character class archetypes are in display here, as is the completely intact battle system. Misses due to dodging, possible double attacks, counterattacks (I can't remember if this was new though), and experience discrepancies making several character classes like the Warrior really suffer. Thankfully, you can get secret character promotions like Baron and Master Monk, and I aimed for this stuff, it really works out so well. Bowie the Hero has to keep himself alive, and Peter the Phoenix is certainly an overpowered character. These two make the game easier, but getting the Master Monks as well as Ninja for Slade also are big deals. Some characters who join much later are worthless due to circumstances, like Rohde being horrible for movement despite being a strong long-range attacker.

Can we also discuss these names? Cause many of them are reused, plenty from the Sword of Hayja which I already checked out. Sarah for instance is a name already used by a priest in that game, and Chester was an archer. It's more egregious with names like Eric and Jaha, since the characters of those names here are in the SAME CLASSES as the ones from there! Eric starts out as a centaur knight, and Jaha starts out as a warrior. The name Luke is used for a bird warrior here, and that was used in the previous two Shining Force games I played. Could they at least give newer names so I don't get confused? This is a sequel after all, and the Sword of Hayja established that not only does Nick return in that game (he was the hero in the first Gaiden game), but also the ninja and samurai from Shining Force 1 also come into play too.

Anyways, what I definitely won't miss is the smithing of penultimate weapons. I say penultimate first cause the ultimate weapons are either the Hero's Holy Sword or cursed weapons with drawbacks like lowered defense. Finding the Mithril basically requires a guide, this is the easy part. Then you give the Mithril to a special smithy, leave town, come back, and you get your weapon. And it's always a frickin' Critical Sword. I had suffered a lot from trying to get Gisarme for Slade or Levanter for Bowie, looking all over the internet and thankfully, people HAVE been researching this RNG issue for quite a while. Therefore, it's not necessarily new. But I just wanted those weapons and timesinked a lot of the endgame until I basically gave in and finished the game. Yeah, that's certainly something that even with the research done is still a frustration moment.

At least the game can still be beaten without this stuff. It feels easier but that's cause of my experience with the former game overall.

A look back at: Final Fantasy X-2

 

I had fun. I also didn't have fun. That's the gist of it. Oh wait, did I quote some character here? I did.

Funny enough, I had a choice to check either this game out first, or Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Considering the fact it is summer break and I don't have a lot of work in the summer, this was the better option at the moment. I knew this game would take a long, long time to go through. I knew there were sidequests, minigames, and grinding. That last part, well, it's mostly the ability grinding. By the end my girls were pushing Lv75 but levels don't matter. Abilities and dresspheres do, as do all the rewards for doing all sorts of things as well. More garment grids! More dresspheres! More accessories! Half the time it felt like I was really doing a nonlinear collectathon.

That's arguably the game's biggest strength in my opinion. It's nonlinear from the start. Final Fantasy X-2 only has a measly 5 chapters, those who want to do the story will realize that the chapters don't really take as long as they really do. But since you can explore every part of Spira (except in those scenarios where places are locked), that lends way to all the sidequests, which could impact other chapters and DEFINITELY impact the percentage of completion later on. Sadly, I didn't really get 100%, this is because I decided that doing Via Infinito (among other things) was gonna take way too long, and I wanted to check out other games later. I still used a cheat code to actually put the game's completion at 100% and found out that the only thing that it really does is add new ending scenes.

I'm a little desensitized with Final Fantasy as a franchise from having played so many games in it. Tons of stuff make this a good game, the customizable garment grids and ability grinding were the gist of my gaming experience here. The return to the Active-Time battle system works out alright, being able to change your dressphere in the midst of combat is a nice touch, but in the end not entirely necessary for most battles that aren't boss battles. This is cause bar specific enemies, a good-leveled party just breezes through encounters. You only have problems whenever the encounter rate dictates you have a battle every three steps, you get ambushed quite a lot (me thinks it is an attempt to balance easy encounters), and most encounters that are troublesome have fixed-damage attacks (those annoying amorphous gel enemies in particular). Oh, and the Oversoul gimmick! Kinda cool, kinda annoying with some encounters, but really not as consequential as it looks.

Character-wise, it's nice to see new faces, who were arguably the most interesting, and the returning ones are either moving on or unfortunately got on my nerves (looking at you, Rikku and Brother). Minigames are so worth talking about. Blitzball is significantly worse but thankfully not truly necessary, but it's better playing than coaching. Gunner's Gauntlet is a kind-of fun third person shooter gimmick but I got all the prizes after figuring things out. Sphere Break is a fun math game but unfortunately requires some luck and math knowledge. The massage minigame is ENTIRELY luck, you want to hit the right spots and that is up to total chance. Shoving the band into the airship elevator was completely unnecessary. The Calm Lands minigames are also not necessary but the publicity stuff sucks. That Cactuar war minigame is beyond stupid, thankfully it's not necessary to win. Thunder Plains tower calibration was quite fun the first time, then not once you got to the last few towers. They give you directions and tutorials on most everything at least. So a varied experience, and honestly a quite worthy sequel in my book, but given how much time things took, and how I felt my usual RPG fatigue at the end, it's obvious that no NG+ playthroughs of any kind will come in soon.