I barely have anything to blog about these days. But even if that were the case, there's still some interesting things to think about. Right now, as I'm playing Final Fantasy Tactics, I'm taking note of just how many characters end up perishing in-game through cutscenes and/or otherwise. There's a lot of them in this game, and it gave me time to reflect on the series and games that had the more notable deaths. Might as well list the one's that are really notable.
II: Josef, Minwu
III: Elia
IV: Tellah, Anna
V: Galuf and the rest of the original heroes
VI: Cid (can be prevented), Gestahl, Leo, Shadow (can be prevented), Cyan's family, Rachel
VII: Aeris, President Shinra
VIII: Vinzer Deling
Those are of course the more memorable ones from the games I'm already familiar with, but there's a whole slew of characters that come near death or perhaps fake their deaths. I'm not familiar with II that much apart from what people have told me, but I know for a fact Desh in III jumps into a tower reactor, only to show up much later on. IV is incredibly blatant with its fake deaths, all of which tend to be sacrifices in some way. Yang jumping into the barrel of a powerful cannon? How could he survive that? Cid is even worse, jumping down a huge chasm with a bomb ready to deploy. And he's the FIRST character you see recovering. Somehow, despite Tellah NOT being able to cure Palom and Porom of petrification much earlier, the village elder of Mysidia could do it. Nothing makes much sense when it comes to these fake deaths.
In V's later stages, Lenna gets sucked into the vortexes during one of Exdeath's main attacks, and is eventually rescued. Although when she's back in the party, she's essentially dead, and her status also shows that when you look at it upon getting her back. But you could just revive her. You couldn't do that with Galuf, mostly due to the circumstances involving his sacrifice. There's also barely any effort to prevent Xeza's death from occurring, or Kelmar's.
Skipping over to VII, as VI had plenty of decent deaths and no real fake-outs apart from the preventable ones. Believe it or not, the two characters I mentioned above are the only two who somehow die, and both by Sephiroth's hands. Sephiroth's Masamune somehow just couldn't kill anything else. Tifa gets slashed completely across the chest in a flashback, and even falls about sixty feet down stairs, but she survives. Tseng gets stabbed in the chest at one dungeon, and is laying on the ground when you meet him there, but he's revealed to have survived despite not appearing later on. Finally, Cloud himself. He also gets pierced in the chest by Sephiroth like Tseng, but also gets lifted up. This somehow doesn't kill him, and Cloud even pulls a reversal and knocks Sephiroth below. And that's just Sephiroth's examples of not killing, there are others in this game. Palmer getting hit by a truck? Well it could be survivable and it is in his case. What about Rufus during the Diamond Weapon attack? Somehow, despite the earth-shattering beam, it's revealed he's okay. This is just not understandable.
VIII had a few of these happen, usually involving moments with Squall and Rinoa (particularly the end of Disc 1 where Squall gets outright skewered with a shard from Edea), it's hard to really follow them. The missile base mission also sees Selphie's group somehow making it out of there, using something...rather special. Laguna in one of his scenes somehow manages to push his injured comrades down a cliff, both survive (although Ward no longer can speak). Vinzer is just the unluckiest guy ever.
So yeah, get your deaths together Final Fantasy. Other JRPG series usually keep characters dead. Usually. Only a few times would they not, but this series is quite notorious for fake deaths. Not saying that death should always happen in these games, that would make things tragic and perhaps make the overall fanbase a little more secluded, but less fake-outs please.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
Friday, March 15, 2019
Suikoden's Tenkai Star
Time for a little something that's different. Been reviewing, looking back, and then talking about bad dungeons and what not. Let's look at a certain trait the Suikoden games had. You all know the drill if you've played at least one of these games, gather 108 characters who are the Stars of Destiny to get the best out of the game's ending. And by looking at the tablet, you can gauge which characters you have. But what do those Japanese names mean? What is the correlation for making certain characters under certain particular named stars? Do you notice a trend in which characters with similar characteristics end up on the same star numbers?
This post focuses on the very first of the stars, the Tenkai Star. This is Star #1 on the tablet, the so-called Chief Star of Heaven. Suikosource lists this very star as the one in which the game's main hero is on. And for the most part, that's completely right, as each and every one of the characters on this star for the five main games is controllable by the player on the field. Tir McDohl was the hero in the first game, Riou in the second, Thomas in the third, Lazlo in the fourth, and Prince Freyjadour in the fifth. But not all are equal of course. While these characters are all controlled, there is one outlier in this group.
You see, Thomas isn't the main hero of Suikoden 3, despite being the Tenkai Star. You have three main heroes in that game, any of which can become the Flame Champion, but none of those can be Thomas. Thomas is simply a rich boy that ends up owning a large castle, and said large castle ends up being the main headquarters of course. He gets his own chapter where you play as him, but it's both optional and too short to be of nominal importance as opposed to the stories of Chris, Hugo, or Geddoe. So what exactly is Thomas's connection to the Tenkai Star? I'd say it's because he's a gatherer of the stars. This can easily apply to the other Tenkai Stars in the series as well, but it's Thomas's own castle that ends up being the headquarters. Even when he gives the ownership up to the new Flame Champion in-game, it still counts in a way.
That's what I think the Tenkai Star is about in the Suikoden series. It's not about being a hero, and it may not exactly be about being young either (despite all the Tenkai Stars all being young). It's about gathering the remaining stars under your cause.
This post focuses on the very first of the stars, the Tenkai Star. This is Star #1 on the tablet, the so-called Chief Star of Heaven. Suikosource lists this very star as the one in which the game's main hero is on. And for the most part, that's completely right, as each and every one of the characters on this star for the five main games is controllable by the player on the field. Tir McDohl was the hero in the first game, Riou in the second, Thomas in the third, Lazlo in the fourth, and Prince Freyjadour in the fifth. But not all are equal of course. While these characters are all controlled, there is one outlier in this group.
You see, Thomas isn't the main hero of Suikoden 3, despite being the Tenkai Star. You have three main heroes in that game, any of which can become the Flame Champion, but none of those can be Thomas. Thomas is simply a rich boy that ends up owning a large castle, and said large castle ends up being the main headquarters of course. He gets his own chapter where you play as him, but it's both optional and too short to be of nominal importance as opposed to the stories of Chris, Hugo, or Geddoe. So what exactly is Thomas's connection to the Tenkai Star? I'd say it's because he's a gatherer of the stars. This can easily apply to the other Tenkai Stars in the series as well, but it's Thomas's own castle that ends up being the headquarters. Even when he gives the ownership up to the new Flame Champion in-game, it still counts in a way.
That's what I think the Tenkai Star is about in the Suikoden series. It's not about being a hero, and it may not exactly be about being young either (despite all the Tenkai Stars all being young). It's about gathering the remaining stars under your cause.
Thursday, March 7, 2019
A look back at: Dragon Quest IV
Who had done more, the Dragon Quest or the Final Fantasy?
Oh Dragon Quest, you certainly provide the same sort of cliche fantasy RPG style that you've been doing for the past three games. Only now you decide to make things chapter-based, have different protagonists, bring them all together, and include travel wagons, casinos, and, what is this? An AI-based battle system?
Maybe it's the experience of playing so many RPGs that my interest may be waning thin. That's not good, I want to see each of these games for myself to see just how good each and every one of them are. Dragon Warrior IV pulls its punches, managing not to be as tough as its predecessors, but still grindy enough that it's not gonna be a breeze. The idea of the tactics system causes quite some randomness, when you have one character consistently attempting a spell that won't work (like Cristo using an instakill spell on a boss in Offensive tactics), you're in for it. On the other hand I'm of course glad things are easier to handle overall, and there still are always those interesting tidbits.
Poker in a casino? Not a fan of that usually, but then again, the double-or-nothing minigame was quite a lucky one to allow me to get some fantastic prizes. Also Taloon's chapter allows you to go behind a store counter early on and buy and sell weapons from customers, which predates what you can do in Breath of Fire 1 with Gobi. The whole "cave of betrayal" which makes you fight off impostors of Mara and Nara is also splendid. Not to mention the separation of characters from the wagon, limiting experience gains. Money also isn't a problem at all, for the most part.
Of course, I said this series is full of cliches. The standard classes do exist here. We also get to know that this game's main villain becomes lovestruck, then the girl dies, then the guy goes mad and wants to resurrect an even greater scope villain, one who we just sort of catch in the middle of resurrection (and one who could start his battle asleep!). I will also say that Necrosaro's main battle is pretty rad, take his arms off, watch him transform numerous times, it gets easier, then harder with each.
Yeah, I would've loved to play the remakes of this game too, especially considering that Saro or Psaro as he's known in the remakes gets better and really wants to right his wrongs. At least that's what I've heard. But that's for another time.
Sunday, March 3, 2019
Terrible RPG Dungeons: Part 5
Wow, I have been incredibly inactive as of late. Been doing a lot of revisiting of non-RPG games as well as playing several mods. Also trying to find new means of work overall. But regardless, I still got a good memory on a number of really bad dungeons. Let's look at the SNES platform.
Infinity - Breath of Fire 2
Everyone who has played BoF2 knows why this is on here. It's long, filled with numerous passageways and dead-ends, areas that require Sten's field ability (he's not that bad of a character, but he's just plain average overall), and worst of all, an encounter rate up the ass. You can't even make eight steps anywhere in the dungeon without triggering an encounter. It's probably worse in the SNES version, which doesn't have a much-needed dash ability. And of course, the enemies are deviously strong, many different kinds exist that will force you to constantly strategize. While the fights against Barubary and Deathevan truly are epics, just getting to them will fatigue players. It's even worse for those who wish to keep shaman transformations, because not only do you have to keep everyone alive as much as possible, there's a certain part where you will get Anfini, and that will reset the transformations, meaning you have to go all the way back to Township then. Dologany is a much-needed rest stop of course, but the dungeon is long on both sides, and undeniably grueling to conquer.
Fanatic's Tower - Final Fantasy VI
Stairs, stairs, stairs, stairs, stairs, stairs, this is seriously some lazy ass design for a tower. You may as well call this a lighthouse given just how the dungeon is nothing but stairs. The enemies are also quite unoriginal, being Lvl X (X is any number from 1 to 9) Magic. Then again, unoriginal only refers to the names, as the enemies themselves will have very powerful magic to cast, some of them already having annoying properties like being inherently reflective. And you can't just fight enemies, as the tower relegates you to only using magic. You're almost better off wearing the Moogle Charm and skipping all the way to the top, only to fight the Magimaster, an insanely tough mage who uses Ultima as his curtain call. Many ways to fight him, it actually may be best to just Rasp his MP while giving him Berserk status.
Sunken Worus Tower - Final Fantasy V
What do you know? Another timed dungeon? Makes sense since you're underwater, but geez, you have to speedrun this one just to get to...Gogo? Having a Thief or the Dash ability is required for this one, hands down. Run, run, run until you get to the boss, and you've got two choices. Wait while the clock is ticking (you better have enough) and he'll forfeit and give you the win, or actually fight the guy. To me, the latter just seems impossible. Being a mimic, he's obviously gonna do what you do to him, but better. Again though, you're timed, and that always sucks.
Reptite Lair - Chrono Trigger
This one's only a bit problematic in honesty. The issue of course, since I'm a completionist at heart, is getting the treasures. Gotta wait for these drill enemies to get in just the right position, then drill down so I can hopefully get what is at the bottom. Nizbel can also be a wake-up call boss. This isn't that bad, but I find the treasure hunting to be a little tedious.
Mare Tower - Breath of Fire
Having fun trying to actually defeat Mote? How about getting to him? It's already bad enough that this is supposedly a "nightmare" dungeon, meaning anything out of the ordinary sure will happen here. And that would be the spinning room. While it's already bad enough in making you seem dizzy (honestly that shouldn't happen), the disorientation will always occur. You're gonna need to figure out which of the spins results in a simple 90 degree counter-clockwise rotation, or a random spin, or none at all, and there's a minimum of seven tiles needed to actually cross to the finish. Mote ain't a picnic either, his pixelated appearance and apparent invulnerability sure would fool players here.
Up next, well, I dunno yet.
Infinity - Breath of Fire 2
Everyone who has played BoF2 knows why this is on here. It's long, filled with numerous passageways and dead-ends, areas that require Sten's field ability (he's not that bad of a character, but he's just plain average overall), and worst of all, an encounter rate up the ass. You can't even make eight steps anywhere in the dungeon without triggering an encounter. It's probably worse in the SNES version, which doesn't have a much-needed dash ability. And of course, the enemies are deviously strong, many different kinds exist that will force you to constantly strategize. While the fights against Barubary and Deathevan truly are epics, just getting to them will fatigue players. It's even worse for those who wish to keep shaman transformations, because not only do you have to keep everyone alive as much as possible, there's a certain part where you will get Anfini, and that will reset the transformations, meaning you have to go all the way back to Township then. Dologany is a much-needed rest stop of course, but the dungeon is long on both sides, and undeniably grueling to conquer.
Fanatic's Tower - Final Fantasy VI
Stairs, stairs, stairs, stairs, stairs, stairs, this is seriously some lazy ass design for a tower. You may as well call this a lighthouse given just how the dungeon is nothing but stairs. The enemies are also quite unoriginal, being Lvl X (X is any number from 1 to 9) Magic. Then again, unoriginal only refers to the names, as the enemies themselves will have very powerful magic to cast, some of them already having annoying properties like being inherently reflective. And you can't just fight enemies, as the tower relegates you to only using magic. You're almost better off wearing the Moogle Charm and skipping all the way to the top, only to fight the Magimaster, an insanely tough mage who uses Ultima as his curtain call. Many ways to fight him, it actually may be best to just Rasp his MP while giving him Berserk status.
Sunken Worus Tower - Final Fantasy V
What do you know? Another timed dungeon? Makes sense since you're underwater, but geez, you have to speedrun this one just to get to...Gogo? Having a Thief or the Dash ability is required for this one, hands down. Run, run, run until you get to the boss, and you've got two choices. Wait while the clock is ticking (you better have enough) and he'll forfeit and give you the win, or actually fight the guy. To me, the latter just seems impossible. Being a mimic, he's obviously gonna do what you do to him, but better. Again though, you're timed, and that always sucks.
Reptite Lair - Chrono Trigger
This one's only a bit problematic in honesty. The issue of course, since I'm a completionist at heart, is getting the treasures. Gotta wait for these drill enemies to get in just the right position, then drill down so I can hopefully get what is at the bottom. Nizbel can also be a wake-up call boss. This isn't that bad, but I find the treasure hunting to be a little tedious.
Mare Tower - Breath of Fire
Having fun trying to actually defeat Mote? How about getting to him? It's already bad enough that this is supposedly a "nightmare" dungeon, meaning anything out of the ordinary sure will happen here. And that would be the spinning room. While it's already bad enough in making you seem dizzy (honestly that shouldn't happen), the disorientation will always occur. You're gonna need to figure out which of the spins results in a simple 90 degree counter-clockwise rotation, or a random spin, or none at all, and there's a minimum of seven tiles needed to actually cross to the finish. Mote ain't a picnic either, his pixelated appearance and apparent invulnerability sure would fool players here.
Up next, well, I dunno yet.
Tuesday, February 12, 2019
A look back at: Tenchi Muyo! Game Hen
Sometimes, I wonder why I play the games I play. And this one certainly is no different, as I'm completely unfamiliar with this particular anime and I'm unsure on how this correlates to the game itself.
Gotta say though, I wasn't entirely pleased. It's a Final Fantasy Tactics clone, but it only has the basic parts. The interface is clunky and not too well made, and the enemies always attack you, in other words, the game completely lacks variety other than attacking, buffing, and healing, no status effects or anything too advanced. Perhaps being able to customize who gets to go is interesting, especially with the unique sets of characters. Yeah, using characters that can only move one space per turn is gonna be harder to maintain than using a character that has multiple spaces of movement. And then you factor in characters that can transform and have better abilities, plus a level cap of 8, meaning yeah, there's quite a bit of training to do, although it may or may not be all that necessary given that this game was pretty short, something I'm actually thankful for.
Perhaps what I was most annoyed with in this game was the enemy AI. They tend to get more turns than I do, plus they always move into positions that are disadvantageous for some of my slower characters. To compound this further, they always gang up on the person that is first in my character slot. Although it allows for strategizing the most defensive characters there, the fact that they usually gangbang one character is still annoying. Also the reinforcements tend to show up if you take too long, further prolonging things for battle-weary characters. And speaking of which, yeah, trying to level characters here basically involves specific characters killing enemies. Easy for some, hard for others.
And again, not much in story for this game overall, maybe if I knew more about these characters, I would enjoy this game more. Well, there's at least one original character, but the plot devolves into basic kidnapping of girls and rescuing them from villain, and also finding out villain behind villain and defeating her. Yeah, it's pretty rote.
Monday, February 4, 2019
A look back at: Phantasy Star IV
Character interactions, decent gameplay, good curve. Things that describe Phantasy Star IV, all for the good of it. I'm really glad that I played this, finally. A bit on the short side, but still charming. See, this is the kind of thing I like about some turn-based RPGs. Let's make special skills unrelated to the thing that takes away your TP, except still making it finite but powerful. Develop actually important strategies for certain bosses, like using the Psycho Wand to remove Zio's stupid buff. And the combination of certain techs and skills can all but break the game. Triblaster at the beginning? I'm sold. Grand Cross doing upwards 700 damage to foes whose overall HP value usually doesn't go above 600? Yikes, this game is much easier than the earlier titles. But given how I get annoyed at grinding that is both required and excessive, this felt pretty lukewarm. For once, I didn't grind excessively for cash, which is great too.
I'll admit, it still has some flaws. Why so many instant death attacks? Pretty much every party member in the game gets one, which is ridiculous. And the final stretch still involves a lame fetch quest, except you're not really doing anything but "proving" you're the protectors, which is just eh. It's not completely shoehorned though, thankfully. Alys' death is a surprise, along with the reveal that Dark Force himself isn't entirely the real bad guy behind everything, even though he's been a legacy villain. And gee whiz, look at all those homages to previous games. The Elysdeon scene just makes fans drool with the appearance of all the other characters from before. Rune being Lutz the Fifth is a cool reveal. The town names definitely are something too, with Piata and Uzo on Motavia being familiar (though Uzo was a dungeon in II) while there's a town named Tyler (after the guy that rescues you from Gaira in II, for whatever reason). Also Termi, which is a town fully dedicated to Alis, the original Phantasy Star hero. And let's not forget the survival of the Air Castle and the revival of Lassic, now called Lashiec. It's just all so charming. There's even Myau being alive and large in this game, as well a couple of optional dungeons with homages to Phantasy Star III even. Just so much to ooh and aah at. But these homages aren't too bad and don't feel like "hey we just mentioned things from previous games, notice us", they integrate into whatever story is in as well. What a great game to experience. The one Phantasy Star title I will recommend.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Terrible RPG Battle Music: Part 1
Well I'm bored. Let's look at some music from RPG battles that is, well, bad. I may or may not create a second one, but let's see which RPG battle music is really bad.
Breath of Fire 2 - Hide n' Seek (Roach battle)
Ugh, you do NOT do this for a battle theme. Especially not one with roaches. This theme works for hunting, but not battling. Let's just put it at that. Breath of Fire 2 had absolutely amazing battle themes, and should be remembered for the good ones.
Final Fantasy 3 - Boss battle
For the most part, the battle themes of the entire Final Fantasy series is always good, and even some of the zanier themes are pretty badass. Can't say that I agree when I listen to FF3's boss battle theme. Like the previous one, the issue is that it's a very happy-go-lucky and zany theme that doesn't really fit for some of the nastier-seeming battles. Remember, if it sounds like it belongs in a carnival, it doesn't fit with an actual boss theme.
Chrono Cross - Main battle theme
Thankfully, this one doesn't sound like it could be carnival music, but it just sounds all over the place still. The instrumentation definitely felt overdone, and while I like the violin part and wish that that part of the battle theme would stick, the rest sort of makes me annoyed. It makes me want to go to the Bend of Time and fight random battles there just because the dungeon music is far more listenable than the main battle theme.
Phantasy Star 3 - Basically any battle theme
Hard to pinpoint which battle theme is the least fun, but when you've got music like in Phantasy Star 3, which seems to be incredibly dissonant with how battle themes should sound, you really just can't tell which battle theme is the worst. The time you get sucked into a random battle, it sounds like a racing game soundtrack, and then there's a few other ones, like one which usually happens upon an ambush that, well I don't know or care how it sounds other than it just sounding awful. What's with the one track that sounds like it could be a mix of techno and church music? Ugly. Just ugly.
Dual Orb II - Battle theme
I mean, this is the ONLY battle theme in the entire game, and that hurts this one real bad. On the surface, Dual Orb II's battle theme is, at its very best, just generic as hell. Not really shabby but not really amazingly exciting. It's just, with all the damn grinding I had to do, with all the battles I had to do, and the fact that they didn't even have unique battle music for any of the bosses not even the final boss, it just got on my nerves real quick. And of course that's all I got there.
Breath of Fire 2 - Hide n' Seek (Roach battle)
Ugh, you do NOT do this for a battle theme. Especially not one with roaches. This theme works for hunting, but not battling. Let's just put it at that. Breath of Fire 2 had absolutely amazing battle themes, and should be remembered for the good ones.
Final Fantasy 3 - Boss battle
For the most part, the battle themes of the entire Final Fantasy series is always good, and even some of the zanier themes are pretty badass. Can't say that I agree when I listen to FF3's boss battle theme. Like the previous one, the issue is that it's a very happy-go-lucky and zany theme that doesn't really fit for some of the nastier-seeming battles. Remember, if it sounds like it belongs in a carnival, it doesn't fit with an actual boss theme.
Chrono Cross - Main battle theme
Thankfully, this one doesn't sound like it could be carnival music, but it just sounds all over the place still. The instrumentation definitely felt overdone, and while I like the violin part and wish that that part of the battle theme would stick, the rest sort of makes me annoyed. It makes me want to go to the Bend of Time and fight random battles there just because the dungeon music is far more listenable than the main battle theme.
Phantasy Star 3 - Basically any battle theme
Hard to pinpoint which battle theme is the least fun, but when you've got music like in Phantasy Star 3, which seems to be incredibly dissonant with how battle themes should sound, you really just can't tell which battle theme is the worst. The time you get sucked into a random battle, it sounds like a racing game soundtrack, and then there's a few other ones, like one which usually happens upon an ambush that, well I don't know or care how it sounds other than it just sounding awful. What's with the one track that sounds like it could be a mix of techno and church music? Ugly. Just ugly.
Dual Orb II - Battle theme
I mean, this is the ONLY battle theme in the entire game, and that hurts this one real bad. On the surface, Dual Orb II's battle theme is, at its very best, just generic as hell. Not really shabby but not really amazingly exciting. It's just, with all the damn grinding I had to do, with all the battles I had to do, and the fact that they didn't even have unique battle music for any of the bosses not even the final boss, it just got on my nerves real quick. And of course that's all I got there.
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