Xenogears: so convoluted, talky and drawn out that even the nutshell is unnecessarily long! Once again, I'm running this off ten-year-old memories and what I can skim from Wikipedia, so some stuff may not be in order or completely accurate.

We open with an intro of a spaceship being torn apart from within by an unseen creature. The captain orders the ship to self-destruct, causing the ship's burning remains to fall to the planet below. There, a lone person bears witness to the ship's destruction.

Cut to a few thousand years later, where we get a text scroll about two long-warring countries called Kislev and Aveh. Our hero is Fei Fong Wong, also known as Yet Another Amnesiac Hero. As with every JRPG ever made, our story opens with Fei's village coming under attack by the Kislev Army. However, Fei hijacks one of their Gears and fights back, blanking out in the fight. When he comes to, the entire village is leveled, all of his attackers are dead and he's exiled as a murderer. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of plots!

Fei leaves town and encounters Elly, a Solarian soldier who is apparently after that mech Fei was piloting a few minutes ago. Citan, the village's doctor, also joins them a short time later when Elly comes under attack by a giant monster and he brings Fei's Gear along to fight it.

After escaping, Elly goes her seperate ways while Citan and Fei decide to continue their journey to Kislev in search of answers. We quickly learn that Citan is a fucking tank, posessing some 200 more HP than the rest of your party at any given time, and that his attack power and magic aren't too shabby either. Needless to say, I kept him in my party whenever possible.

On the way there they get blindsided by Bart, an eyepatch-wearing sand pirate with an eyepatch-wearing Gear. No, I'm not making that up. After a scuffle and Square's requisite fall-into-a-dungeon-and-get-seperated moment (they're lost without it, you see), we learn through further exposition that Fei's Gear is the "Destroyer of God" and that Bart is the rightful heir to the kingdom of Aveh, waging a guerilla war against its usurpers from his sandship Yggdrassil. For the next several hours of the game Fei and Citan join the pirates and assist him in this endeavor.

Spoony: It's about this time that you begin to learn one of the game's hardest lessons - you can never, EVER skip the plot scenes or even increase the text speed. And they are very long, sometimes going on for twenty or thirty minutes at a stretch.

First they rescue Bart's sister, encountering the game's requisite annoying rivals, Ramsus and Miang, the former of who bears a grudge against Fei for some reason. Eventually a battle goes catastrophically wrong when a dude named Grahf appears, giving the enemy general superpowers and proving to be so powerful that he can lift the Yggdrassil above his head and break it in half with his bare hands. Wow.

Fei ends up in Kislev's prison/ghetto where he meets Rico, who, in addition to looking exactly like Blanka from Street Fighter, is our next party member. After earning his freedom via some very Ehrgeiz-esque fights, the party is reunited briefly, only to be split up again when Ramsus attacks and wind up in a floating city of dolphin-people, where we run into a group of gear users called the Elements. Oh, and we'll be seeing them quite a bit too as the game goes on.

Spoony: We've already got an annoying rival character! Go away, go away!

We next meet Billy, a young priest who carries a pair of pistols, an enormous shotgun and a rocket launcher. Yeah, he's pretty cool. His job is to slay monsters called the "Wels", who we quickly learn are slain humans mutated into the undead by the floating city of Solaris, who have been manipulating the Kislev-Aveh war for exactly this purpose. The place is run by an immortal guy named Emperor Cain, only not really because a floating ball of TVs called the Gazel Ministry and a guy named Krelian are plotting to overthrow him for their own ends. Which they do.

So your party decides to ally with the floating city of Shevat, the only place on the planet not under Solaris' control. On the way there they meet Maria, an eight year old girl with an absolutely gigantic and powerful gear. Ironically, she rides on TOP of the thing rather than inside it, which you'd think would be a pretty poor design flaw. But your mind quickly gets distracted from that as shortly thereafter you encounter ANOTHER gear whose own cockpit gets fired as a bullet, causing the pilot to commit suicide rather than actually kill anything. Yeah. Who thought that would be a good idea?

Spoony: It was Citan. Way to go, Citan!

You also learn that Maria, in another bit of irony, is the weakest character when fighting on-foot; she doesn't use any weapons, has really low attack power and can't string together any comboes. However, she can spend MP to have her Gear crash through the roof and punch your enemy right in the head, which is always hilarious to watch.

It's around this time that Citan decides to stop kicking ass with his fists and dust off his old sword, which makes him even MORE of an unstoppable force; in fact, with the right equipment and under the right conditions, he can dish out enough damage to take out even Gears while on foot. The guy's seriously neck-and-neck with Cidolfas Orlandu for most godlike party member in an RPG.

Anyhow, Fei and company lead an attack on Solaris, where they encounter a robotic girl who recognizes Fei. It turns out her name is Emeralda, and she ended being one of my favorite characters because can morph her limbs into ridiculous weapons like the Battletoads. She also has one of the best Gears in the entire game, which is always handy.

Shevat comes under attack from Krelian again, and they're in a pickle because all of their gears are either disabled or too far away to help. But lucky for them the goofy bit character Chuchu, a terrifying creature who looks like a cross between a Care Bear and a Furby, is able to grow to giant size and fend off the enemy! After this, she joins the party, but she's not particularly useful as she can't use any combos, has mediocre stats all around and can't equip much of anything. In addition, her giant form's stats are based on those of her smaller form, which means she's especially weak by Gear standards. However, she does have one redeeming factor - she is the only character that can heal other characters' Gears via magic, a very useful ability in some battles.

Back to the story. We learn that Krelian's goal is to create enough Wels to regenerate the fallen god "Deus", which, as you may have guessed by now, was the superweapon we saw tearing apart the ship in the intro. Apparently, it was some kind of weapon meant to conduct warfare on a global scale, but when decided to be too dangerous, was to be dismantled. However, it became self aware and turned on its creators to ensure its own survival. The ship's self-destruction left it heavily damaged, but alive, and once revived it can strip the entire planet clean and the move on to other solar systems to systematically wipe them out as well.

Spoony: An enormous monster that Landed on a planet eons ago, burrowed itself beneath the earth, is manipulating humanity with the ultimate goal of harvesting all of their knowledge and DNA to rejuvenate itself and then setting off to space once again to destroy more planets? I could have sworn I've seen this somewhere before. Hm........ nope, can't think of it.

We also learn why Fei keeps blanking out in the middle of intense battles and waking up in the middle of a bunch of exploded enemies - he has an incredibly powerful and mentally unstable split personality named Id, and coincidentally his Gear also transforms into a much more powerful form whenever he does!

Spoony: So Fei not only has an evil split personality who is a superpowered assassin capable of destroying giant mechs with his bare hands and completely changes appearance when he shifts to this other personality, but his Gear - a Gear that the army invading his village just happened to bring with them - was specifically designed to reflect this and also completely changes form whenever he does? That's... a lot to buy, guys.

After 30 hours of gameplay we've finally come to disc 2, and it's... nothing but scrolling text. No, I don't mean that there are now thirty-minute cutscenes between every dungeon, I mean that ninety percent of the disc is nothing but text slowly typing out over still frames. The only break you ever get comes in the form of an occasional boss fight, or cutting to the last two rooms of a "dungeon" just in time to sit through one of the few scenes they bothered to actually script out.

Spoony: This is the laziest game design I've ever seen. They're not even telling the story anymore, they're just summing up all the events we should be playing right now in... well, a nutshell. To put this in perspective, it's as if One Piece's animation budget ran out halfway through production and the best they could do was splice the "next episode" teasers and a few assorted fight scenes together and pass it off as the newest season. You just feel... cheated as you sit through it.

At any rate, all this exposition reveals that Fei and Elly have been reincarnated countless times throughout the entire history of the planet; Fei's first incarnation was Abel, the lone survivor of the crashed ship, and that his later incarnations would, among other things, create Emeralda, rebel against Emperor Cain, the Gazel Ministry and Miang (all created by Deus to populate the planet so it could harvest humans to rejuvenate itself) and unwittingly create Grahf, the ultimate superpowered emoid who wants to destroy the world.

In the few times you actually get to do anything on the disc, you fight a giant Koosh ball with a ridiculously powerful superdimensional Gear that comes right the hell out of nowhere and is never seen again afterward, battle the Elements and their magical combining Power Ranger mechs, and come to the final showdown with Ramsus, which is one of the most infuriatingly hard battles in the entire game because he drops your gears' HP to ONE, which is a real bitch considering Gears have no effective means of healing themselves. Oh, and you've got another tough battle with Miang immediately following that one, and if you die you get to sit through all the dialog again. Have fun!

Anyway, after losing so many times that you consider either starting the game over or just throwing it in a garbage disposal, you finally come out on top, where we get this thoroughly disturbing exposition.

Ramsus: I was genetically created to be the contact to Deus, but cast aside when Fei was born and my barely-developed fetus was tossed into a garbage heap. And if it's not disturbing enough that I actually REMEMBER this, I somehow survived, crawled out of there under my own power, and have spent my entire life obsessing over revenge against you!
Spoony: GONTERMAN ALERT! GONTERMAN ALERT! ABANDON SCENE! ABANDON SCENE!

No such luck, as we learn that the reason Fei has an evil split personality is because his mother, under Miang's control, conducted cruel, soul-shattering experiments on him to turn him into the contact for Deus. His split side, Id, held control over him for numerous years, and ended up being trained by Grahf in the art of Dragonball Z Martial Arts*. However, his father, masquerading as the guy named "Wiseman" who you encountered numerous times throughout the game, was able to suppress Id and return Fei to his normal self. Kind of ironic considering his father ALSO harbors Grahf's mind within him!

Spoony: Wiseman, Grahf AND Fei's dad are all the same character. ...It's officially happened, this plot has gone so far past "complex" that we've looped around and come back to the other end of the scale: absurd, silly nonsense.

*Dragonball Z Martial Arts: Just make up whatever random physically impossible superpowers you want and write it off as "chi control".

So Ramsus, realizing that Fei is also a victim, turn on Miang and murders her instead. But that turns out to be a mistake, as Miang is reborn within Elly, who, like Fei, also has the ability to kick-start Deus' revival. Which she does. So yeah, now the whole planet's in some pretty deep shit.

But that will have to wait a bit longer, as we have some more exposition to get through. Abel and Elly keep being reborn throughout history due to the machinations of the "Wave Existence", an energy being from a higher plane of existence that was drawn into ours to act as Deus' power source, with the ultimate goal of destroying Deus and freeing the Wave.

And so, after ten solid hours of wading through slowly scrolling text, the time comes to confront Deus. To do that you actually have to fight your way through - gasp - a dungeon! One of only two on the entire disc! There's a few sidequests to do as well, but I just skipped over most of them because I'd already sat through enough confusing plot threads as it was.

If nothing else, I will admit that the final boss battle is actually pretty creative; you have the option of just taking the guy on straight away, which is your most difficult option. Or you can elect to face up to four minibosses; these guys, when defeated, will each remove one of Deus' worst attacks and lower his maximum HP. The downside to that, of course, is that you can't heal up between the fights, so any damage you've taken will carry over to the fight with the big boss. It's a system that requires you to make some tactical choices and, if nothing else, it's a nice contrast to most of the game's boss battles, in which the only real strategy is to spam strong attacks and comboes to end the fight as quickly as possible.

Fei: Gratuitous nudity? What is this doing here?
Wave Existence: I am free of Deus at last, now I can go back home. Thank you Fei.
Krelian: I am back for revenge even though I've definitively lost, yaaargh!
Fei: Hey look, my gear is miraculously fully repaired, refueled and ready to kick ass. Eat shit, Krelian.

An extremely easy and anticlimactic concluding battle occurs. Krelian leaves our dimension, Elly is revived, and, as you've read in every self-righteous rant the Internet has to offer, the not-so-subtle-God-reference's death instantly absolves everyone on the planet of any wrongdoing and ends all wars, conflict and strife forever. The end. The slow, unskippable text finally makes its last stand as the credits roll.

Spoony: Well, that was a... project. But to be fair, I wouldn't rank Xenogears anywhere near Square's worst title; It's a chore to sit through, but it's not horrible. The story does a good job avoiding glaring plot holes and deus ex machinae, the characters are interesting and well developed, and the darker elements of the story are actually well integrated; they very rarely feel "tacked on" just to add more violence and angst to the story. But the game begs for more stimulating gameplay; you're literally just sitting there clicking through text for 70% of the game, and what little combat there is tends to have little strategy outside of just chaining together the strongest comboes possible. Not to mention that some of the story elements are just plain dumb; the worst offenders being a mech that completely changes in appearance and ability when its user's split personality surfaces and another mech that fires its own pilot at the enemy as a bullet. Come on guys, that can't have even sounded cool in your heads as you wrote this.

So yeah, I don't regret slogging through it, but I can't quite recommend it. That is, unless they rerelease it with Chrono Cross' fast forward button, or something along those lines.

 

 

It's the same shit you bought last year, just with an even crappier framerate and three new enemies. It still has only five levels, no strategy outside of sitting in the corner and hitting the melee button over and over again, the worst player community of all time, and the same shitty broken multiplayer. But then, it serves you right for paying full price for an expansion pack to a game that you got tired of after six hours. Enjoy Left 4 Dead 3 in four months, sucker!

 

 

Let's nutshell this fuckfest!

Chapter 1: Great Jaggi

Okay, starting up I have my choice of control schemes. I went with Classic Controller A, because B's "Right Stick = Attack" setup sounded a bit too reminiscent of Rise to Honor, a titanic piece of shit on the Playstation 2. A bit of quick experimentation revealed that the Wii Remote + Nunchuck combination wasn't any good either. (Tilt left and press A for weak attack, Right and A for strong attack, tilt upward + A for a forward thrust, then realize that the A button actually does nothing and that every combat boils down to swinging the remote around wildly until you come down with a terrible case of carpal tunnel syndrome!)

I'm given only two choices for quests: "Great Jaggi Hunt", rated at 1 star, and "Ouropeco Hunt", rated at three. I decide for the former at first so I can hopefully get used to the controls and start off on an easy quest to get into the swing of things. I choose the guy with the giant bowgun as a weapon, because honestly, that gun barrel looks to be twice the size of the damn thing's head; one clean shot should leave it decapitated and me a few hundred bucks richer.

Tracking the monster is a pretty easy process; you're given a minimap, and a glowing red dot on it shows you the monster's position. So all I have to do is make a minute-long trek over there. Easy shit. Not to skip ahead here, but this is the only thing they managed to get right.

After reaching the monster, I take a moment to puzzle out how to use my weapon. Okay, so Y uses a potion (whoops, wasted one... oh well, I have nine left), B makes me roll, A doesn't seem to do anything... ah, it's X to equip weapon. Okay. Now what button shoots... Y? Wasn't that the potion button a minute ago? Whatever. Shoot the thing.

Well, that did nothing but piss it off; now it's charged right at me, knocked me on my ass, and fled to another area. So I pursue, shoot it a few more times, and get the exact same result. After repeating this one more time, the thing decides its had enough of me, sends all of its smaller minions after me and they frantically tear me a new asshole while I desperately try to retreat and use a potion, then learn the hard way that your weapon runs out of ammo after only six shots and you have to reload by pressing A. Oh, and you can't do your dodge-roll while you have your weapon out either, which kind of defeats the entire purpose of even having the damn thing. Isn't the general idea of a dodge to be able to quickly evade attacks? Kind of hard when you have to stop, take two seconds to sheathe your weapon, and THEN dodge.

So I cancel the quest, having remembered that guns are almost always useless in JRPGs, and decide to try again with something that hopefully packs a bit more punch. Like... that really big axe. That sounds good. So I find the monster (again), whack it a few times with the upward stab attack (via Y Button) and quickly get mobbed by his smaller minions again. After taking a few hits, I also discover that the A button can do a sweep attack that hits multiple enemies, which allows me to quickly wipe out the little fuckers. Hey, this is going pretty well.

Or at least it is until I hit him a few more times to absolutely no visible effect; he barely bleeds, he doesn't get knocked back, he doesn't shout in pain, NOTHING. In fact, he's still more than able to slap me around with his tail AND call in more backup to chew on me even as I bash him repeatedly in the spine and head with my axe. At this point I'm starting to get low on health, so I sweep his minions out of the way and retreat a safe distance to use a potion.

The problem with THIS is that every time I try, the fucker just runs up, bitchslaps me with his tail and takes off more health than I recover, because not only do I have to put away my weapon (a two second process) and stop dead in my tracks to use a potion (ditto), I THEN have to continue staying completely vulnerable to attack while my character slowly tosses the empty bottle aside, raises his arms into the air and cheers himself on. It becomes clear at this point that my hunter is Wimp Lo, deliberately trained wrong as a joke. Or perhaps Dan Hibiki.

So after getting hauled back to the village on a cart that looks like something out of the Flintstones, I decide to see if I can buy any better potions or heavier weapons. Nope. In fact, I can't talk to anyone. Oh, but pressing Minus brings up an item menu, where I discover that I have some Mega Potions. But how do I equip them? The menu only gives me the option to drop them or move them around the list.

Oh, maybe that "L" button under the icon is a clue. Yep, it brings up a window with some items. Now how do I cycle? It's not the D-pad, the left stick or even the right stick... oh, it's A and Y. Rather nonintuitive, but whatever, I've got some Mega Potions equipped; maybe these will work better. Let's find that fucker again.

On the way there, I discover that hitting the Plus key (Pause in most games) does a slow upward slash attack. Is this my power move? It sure looks like it. Guess I'll find out when I get there.

Okay, there's the bastard. And sure enough, my Plus attack is the only one to inflict some visible damage to the guy - he actually flies back and winces for a moment! So I do it again. Nothing; he just keeps attacking. And again. And again! Apparently it was a one-shot deal. Kind of shitty. But hey, at least I can recover more health than I lose now, even if I do get hit again during the unnecessarily drawn out process of using a potion. After a countless number of sword whacks, the bastard finally shows visible signs of pain and injury - and promptly runs away... through a solid wall. So not only does he have plenty of time to escape and (probably) recover health, but hitting him as he does so is useless because he's too fast to catch up to and he doesn't get stunned.

So I look at the included poster for hints, and I find out the axe can apparently also turn into a powerful sword. I'm not sure what the point of that is since you can just choose a sword as one of your starting weapons, but hey, I may as well give it a shot. After fumbling around with the buttons for a bit, I find the transform button, which makes me move really slowly. But hey, I have played a lot of Team Fortress 2, maybe this is a good sign; the rough equivalent to the Heavy revving up his weapon in preparation of unleashing an unstoppable hail of death.

So after (very slowly) making my way to the Jaggi's latest hiding place, I unleash the fury of my sword with a few Plus attacks, which, once again, results in no stun and hardly any sign of injury. But I'm running low on potions and the game's just informed me that I have less than five minutes left to complete my task, so I guess it's do-or-die time. After a while my sword runs out of ammo (uh... what?) and turns back into an axe, but by that point it's too late and the bastard finally decides he's had enough and falls over in defeat. After a few more sweep attacks clean up his minions, the mission gets declared a success and I collect my reward of... a plug for a game I've already had to preorder to get this demo disc. Yay.

Chapter 2: Ouropeco

Now I decide that it's time to take on our second quest, Ouropeco, who looks like some kind of retarded giant duck. I elected to pick the great sword this time; turning our big axe into a big sword seemed to have pretty good results last time around, so why not just start with a big sword, right? The description also tells me something about an unstoppable combination attack; again, sounds pretty good, since you get knocked down in one hit while stunning the boss monster is nearly impossible, so I may as well pick a weapon that lets me dish out a lot of damage and prevents me from being knocked back.

So after a short trek to find the bastard, I run up to him... only to watch him fly up out of my reach and flee to another area. So I follow him again - same thing. And again. Same thing! Do I ever get to FIGHT this guy, or what?

Well, after wasting about five minutes of my allotted 20 minute quest time, he finally lands, allowing me to run up and hit him a few times. Or not, as he hocks a gigantic loogie on me, knocking me down before I can even get close. But I do eventually close the gap and stab him in the knees. As with my last fight, this does little outside of pissing him off, and he summons more of the mini-Jaggis the last boss sent after me. I was expecting mini-Ouropecos, but I guess the demo's too low-budget to afford those. Not a huge deal; let's just roll with it.

So after a few waves of those little bastards get dispatched, I continue to run up and whack away at him; again, he doesn't get stunned or slowed in the slightest, but one small nudge from him is enough to send me flipping back ten feet while my health meter turns purple and my character begins to spark like a damaged robot, and he continues to call in more and more monsters just to be a gigantic pain in the ass. So I decide to unleash the aforementioned special move, which I eventually puzzle out being tied to the R button. Yeah, R. Not Plus, as it was with the axe-sword. It's like they just mapped commands to random buttons, paying no heed to the fact that they did something completely different when you were using a different weapon, had your weapon sheathed, or are redundant to things already mapped (the D-pad AND right stick both control the camera, rather than one of them, say, scrolling inventory items). It's really sloppy programming, to say the least.

Sure enough, the R button seems to be the sword's one-shot knockback attack, which I can continue to spam to unleash a lengthy and (allegedly) powerful combo. But the "unstoppable" effect certainly doesn't work as advertised, as he managed to slap me out of it mid-combo and send me back to the village on a Flintstones stretcher once again.

What's with that thing anyway? If you can make bowguns and transforming weapons, shouldn't you at least have stretchers made of wood instead of stone and dinosaur bones? Whatever. I equip my Mega Potions and jump back into the fray.

Oh god, he's back to this run-down-the-clock routine again. So after dicking around to the point where I now have well under ten minutes to kill him and he has yet to even show any sign of weakening, he finally decides to stand and fight again. But after only a few hits, I get informed that for no real reason my weapon's effectiveness has been decreased; sure enough, the little Jaggis aren't even dying in one hit anymore. So what am I supposed to do?

After getting Flintstoned back to the village (again), I check my inventory and find a whetstone. Okay, I guess I need to sharpen my sword back up after I use it too much. Why that wasn't the case with the axe-sword is a mystery I'll never understand, but whatever.

...Alright, I'm good to go again. Back to the fight.

Oh the way there, I checked my inventory again and also found that I had some bombs. Thinking that maybe those could help (or at least STUN the thing momentarily where a giant sword repeatedly piercing its neck couldn't), I equipped them. Once I reach the monster again, I ready a bomb, toss it and... it does nothing. Absolutely nothing. Wow, thanks game. Why not just give me a handful of pebbles to throw too?

The third flurry of slashes-to-the-throat seems to have been the last straw, because NOW he's sunk to the ultimate low - calling in Great Jaggi again! I shit you not. The guy I just killed after more than fifteen minutes of hard work is, with no explanation, back from the grave and helping the guy I'm already having trouble even doing any noticable damage to. Needless to say, they quickly rape me, the game arbitrarily decides to enforce a three-knockdown rule, terminates the quest, and sends me back to the same splash screen I was "rewarded" with for completing the last quest. Then I'm brought back to the select screen and asked if I want to try again. Fuck. That.

Spoony: This game is awful. All of the control options are clumsy and unintuitive, combat has no discernable strategy outside of brute-force repetition, even the weakest monsters take way too long to kill, and I honestly can't imagine it being fun even with a group of people helping you out. Maybe I'm just missing something, or maybe you can get weapon upgrades and items that make these quests easier in the full version; I don't know. But the objective of a demo is to convince me that the full version of the game is worth my money, and this one has failed in that task. Hard.

Do not buy Monster Hunter Tri.

 

 

So, here's some writing about Final Fantasy 13, inspired by Spoony's Games in a Nutshell reviews. This is the latest game in the Final Fantasy series, and so far, I'm not really impressed with anything but the graphics. Off we go!

You start off seeing a train travelling through a few places. It's carrying a bunch of prisoners in cloaks, being watched by a bunch of soldiers. Two prisoners seem to be up to something.

Lightning: I'm the main character. I look like Ashe and a female Cloud Strife. I'm also an ex-soldier and use a sword gunblade, though plain old guns would be a far better choice.
Sazh: I'm another main character. I carry a baby chocobo in my afro, and I use two pistols. I'm here to help you, I guess?
Lightning: Quiet. I have to do some eye candy fighting.

Lightning proceeds to kick the crap out of the soldiers while defying gravity and physics, which frees the prisoners. You get some eye candy FMV of what looks like a city, fighter jets (dragons?) shooting the train, and Lightning looking around. She blasts a fighter jet dragon with a rocket launcher that happened to be found by Sazh. The train is then attacked by a giant, flying scorpion robot.

Sazh: What the hell are we supposed to do here?!
Lightning: We attack it by going through a bunch of tutorials, of course.
Sazh: Can't we skip the tutorials?
Lightning: Yeah, but it'll result in frustration.

Azul Rojo: I feel sorry for any poor bastard who tries to play this without an instruction manual or tutorials. This battle system is a bit painful, and you can't flee from enemies.

Lightning and Sazh kick the robot's ass. It falls into a gaping pit which spans the bottom of the city, for some reason.

Sazh: Yay! We win! So, I'm going to follow you. Oh, and I can talk to the baby chocobo in my hair.
Lightning: Don't really care. Oh, by the way, here's another tutorial. This one's about the camera.

Azul Rojo: A tutorial. For using the camera, which is controlled with the right analog stick. Oddly, it and character movement handle like crap. Skipping this "tutorial."

After several more battles and gravity-defying jumps, Lightning and Sazh reach a bridge, only to see it blown to smithereens. Lightning attempts to fly away, but Sazh pulls her down, which results in him getting beat up a bit.

Sazh: Hey! I said I'm following you, so stop hitting me and let me go with you! I can't possibly get out of here by myself!
Lightning: What the hell? You broke my magic flying machine gizmo. Dick.
Sazh: Hey, we can just use that elevator bridge over there.
Lightning: So why didn't you use it in the first place?

The two of them get onto the bridge, then run into more soldiers and Boba Fett an officer.

Officer: SURRENDER SO THINGS DON'T GET UGLY.
Sazh: What's that mean?
Lightning: He wants to kill us. Duh.
Officer: DIEDIEDIEDIE! *charges at Lightning*
Lightning: Guess what?
Sazh: Another tutorial?
Lightning: That's right.

Enemies get their asses kicked, of course.

Sazh: So, what's your deal, anyway?
Lightning: I'm going after the fal'Cie. Happy you followed me?
Sazh: I didn't have a choice.

Azul Rojo: So, if you don't know who the fal'Cie are, that's okay. There's no mention of them until this point, unless you looked at the instruction manual, read the datalog, or loaded a save game. The datalog is an encyclopedia overloaded with information on enemies, game setting, and plot. Didn't Star Ocean 3 do this already? Also, while you're loading a saved game, the screen displays bits about the plot that weren't mentioned during the game. Honestly, Square-Enix. What happened to explaining things in an interesting way during the story? Why do I have to load my save file or go through an encyclopedia to learn these things? Bah. On with the game.

Scene changes to a bunch of people fighting soldiers, and some guy babbling about certain people in Cocoon being relocated to Pulse, the world below Cocoon. He mentions that their sacrifice will keep Cocoon safe and peaceful, and keep others from being exposed to the dangers in the lower world. The guy continues babbling, but then someone kicks in a nearby radio, ending the speech.

Yuj: Screw that. Guy's full of shit, obviously.
Snow: Yeah, now calm down. By the way, I'm another main character. I have no relation to Seifer in Kingdom Hearts II, even though I look like a much older version of him. I punch things. Yuj, you get to stay here and help these civilians because you're an NPC.
Yuj: Okay!

Snow goes to meet up with some more of his allies. They complain for a bit until Snow shows up and gives them a pep talk. Wakka and Lulu look-alikes Gadot and Lebreau join him to fight off some enemies, then help some civilians about to be exiled.

Snow: So, is everyone okay?
Civilians: Guess so.
Snow: Good. We'll clear a path for y-
Civilians: No! We want to fight, too!
Snow: Oh, okay. Cool! Grab a weapon!
Lady: Hey, I've got my kid Hope with me. I'm gonna help you fight, too. Moms are tough.
Snow: Oh, that's cool. Here, have a gun. Okay, one weapon left. Who wants it?
Hope: No way! I'm totally scared, being a young kid/main character and all.
Vanille: Hey, I'm an obligatory cute girl with a happy attitude! I'm also on the young side. I'll take the gun!
Snow: Uh...really?
Vanille: Bang! Hee hee!
Snow: Okay, then! You look after these people. The rest of us will go kick ass!

Snow and his allies continue forward, and meet up with the civilians who pushed ahead. Snow and his party fight off a huge robot dog, and then a huge warship comes to attack. Most of the civilians are slaughtered.

Snow: Well, shit!
Gadot: Yeah, we're screwed now.
Snow: No, wait! There's a rocket launcher conveniently lying in the warship's path!

Snow jumps for the rocket launcher, but fails to pick it up. He's about to get shot, but Hope's mom got the rocket launcher and shot the warship. An explosion then rips up the bridge, knocking her flying, and sending several people falling to their deaths. Snow manages to catch Hope's mom; however, they're both stuck dangling from a piece of metal sticking out of the bridge.

Snow: Crap, now I'm hanging off a ledge, and I don't know if I can hold on to you, too.
Hope's Mom: I'm gonna die, anyway. Keep my kid safe, and bring him home, okay?

Hope's mom falls into the pit, along with more people. Snow loses his grip on the bridge, and also falls. Hope and Vanille watch from a distance as this happens.

Hope: What just happened?!
Vanille: ... *smacks Hope*
Hope: Ow!
Vanille: Come on. We have to go.

Azul Rojo: So, we have more falling into pits to split up the party, and a ton of tragic death to help with character development. Snow just relived a certain moment in FF7. Way to go, Square-Enix. My faith in this game is quickly failing.

The game goes back to Lightning and Sazh, who are on some sort of airship, discussing the big attack they just saw.

Sazh: That was a massacre.
Lightning: Of course.
Sazh: What?
Lightning: The sanctum conjured up a Purge to eliminate a threat. Why carry a danger all the way to Pulse? Get rid of it here.
Sazh: Did you know this was gonna happen?
Lightning: No. The Purge was PSICOM Troops, not the Guardian Corps.
Sazh: Whatever. Soldiers are soldiers. Pulse fal'Cie and their l'Cie are enemies of the state.

Their conversation continues until they're attacked by a flying bot. Ass-kicking ensues. When the bot is defeated, a siren goes off in the distance. An announcement blasts over loud speakers, telling the deportees to surrender immediately. A big
ass machine comes down from the very top of the city. The scene changes, and you see Snow climbing on some rubble. He's looking for someone named Serah. Lightning and Sazh are watching the big ass machine.

Sazh: Just what you were looking for.
Lightning: Yeah. Right in there.
Sazh: The Pulse fal'Cie. Huh.

Over to Vanille, Hope, and some other civilians who are also looking at the machine. Vanille throws off the exile robe she was wearing, then giggles and smiles at Hope. She then picks up a gun and hands it to Hope.

Vanille: Here!
Hope: Uh...
Vanille: *hugs Hope* It's too much, isn't it? Face it later! Ciao!
Hope: Huh? Uh, hey! Wait!

Hope and Vanille run off. Scene goes back to the big ass machine for a moment, then back to Lightning and Sazh.

Sazh: How're the Pulse fal'Cie different from the Sanctum's? I'll keep wondering about that.
Baby Chocobo: Kweh!
Lightning: Jump time!
Sazh: What?
Lightning: Eye candy and physics warping stuff, of course.

Lightning jumps, then snaps her fingers to activate her flying magic thing. Instead of flying, though, she somehow uses the magic to break her fall.

Sazh: Damn. Well, I guess we can do that too, even though we don't posses the sparkly magic thing.
Baby Chocobo: Kweh!

Sazh tries to hang off the platform, but slips. His fall is broken by a platform of electricity that Lightning left behind.

Azul Rojo: Wasn't that magic flying thing broken just 10 minutes ago? And how the fuck does lightning magic break a fall and help you fly? This would've made more sense if the lady used wind magic. But, Square-Enix hasn't liked to make sense lately.

Back to Snow, who's helping Gardot get up by slapping him in the face. Dead people are everywhere on the platform.

Gadot: What about the others?
Snow: *sigh*
Gadot: They're not dead, right?
Snow: Of course not.
Gadot: Dude, get a grip. What's wrong?
Snow: Trying to remember who I'm supposed to look after. That woman who died said to "get him home."

Suddenly, a huge piece of the big ass machine breaks off. Snow tosses Gadot a gun, and Gadot promptly aims it at him.

Snow: What the hell?
Gadot: What are you afraid of? You're the hero. Your bride-to-be is over there. Shouldn't you go pick her up?
Snow: Oh, right! Hey, those ships over there will be our ride.

Azul Rojo: Still no idea what that big ass machine is, so I'm just going to keep calling it that. I probably could find out by looking at the datalog, but fuck that. I'm going to play this like any other RPG: I'm only going to look at the datalog for enemy data and gameplay tips. I'll not be looking at plot-related info, because I shouldn't have to in the first place. On a side note, I played FF12 for a bit today. I can now confirm FF13's character and camera controls are delayed and slippery. And no, it's not the controller. It's fully charged, and isn't even a year old.

Snow and Gadot plow reach the ships, then cruise around and catch up with their other allies. Hope and Vanille soon show up, and Snow notices Hope.

Vanille: Didn't you have something to tell him?
Hope: Yeah.
Vanille: Let's go, then! Go go go!
Hope: I'm going to be all scared and everything.
Vanille: Okay, I'll call him over!

Snow flies off before Vanille can get his attention. Gadot left a ship behind, and Vanille and Hope take a look at it.

Vanille: Hey, do you know how to fly this?
Hope: I guess so. Most kids can do this sort of thing in these situations, anyway.
Vanille: Oh yeah! Well, in you go! Now let's go that big machine.
Hope: If we go in there, that thing could make us l'Cie.
Gadot: Hey, what are you two doing?!
Hope: Well, time to go!

Hope and Vanille take off before Gadot can do anything. They head right for the big ass machine. They soon crash, and the ship is ruined.

Vanille: I guess it's just us here.
Hope: Well, even soldiers know not to go near the fal'Cie. If you become a Pulse l'Cie, you're finished.
Vanille: Well, I'm just going to be happy some more, and act like I don't care!

Vanille finds a staff/whip thing, and starts dancing around with it, which attracts the attention of a robot guard dog. The two of them proceed to kick the bot's ass. They soon find Snow's ship, and start talking again.

Hope: You know we're going to be in deep trouble if anyone finds us, right?
Vanille: La la la, happy happy!
Hope: Do you even know what could happen? Do you care? Pulse is hell on earth!
Vanille: Yeah, yeah! fal'Cie are bad. Hanging around them curses you, and then no one wants to be near you. Then you become an l'Cie, and have to go to Pulse. See? I actually know and care! We'll be fine, though!

The two of them soon hear Snow looking for Serah. The scene switches to Snow, who is busy searching another room.

Azul Rojo: So, two kids bust into a place that most people wouldn't dare go near. One of them is having a great time, and doesn't seem to care that things could go really, really bad. The way the game's going so far, you KNOW things are going to end badly. Current amount of faith I have in this game: 80% and falling.

Snow gets to a room-changing platform. Lightning and Sazh are busy elsewhere, trying to open a glowing, red door.

Lightning: This is all my fault.
Sazh: Uh, what?
Lightning: Cover your ears.
Sazh: Gonna blast the door open? Okay! *ducks and plugs ears*
Lightning: No. I'm going to say I'm sorry and beg it to open. *door opens*
Sazh: Eh? Woah, what'd you do?
Lightning: Shut up and have a tutorial.

Meanwhile, Snow is busy in another room, also fighting enemies. He eventually gets on an elevator that takes him lower into the building. Vanille and Hope hear him yelling on the elevator, but still have no clue where he is.

Hope: What a dick. He's calling himself a "hero."
Vanille: He's coming this way. Don't you still need to talk to him?
Hope: I don't know what to say.
Vanille: Well, then how about we just run away?
Hope: We can't, because that would end the story. Hey, why does your accent keep coming and going?
Vanille: Don't know. Let's keep going.

They soon come across a batch of weird-looking monsters with a glowy, red eye thing on their chests.

Hope: What are these things?!
Vanille: Cie'th. This is what happens to l'Cie who don't finish tasks given to them by fal'Cie.
Hope: Well, we're screwed since they're surrounding us.
Snow: ARRRRRRGH!

Enemy ass kicking ensues.

Snow: How did you get here? You should leave. Actually, go hide somewhere and keep quiet. I'll come get you when I find Serah.
Vanille: Who's Serah?
Snow: My future wife. She's a Pulse l'Cie. She's with the fal'Cie, so I'm going to find her.
Hope: Why the hell are you helping a l'Cie?! Don't you know they're the enemy?! How can you save them and not...not...that's insane!
Snow: Well, I've gotta do something. I'll be back.
Vanille: Should we wait for him?
Hope: Screw him! Why's this happening to me?! Mom and I were visiting a city in Cocoon, and then people found a fal'Cie! Then we got thrown on that train, and because of Snow, mom's.... If you haven't noticed, I'm the new whiney kid.
Snow: Oh, wait. I probably shouldn't leave kids alone. Let's go!
Vanille: Come on, Hope. Let's go with him. Oh, and you should talk to him.

Back to Sazh and Lightning.

Sazh: Did you come here for a fight?
Lightning: My sister, and she's a Pulse l'Cie. The fal'Cie has her captive somewhere, so I'm going to find her.
Sazh: What'd she have to do? Not "blow up Cocoon," right?
Lightning: I didn't ask.

A door opens, and Cie'th are on the other side.

Sazh: Oh, just so you know, any l'Cie that don't complete their tasks turn into those things. And you can't turn a l'Cie back into a human. So, even if your sister does complete her focus, she's screwed.
Lightning: Oh, so you're saying anyone who becomes a l'Cie should be wiped off of Cocoon? People like you started this Purge junk. You racist.

Azul Rojo: So, I run past a bunch of Cie'th, and end up running into 2 big fuckers at the end of a hall. My ass gets kicked, and I'm not even 4 hours into the game. You might be thinking I'm too low-levelled, but here's the thing: enemies do NOT award EXP or Gil. You do get fully healed at the end of each fight, but no way of levelling up at this point in the game. Got through the two bastards on a 2nd try, at least. So, yeah...rooms full of enemies serve no purpose, other than they MIGHT drop items for you. Great, Square-Enix. My faith in this game has fallen even more.

Lightning and Sazh eventually find Serah, who's laying unconscious on the floor.

Lightning: Okay, let's go!
Sazh: That girl's a l'Cie. She's got a brand on her arm. *goes for a pistol*
Lightning: No shit! What'd I tell you just 5 minutes ago?
Sazh: Well, she's an enemy now. And if she fails her Focus, you know what'll happen.
Lightning: So, killing her is a mercy, then?
Serah: Oh, hey. I'm awake now.
Snow: Serah! Let's get out of here!
Lightning: Hey, piss off, buddy. I'm taking her home.
Snow: Calm down, sis.
Lightning: Don't call me that. This is all your fault, you know!
Serah: You can save and protect us all. Save Cocoon.
Lightning: THAT'S your Focus?
Snow: We'll do whatever we can, okay?

Serah transforms into a crystal.

Vanille: Huh? Why's that happening?
Hope: She fulfilled her Focus, so she turns into a crystal and gains eternal life.
Snow: Sweet dreams, Serah.
Lightning: She's dead, you idiot!
Snow: No, she's not. Remember that legend? Crystallized people gain eternal life! And we're supposed to get married, so she's not dead!
Lightning: *punches Snow* SHE'S DEAD. LIVE WITH IT, DICKHEAD.

The entire room starts to shake. Outside, several fighter dragon jets are moving the big ass machine, and plan to destroy it. The army starts firing all their weapons at it, causing it to start crumbling. Back inside, the room is starting to crumble. The shaking eventually stops, and a door behind the group opens. Everyone soon goes through the door. They wind up in a room with a giant machine, which is the fal'Cie.

Snow: Serah finished her mission, so let her go!
fal'Cie: . . .
Snow: I'll be your l'Cie!
Lightning: Oh, fuck this. It doesn't care!

Lightning tries to slash the machine, but her gunblade does nothing to it. The fal'Cie's true form is soon revealed: a huge robot with crystal parts. Lightning, Snow, and Sazh attack it.

Azul Rojo: Gee, another game over! If the party leader dies, that's it. Your allies don't use potions, so you have to have Lightning use them. And due to the enemy smashing you nigh constantly with attacks that hit for 40 to 80 damage each time, you're going to be popping a lot of potions. It doesn't help that Lightning is a strong attacker, and you have to use her as a healer. Who the fuck designed this battle system, and why are people saying it's so much fun? Yet more over-hyped bullcrap.

When the fal'Cie is defeated, Lightning, Sazh, and Snow find themselves floating around a dark room. The fal'Cie has grown even larger. It binds everyone with energy chains, then brands them as l'Cie. The fal'Cie explodes, causing the big ass machine to fall into the water and crystallize it. Eye candy FMVs of a party and Snow proposing to Serah follow. Snow wakes up from his dream, and finds that he and the others are on Lake Bresha, which is now crystal.

Sazh: How the hell did we end up here?
Lightning: I don't know.
Vanille: How are we alive?
Snow: Serah saved us!
Lightning: Shut up! It's your fault she's dead!
Sazh: Oh shit! Enemies!

Snow blocks an attack aimed at Lightning, and kicks the enemy's ass with a burst of energy.

Snow: The hell?
Hope: You used magic! l'Cie power! Well, shit! We're all l'Cie now!
Lightning: Right. Oh, it's tutorial time.

Azul Rojo: Congrats, Square. I think this it the biggest number of tutorials you've crammed into the first 4 hours of a game! So, my characters can change "roles" now, even mid-battle. Not so fun changing things mid-battle, since the action doesn't pause while you're deciding what you want.

Snow: So, we really are l'Cie.
Sazh: Guess so.
Vanille: Yeah, me too. Have a close up of my thigh!
Hope: Why me? You guys suck! Leave me alone! It's all Snow and Serah's fault!
Snow: Shut up, kid! Er, sorry.
Vanille: It's okay! Everything will be fine! La la la, happy happy!
Lightning: So, how do we complete a Focus if we don't know what it is?
Vanille: I think I saw it.
Lightning: What?
Sazh: That's how a Focus works. Fal'Cie just give you a glimpse about what to do. Er...That's what legends say, anyway.
Lightning: Hey, whiney. What'd you see?
Hope: Uh...I saw a towering-
Sazh: Wait, did we all have the same dream?
Lightning & Snow: Ragnarok.
Sazh: Yep. Same dream.
Hope: That was our Focus? How do we figure that out?
Vanille: That's the hard part. Fal'Cie only give us a hint. We have to figure out what to do with it.
Sazh: So, we're technically enemies of Cocoon. So, are we supposed to--
Snow: We have to protect Cocoon.
Vanille: Why's that?
Snow: Serah told us. Let's work together! Oh, I'm gonna go find Serah!
Vanille: Wait for meeee!
Lightning: Hey, tutorial time again.

Azul Rojo: Wow! I can level up now! About fucking time. Wait a minute. HP +20 slot? Strength +4 slot? Oh, fucking damn it. The Sphere Grid? Really? Well, it uses points this time. But you can't just dump points into slots. You actually use them up while moving from slot to slot. This is a pain in the ass to use. And each character has to develop battle roles separately! Wow, Square-Enix. You went with the License Point system and normal levelling for FFXII, which worked nicely and was easy to learn. Now, you've brought back the Sphere Grid, but mashed it together with the LP system and a limited job system? Fucking hell. *RAGE QUIT*

What? You want to know more? Go on YouTube and watch a playthrough. Or go rent it.

 

 

Yeah, I'm doing another game I actually like; the first RPG I ever played and completed, in fact. Because Phantasy Star II deserves some company in the Nutshell section that isn't ass on toast.

King of Alefgard: Descendant of Erdrick, thou art the only one that can defeat the Dragonlord. Now go forth!
Hero: I'd love to, but I'm kind of trapped in this room by a magic door. Come to think of it, so are you. How did I even get in here?
King of Alefgard: Take my treasure chests so that thou can escape and buy some equipment!
Hero: I'm on a big quest to save the world from an evil fiend and you couldn't spare more than a torch and some chump change? Well, I guess if this game was easy, it wouldn't be any fun.

This early on, the hero is a gigantic wimp, and has to take a break every 3 or 4 fights to rest off all the damage he's taking, which the game charges you for each time (of course). But once you gain the Heal spell and figure out that talking to the magician guy in the castle restores your MP to full for free, the inns become pretty pointless.

This stage of the game is pretty much just a gigantic grinding session to earn levels and buy better gear, because almost every area you need to complete is blocked off by magic doors, and you don't find any more keys until you're strong enough to survive a trip through a tunnel to the southern island, and then make the perilous trek to another town where you can finally buy the damn things.

On the return trek...

Hero: Hey, I've got these keys now. I wonder what that door in the tunnel on the way here has behind it.
Dragon: ROAAAAARRRRRR
Hero: Ohhhh SHIT!

The hero is reduced to charcoal, but the King is kind enough to bring him back from the afterlife to continue his quest. But only after extorting half of his gold from him.

King: Didn't you know? That 120 gold wasn't a gift, but a loan! And I make all of my loans at 13,000% interest!
Hero: You're... kind of a douche.
King: But a rich douche!

It's at this point that you venture into the locked doors in the king's castle and realize that there's a key shop right behind his throne room.

Hero: Why could he not just loan me another key so I could save myself a lot of time and effort? What a cheapskate!

Actually, it's a pretty elegant, if shoehorned, way to get you prepared for what lies WITHIN said dungeons - the enemies would stomp you flat if you tried going in before level 10 or so. So you venture deep into Garinham's dungeon and find a Silver Harp, which - get this - summons enemies whenever you play it!

Hero: What was the point of that? I've already got enough random bad guys trying to kill me!
Nintendo Power: Don't you pay attention to the villagers? Some guy on the other end of the island wants it!
Hero: You mean that unlike 98% of all RPGs ever made, the villagers actually have vital, important things to say? Amazing!

So you talk to the guy and get the Staff of Rain, which you vaguely remember being one of the key items you need to get to the Dragonlord's keep. Nifty.

Anyway, you venture south for a while longer (after some more level grinding) and come to Hauksness, a ruined town full of really powerful and supremely annoying monsters. Rooting around doesn't reveal much until you venture into the burned out ruins of a shop, with a tree behind it where a knight with a really big axe attacks you.

Hero: Jeez. Guy hits like a damn truck, and the Sleep spell only knocks him out for a couple of turns. Must be some good shit back here.

Sure enough, you find the Armor of Erdrick, the best of its kind in the game. Not only does it make you immune to poison swamps and magic barriers, but it also lets you regenerate your HP. Sweet!

That done, you try to venture even further south to Cantlin to load up on more awesome gear, which is an unnecessarily long path north, then west, then south, then east across a giant swamp, then north again through a maze of mountains. It would be a really short trip if you had a boat or an airship, but unfortunately that hadn't become an RPG trope yet in 1986. Just before you enter Cantlin however, your path is barred by a Golem, who hits like a bullet train and takes no damage from spells!

King: Oh, hello again. I brought you back from the dead and stole half the money you were going to spend on equipment to hopefully kill the Dragonlord with and save my kingdom!
Hero: Dick.

So, anyway, you do a little research and find out you're supposed to use the Fairy Flute you found in Kol to knock the guy out, then beat him up while he's asleep.

Hero: Why couldn't I just use the Sleep spe-- nevermind.

Killing a bunch of Goldmen to make up for what the king pilfered, you buy a shiny Silver Shield and a Flame Sword for somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 bucks a pop. Now that pretty much every enemy in the game is helpless before your might, you venture back to the tunnel to teach that dragon a lesson.

Gwaelin: Oh, hello. I'm the king's daughter that he mentioned in passing when you first began your quest!
Hero: Well, that's convenient. Should we go back to the castle?
Gwaelin: Yes, but you must carry me the entire way!
Hero: Wha... why?
Gwaelin: Because I am unnecessarily lazy!

You do just that (although it is slightly amusing to lug her around for the next few hours of the game just for the hell of it), and your reward is... Gwaelin's love. Both in a literal sense and in a surreal metaphysical sense, as you get an item in your inventory called "Gwaelin's Love". Using it results in her giving you your current coordinates, but only after you sit through a lengthy dialog about how much she loves you that never changes and cannot be skipped. But you just have to put up with it because you need it to solve one of the game's biggest puzzles.

So anyway, you get back to the quest of trying to find the three key items to get to the Dragonlord's castle, learning that one is in a small shrine south of Rimuldar guarded by a wizard guy.

Wizard: Thou claim to be the descendant of Erdrick. Hast thou any proof?
Hero: What, seriously? I have his ARMOR. That's not enough?
Nintendo Power: You need the Amulet of Erdrick!
Hero: Well, where the hell do I find that?!
Nintendo Power: 70 South by 40 East.
Hero: Oh boy.

We already know that Gwaelin's Love is the key to solving this puzzle, since it gives your coordinates relative to Castle Alefgard and all. However, I still got stuck on this puzzle because I kept trying to get to 40 WEST, which is three spaces into the ocean off the western coast. I searched everywhere for a boat, looked for a way to get past the wizard for the item he had, hoping that would somehow allow me to get to it, scoured back issues of Nintendo Power, and checked every villager in every town three times over thinking I'd missed something. I agonized over this for close to two weeks until I finally realized I read the directions wrong! (Hey, I was seven years old at the time, cut me a break.)

Anyway, rooting through that gigantic swamp you had to pass through on the way to Cantlin eventually yields the amulet. Hooray!

Wizard: Thou claim to be the descendant of Erdrick. Hast thou any proof?
Hero: Here's the amulet. That enough proof for you, chief?
Wizard: Well, I was going to give you this neat item, but you need the Stones of Sunlight first.
Hero: Well, where the hell do I find those?

Wondering if that random villager with the same line of dialog might have the other item, he returns to Rimuldar.

Villager: Thou claim to be the descendant of Erdrick. Hast thou any proof?
Hero: Yeah, right here. See? Medallion of Erdrick!
Villager: Thou claim to be the descendant of Erdrick. Hast thou any proof?
Hero: I just showed you my medallion, dickface. Acknowledge me as Erdrick's descendant!
Villager: Thou claim to be the descendant of Erdrick. Hast thou any proof?
Hero: Oh, fuck you.

Retracing his steps, he talks to random villagers and learns that the stones are hidden in Castle Alefgard. However, turning the place upside-down for half an hour earns you... nothing.

Hero: Where are the damn things? This place is two screens wide by two screens tall, it can't possibly be that well hidden!

After painstakingly searching the place tile by tile, you find that they're hidden in a secret room along the RIGHT EDGE of the castle, just south of the key shop, behind that door you need a magic key for. You need to walk south from the shop along the edge of the moat, being careful not to walk too far to the right and exit to the world map, because if you do that you have to start all over again.

Hero: Why couldn't I just see and approach this room from the outside? I mean, I know it's a puzzle and all, but this just seems a little contrived even by mid-80s standards.

So anyway, you finally have the two items the wizard guy wanted.

Wizard: I say something cryptic and the screen FLICKERS DRAMATICALLY! Oh, and have this Rainbow Drop.
Hero: O...kay. The guy who wanted the harp just kind of vanished, but that works too.

Equipped with the Rainbow Drop, we can now bridge the path to the Dragonlord's keep. And when I say "bridge", it's very literal; after a psychedelic light show, it creates a bridge for you.

Hero: See, this is another example of why the king should just build a boat. I could sail the whole two tiles across the river south of Alefgard and get right to his castle and skip all this magical item fetch quest mumbo-jumbo!

Anyway, you root around in this oddly abandoned castle and find a hidden staircase behind the throne, leading into the biggest dungeon in the game. It's also full of dragons, knights, wizards, and basically every super tough generic villain imaginable. It's also got a few misleading paths in it, which is actually kind of a rarity in this game.

Ironically, one of these leads you to Erdrick's Sword, the bane of all evil!

Hero: Why the hell would he have the ONE WEAPON that can defeat him in his castle? Why would he not just, you know, destroy it or toss it into the ocean or something?

The other throw-off path leads to a neverending hallway, which I tried to go down for about twenty minutes before catching on. Again, I blame it on being seven years old.

So after backtracking and finding another route to follow, you come to the bottom of the Dragonlord's dungeon, which unlike every floor before it is fully lit and free of random enemies. You can loot his storeroom too if you want, but it's not really worth it at this stage of the game.

Dragonlord: Join me, young Skywalker, and we will rule the world together!
Hero: And what would I possibly stand to gain by abandoning this quest I've spent weeks trying to complete and following an empty promise from the lord of darkness?
Dragonlord: Your experience meter drops to 0, I emit an evil laugh and the game locks up, implying that I killed you!
Hero: ...And I get to hit Reset and do the entire dungeon again. That's weak sauce, dude.
Dragonlord: This is a 1986 game; villains didn't start thinking ahead and getting truly devious and persusasive until the 90's.
Hero: Good point.

They duke it out, which is pretty anticlimactic since the Dragonlord dies in three hits.

Hero: Well, that was... pretty easy.
Dragonlord: SURPRISE! I have another form!

The dragonlord becomes - what else - a dragon, and is much tougher this time around since he can dish out a lot of damage and none of your spells work on him. Still, if you've got the best equipment available and a decent supply of MP for healing spells, you can outlast him without too much difficulty.

Dragonlord: I am vanquished!

You get Erdrick's ball of light back, which vanquishes all random enemies in the game forevermore, and allows you to wander around to every town in the game and get congratulated by everyone. Actually, just one town will do the trick, since they all repeat the same two lines.

So you go back to Alefgard, where the king offers you his eternal gratitude and his daughter's hand in marriage. She won't take "No" for an answer no matter how many times you try to choose it, so our hero is forced to wed Gwaelin and, once again, carry her off into the sunset. The end, roll credits.

Spoony: You know, as RPGs went on, I expected to be able to explore more of the possibilities the story could take . Like here, where the game gives you a yes or no choice, but the story won't continue until you pick "Yes"; I always just thought that was a system limitation locking you to one path. I was hoping in future games that in a similar situation you could pick "No" just to see what would happen. Like, say, the King putting a hit out on you for abandoning his daughter to the dragons! A pity that idea seems to only have caught on with American RPGs on the PC, and to a lesser extent the Shin Megami Tensei series. I mean, why do they even give you a choice of two or three options in newer games, anyway? Just to tease you?

At any rate, I like the game of Dragon Warrior; it was certainly a milestone in the console RPG genre, and although it definitely shows its age nowadays due to the bare-bones story and heavy emphasis on gold gathering and level grinding, I'd much rather play this than say... Star Ocean 4 or Infinite Undiscovery.

 

 

Final Fantasy X-2's release day marked the point of no return for Square; they'd abandoned their loyal fanbase and given in to the worst aspect of anime fandom, peppering every subesquent game with the same dull, gimmicky gameplay, predictable plotlines, ridiculous over-frilled aesthetic design, and obnoxious one dimensional characterizations. Not to mention that they started releasing endless waves of terrible sequels, prequels, spinoffs and remakes to their classic games just to destroy any fond memories their older fans may have had of them whilst simultaneously stealing their money.

As for the game itself, I didn't even play it; all I saw was a video of them turning Yuna and Rikku into the fucking Spice Girls and I decided "that's it, I'm not even going to waste my time on this bullshit". But on the plus side, it does give me a good trump card in arguments with Square fantards.

"Square sucks now, dude. They've made maybe two decent games in the last 10 years."
"NO WAY FUCK YOU THEY ARE THE BEST COMPANY AND WILL ALWAYS BE THEY HAVE THE BEST STORIES EVER WRITTEN AND PIONEERED SO MANY RPG TRENDS AND DON'T JUST WHORE OUT THEIR CHARACTERS AND FRANCHISES ALL THE TIME LIKE ALL THE COMPANIES YOU LI-"
"Ehrgeiz."
"THAT GAME WAS AWESOME GO BACK TO YOUR BUTTON MASHING STREET FIGHTER GAMES"
"Dirge of Cerberus"
"BEST SHOOTER EVER YOU'RE JUST TOO STUPID TO GET IT"
"Dissidia."
"THAT GAME WAS SO DEEP AND WELL MADE I MEAN ARENA FIGHTERS ONLY NEED TWO MOVES PER CHARACTER ANYWAY MAN, RANDOM WEAPONS, STAGE HAZARDS AND VARIETY IN GENERAL ARE FOR CHUMPS!"
"Unlimited SaGa"
"ITS SPELLED WITH A LOWERCASE G FAGGOT AND IT'S BRILLIANT BECAUSE ITS A TABLETOP RPG PUT INTO VIDEO GAME FORM, NEVERMIND THAT NO TABLETOP RPG I'VE EVER PLAYED ANYWHERE HAD A DESIGN THIS COUNTER-INTUITIVE AND GAMEPLAY THIS BORING!"
"Final Fantasy X-2."
"Uh..."
"Checkmate, asshole."

 

 

George Lucas can rest assured he's no longer the only person to ruin a classic piece of popular culture by doing everything wrong in the sequel. Hell, Square's topped his failure at least five times over by now!

Serge: I have an exciting and wonderful life in this fishing village, and I prove it by fighting the same two monsters over and over for days on end!
Leena: I'm here to partake in idle chatter, which unknown to you will affect whether or not you get an important item later in the game!
Serge: Yeah. Hey Square, next time you make a game, can you at least give some kind of clue as to what seemingly inconsequential choices will have an impact on later events? Please?

Seconds after Leena leaves, Serge gets sucked into an episode of Star Trek

Serge: All of a sudden, nobody recognizes me and everything I know is completely turned upside-down. It'd be kind of freaky if that long cinematic you watched a minute ago didn't immediately clue you in that something wasn't right.
Other Leena: You can't be Serge. Serge died ten years ago.
Serge: That's the big replacement for the time travel mechanic, huh? A parallel universe plot?
Other Leena: Yep. Everything is exactly the same except for you still being alive in the other universe.
Serge: Which somehow drastically changes the destinies of a bunch of people I've never even met.
Other Leena: You got it.
Serge: *Sigh* At least it's a better dynamic than Star Ocean 2's "choice of two protagonists with unique stories... who meet ten minutes in and never seperate for more than three minutes in the entire game".

Serge, feeling like depressing himself even further, decides to visit Other Serge's grave and gets attacked by some dickweed soldiers

Teenage Fanboy Sex Symbol Kid: Obligatory Cute Girl who never does anything, nice to meet you! ...Actually, that title could probably be applied to the entire female contingent of the cast, but we won't get into that just yet.

You're given the option of going with Kid or finding your own path, which has absolutely no lasting impact since you'll meet again in the next town and she'll force herself into your party anyway.

Kid: Come on, let's go get the Frozen Flame!
Serge: Okay. Do you have a way to get in?
Kid: No, I'm leaving that up to you.
Serge: Your big plan is to find some random person you've never met before, let them know you're planning something illegal and very dangerous, and then leave it to THEM to arrange the whole heist?
Kid: Pretty much.
Serge: I'd berate you for this, but you're obviously thirteen years old and a bit retarded, so I'd feel bad about it later.

You have the choice of being escorted there by a wasted raver in goth makeup, a poser swordsman who happens to be the worst character in the entire game, or a cool-looking magician guy. I think the choice is pretty clear.

Serge: Are you... Magus?
Guile: No. Well, kind of; I was supposed to be, but they just changed my name when they couldn't find a way to fit Magus into the plot.
Serge: You're telling me that Chrono Trigger's sequel, which revolves entirely around Schala and Lavos - two characters Magus spent the entire game obsessed with rescuing and killing respectively - couldn't even find a place to fit Magus into the story, even in a bit role?
Guile: Yep.
Serge: ...Simply stunning.

They sneak into a heavily guarded palace. The guards, being dumb as rocks and such heavy sleepers that they don't hear pitched battles taking place one room over, are easily evaded or dispatched.

Lynx: ROAR, the Frozen Flame is not yours to take. Beware my furry rage!

Apparently Kid's info was a bit off (big surprise) and you're forced to flee the castle with nothing to show for your effort.

Kid: Oh shit, Lynx poisoned me and now I'm dying.
Doc: The only thing that can cure this poison is Hydra Humour, which only the dwarves have!
Serge: Uh... okay. I'll go get it from them then.
Doc: They hate humans, though, and they have tanks. Yes, tanks. Don't ask me where they got the knowledge or materials to build the things when they live in a fucking swamp.
Serge: Well, this is a JRPG, so I'll have no trouble taking out something huge and heavily armored with nothing more than a few crappy spells and an impractical bladed weapon. Bye!

You quickly learn that Doc wasn't kidding, and that they have their entire goddamn army attacking you with everything they've got. As you can probably predict, none really stand a chance at all if you have some decent spells and a good supply of healing items. But, once you've begun a New Game Plus save and pick the other path, you learn that Kid survives regardless, so Serge now has the needless genocide of an entire species on his conscience for the rest of his life. What a great and inspiring hero!

Spoony: And his party members are no better for not even raising an objection to his statement of "Okay guys, we're going to go slay a whole species for the sake of one girl I barely know"!

At any rate, you take another whack at Lynx once that's all sorted out. He's kind of a douche, because unlike 99% of all RPG villains he's smart enough to target your weakest party members and use spells they're actually weak against.

Lynx: Time to swap bodies with the hero like in so many corny 90's cartoons!
Serge as Lynx: Uh... oh shit, wait guys, don't kill me!

Kid gets stabbed in the gut, Serge gets beaten to a pulp by his own party members, and then he gets tossed into an MC Escher painting where he meets a green troll and Harle

Harle: I speak in zis annoying French accent, and everyzing I say is cryptique. Yet for zhome reason I betrayed zhe real Lynx and am helping you instead.
Serge as Lynx: Mmkay...

An annoying puzzle or two later, they escape back to Serge's reality, where Serge is understandably disliked, being trapped in the form of the main villain and all. After a few more well-placed beatings, he convinces his village elder to help him out of this jam and they set off to find a boat. Which, not surprisingly, requires battling your way through three or four dungeons and several bosses.

Numerous dead-end subplots later...

Serge as Lynx: Okay, now we're at a big frozen ocean called the "Dead Sea". Creative name there, by the way.
Miguel: Oh, hi. I'm your dad's old buddy, remember me? Turns out I'm a slave to the big bad guy now, so we must fight to the death!

Miguel is, surprisingly, one of the hardest f'ing battles in the entire game. Why he can't just let you win, being your father's good friend and all, is a mystery, but regardless, he goes all out with ultra-powerful light spells and lays waste to your party. Especially Serge; being in Lynx's body, he is now WEAK against light spells. After several tries, you finally get him, causing time to un-freeze and finally letting you go back to the parallel dimension to continue the plot.

Spoony: I find that you're usually better off making a shorter game than padding it out with several hours of junk quests while the plot comes to a screeching halt. Take a look at Metal Gear Solid or Max Payne for good examples.

In any case, Serge gets his body back after another eye-candy FMV.

Serge: About time. Lynx's shitty skills and weakness to Light spells (which every single enemy and boss uses) sure aren't doing me any favors.

They set off for the other world's equivalent of the Dead Sea, spurred on by some Dragons who apparently convince them that there's some kind of world-ending catastrophe about to go down there. Other World's equivalent is a futuristic city thrown into the current time by something called the "Time Crash"

Spoony: Oh, so time is like Windows 98? When you put too much strain on it, it gets all fucky and you have to reboot it?

Anyway, you finally catch up to Lynx and Kid, who is apparently working with him despite that whole knife-in-the-gut business. Apparently she's even dumber than you were first led to believe!

Spoony: So uh, what were Lynx and Kid doing all this time? I've been wandering around for ages doing filler quests and meeting Dragons, and they've only beat us here by an hour or two?

Lynx: (Deep breath) Ten years ago, I was your father, who took you on a seaward trip in search of a cure to your condition after you got bitten by a panther demon. We came across this city, and by some hilarious weather phenomena the computer system FATE (very subtle name, eh?), tasked with controlling the destiny of all of humanity via the Frozen Flame, had shut down. When you came in contact with the Frozen Flame it not only healed you, but Chronopolis' circuits attuned the Flame to you so that nobody else could use it. So FATE turned me into a manifestation of your worst fear and sent me to kill you, hoping that would allow it to access the Flame again. It didn't, so FATE concocted some doofy scheme involving swapping bodies with the other you from a parallel world to take another shot at it. It apparently worked, but I'm going to kill you anyway!
Serge: ...That is, without a doubt, the DUMBEST thing I have ever heard. What kind of stupid computer system uses a biological component as a key? Especially in a world full of magic capable of body-swapping and cloning people? And moreover, why not just bypass or remove the offending circuits so you can use it again? Or, you know, just knock it offline again for a while and reset it to yourself the second time around?
Lynx: If you think that's bad, just wait until you see what the Prophet of Time has waiting for you later. Anyway, FIGHT!

Lynx, despite going through ALL THAT TROUBLE to get a duplicate of your body, ditches it and turns into some ugly monstrosity. He's another obnoxiously tough fight, but with the right party members he's not too bad. You're better off fighting him than Miguel, at least.

Dragons: SURPRISE, we were manipulating you all along! Now we shall take the Frozen Flame and become the Dragon God once again!
Serge: The what now?
Dragons: When Chronopolis went back in time, it drew part of a parallel world where the Reptites became the planet's dominant species into our world, and with it came the Dragon God, their ultimate creation capable of controlling nature itself. Chronopolis defeated the Dragon God, split it into the seven Dragons, and now we've just been waiting for our chance to wrest the Frozen Flame from FATE's hands so that we can become whole again and have our revenge!
Serge: I take back what I said about the whole FATE and Arbiter of the Frozen Flame business, this is even worse.
Dragons: If you think that's bad, you haven't seen anything yet!
Serge: So I've heard.

Harle: Oh yes, I am zhe seventh Dragon. So long!
Serge: ...And you were working with Lynx... why?
Harle: I attempted to manipulate him to betray FATE so zhat zhe Dragons could recover the Flame.
Serge: And then you joined me because...
Harle: Apparently, I have fallen for you. But not enough to convince me to betray zhe dragons.
Serge: A shoehorned romantic sub-plot. Hooray, now my life is complete!

Aaaaaaaanyway, after reading 70% of the plot mashed into less than twenty minutes of exposition, you learn that Kid has fallens into a coma again

Spoony: Again? Really, Square? You're putting Kid into another coma after I committed genocide to snap her out of the first one?! Is this girl I barely know really worth all this effort, or is this going to turn into another Rinoa situation where all I get is another hammy love plot between two of the blandest characters in existence?

It turns out to be neither; because the game has to go on regardless of what choices you make and who is in your party, 90% of all the party's dialog is completely interchangable. This also has the effect of ensuring that even the touted "main" characters have almost nothing to say or do, to say nothing of the 40-some others that round out the cast. Now that's a compelling RPG experience!

Spoony: I also take issue with this whole "multiple paths" nonsense. Usually when a game offers you a chance to take one road or the other (but not both), it's to cause some significant change in the overarching storyline. But here, there's no real consequences for any choice you're offered; the plot plays out exactly the same way every time. The only differences your choices make are that you may fight a different boss, venture through a slightly different dungeon or have the option to recruit another party member who you'll never use anyway since playable characters as a whole are so indistinct in this game. It just gives the unpleasant feeling that the game is offering you the illusion of nonlinearity just to tease you.

At any rate, after a few more dopey sub-plots, Serge gets his hands on the Masamune sword, revives Kid, and attains the ultimate element, the Chrono Cross.

Balthasar: In another "shocking" twist, I reveal that the one manipulating ALL of these events was Lavos, who apparently survived and vanished beyond time, where he fused with Schala in an attempt to become the Time Devourer, an entity capable of destroying all time and space as we know it. But lucky you, I set the events in motion that would split the timeline in two, send Kid (Schala's clone, oooo!) to save your life and eventually allow you to gain possession of the Chrono Cross in order to stop the Time Devourer from forming!
Ghosts of Crono, Lucca and Marle: Oh yeah, we apparently all died in that Guardia War that got mentioned in passing hours ago. Never mind that we eventually became so powerful that we were able to defeat an entity capable of laying waste to entire planets and manipulating time itself.
Serge: Do you hear that?
All: Hear what?
Serge: The sound of a freight train hitting this plot, jumping the tracks, throwing its cars and cargo in every direction and then exploding into a fireball?
Balthasar: Very funny, wise guy. Go fight the Dragon God.
Serge: *Sigh* Fine. I've sunk this much time into this crummy game, I might as well see it through to the end.

Fight ensues, fight gets won, blah blah blah. Now all there is left to do is face the Time Devourer, who can only be beaten via a method that everyone gives you a clue or two about.

Once you've pieced together the clues, you figure out how you have to beat on the Devourer for a while, cast six spells in a specific order, then finish the sequence with the Chrono Cross to win the battle. Fair enough. But what they don't tell you is that the Time Devourer's spells count in this sequence as well. This quickly becomes a frustrating ordeal as you get partway done, then watch helplessly as the asshole casts the wrong spell again and screws up the whole sequence. Which leaves you no choice but to continue with the fight and get the shitty ending, or run from the battle and try again.

After many, many tries, the right sequence finally plays out and Serge is able to use the Chrono Cross properly. The Time Devourer dies, and as you might expect, all you get is a lame ending that doesn't satisfy on any level. Hooray.

Spoony: Yeeeeeah. To be fair, it's not as bad as some of Square's other turds of the time like Final Fantasy VIII, Parasite Eve II and Ehrgeiz; the game is decently paced, avoids a lot of annoying cliches of the genre, has an interesting combat system, an excellent soundtrack what are doubtlessly the best visuals on the Playstation, and it rarely gets bogged down with stupid minigames or tedious item-farming busywork. But none of this can redeem the stupid plot, the numerous useless subplots, the needlessly large and dull cast of characters, and the letdown associated with it being the long-awaited sequel to one of the greatest RPGs ever made.

If you want my advice, skip this mind dump and play Suikoden II instead. Not only does it balance a large cast of characters much more effectively than Chrono Cross, it stays much truer to its predecessor's themes and gameplay style. It may not look or sound nearly as good as CC, but believe me, when it comes to what counts it's a far better game.

 

 

Well holy dog shit, Vinic's finally started to program the site again after nine months of sitting on his thumbs and playing shitty browser games. Hooray! Have a Nutshell for another unflushed Square Enix turd to celebrate.

"Combining elements of Eastern and Western RPGs" shouldn't mean that you're just recycling the worst and most boring cliches from TWO sources instead of just one.

The setting is a world that looks extremely similar to Final Fantasy XII; in fact, it looks like they just transplanted almost every character model and texture straight from that game without even bothering to make any improvements for the Xbox 360 hardware. The only thing that doesn't look like it's copied straight from a Playstation 2 game is the menu text, which like every Xbox RPG in existence is so small that it's barely readable.*

*I'm sure it's crystal clear on an HDTV, but come on, I don't have a thousand bucks to burn. Besides, is it really that hard to use a bigger fucking font? This is the most basic of low-level game programming here, guys - if you make a text-heavy game, make the text fucking READABLE.

The game immediately takes a page from the Hero's Book of Generic Motives and has the protagonist's sister get kidnapped by monsters. But that's not enough, oh no - he also has a magical Plot Coupon Amulet that unleashes cataclysmic superpowers whenever the story writes itself into a corner, which it invariably will. Many times. As Plot Coupon's first act, it glows and vaporizes all of Rush's assailants sans the one that has his sister trapped (of course).

Spoony: And it's all done with shiny aurora effects surrounding spheres of light. That sort of thing was visually impressive back when Final Fantasy X was released, but it's 2009 and glitter isn't fashionable anymore. Maybe you should focus more on your character modeling and less on graphical gimmicks; giving them more than one facial expression and mouth movement with a wider range than a hand puppet's would be a good start. I mean, when online-only first person shooters have more believable facial expressions than the cast of an emotionally-driven console RPG, that doesn't speak very well for you.

Some unspecified amount of time later, Rush stumbles upon a battlefield, where we're treated to our first glimpse of the game's underwhelming combat: riddled with excessive load times, graphical errors and a bunch of mechanics that ultimately have little to no effect on the overall strategy (or lack thereof). I suppose they justify it by saying that it's meant to mimic a bad PC RPG from the mid 90s running on an underpowered computer. Because, after all, this game combines EASTERN and WESTERN RPG elements!

Thinking he sees his sister down there for some reason, he charges right into the middle of the fight, somehow never losing an arm or an eye in the process. Hooray for the plot shield!

It seems everyone associated with Square is only capable of thinking in cliches, because one side of the war unleashes a cacaclysmic superweapon that sends the hero plummeting into a dungeon of some description. Despite the distance of the fall and the fact that he lands facefirst on solid rock, he manages to sustain no noticable damage.

Spoony: Didn't Final Fantasy III open with a scene just like this too? And IV? And Secret of Mana? And Secret of Evermore? And VI? And VII? And IX? And X? And Blue Dragon? And Lost Odyssey?

The collapse is also a clumsy excuse to introduce a new party member; this time around, it's a really bitchy female knight. Pointless bickering ensues, wherein Rush is accused of being a spy (because, of course, all spies run headlong into the thick of combat with no weapons while being as conspicuous as possible). We also quickly discover that even the dialog scenes have background textures appearing and vanishing at random intervals.

Spoony: No, really, what is with all of this pop-in? I'm having flashbacks to time spent trying to play Deus Ex on my crappy old Pentium 166 with the software renderer and no sound card support. It ended... badly.

A rescue party comes down moments later. It's established that Rush is the son of two prominent scientists researching Remnants, and because of that the Marquis offers his help in seeking his sister. Upon hearing this, Rush completely breaks character to hop around and giggle like an eight year old. Yes, really. Nothing says "compelling" like a war epic starring a tragic hero who acts like a kid in a candy store. And Square fans, after sitting through all of Final Fantasy 10's dialog and now witnessing this scene, still have the nerve to bash Disgaea for being too "immature and silly"; simply amazing.

Marquis Dickhead: Behold, the generic quest list!
Spoony: Oh, suck my balls. Quest list RPGs are an outdated relic from the fucking Apple II era.
Marquis Dickhead: That's the point, this game combines EASTERN and WESTERN RPG elements!
Spoony: ...Fine, fine. If you're going to replace story flow with a chore list, can you at least tell me what ones advance the plot and what ones are just meaningless busywork?
Marquis Dickhead: Of course not. That would be doing something innovative and convenient to the player, and we're clearly trying to avoid that.
Spoony: Another throwback to the days of archaic and poorly-explained interfaces, I suppose.
Marquis Dickhead: Of course. Because, after all, this game combines EASTERN and WESTERN RPG elements!
Spoony: *Sigh* Fine, I'll just grab a few at random and hope that something - anything - within them convinces me that this game wasn't a complete waste of money.

A few quests are played. It quickly becomes apparent that the battles we witnessed weren't trimmed-down versions for the sake of early game demonstration; you quite literally spend three seconds choosing what moves to use and then the next three minutes watching them animate. You have almost no interaction with every single battle in the entire game.

Spoony: I knew Square loved having monster summons and limit breaks be excessively long, noninteractive movies, but every turn? That is simply unacceptable. Especially when there's this much load time and graphic pop-in between EVERY SINGLE CAMERA CUT.

At the very least the quests don't take fucking ages to finish, because while battles drag on for way too long, the dungeons are quite short. Still, it's only a matter of time and a lot of effort wasted on dead end quests before you get bored of it and desperately wish for a game where you know you're making some kind of actual progress.

Spoony: Okay Square, I've had enough. I liked Final Fantasy XII because it was completely unlike the last few games in the series. I liked The World Ends With You because it had a unique graphical style, original gameplay and several interesting characterizations; again, unlike pretty much everything else you've made in the last decade. So why in the hell would you come back to cliched, mediocre dreck like this? Was that bold new direction just your moving van's pit stop on the road to Blandville? Or do you think you can just live forever off your "cutting edge" graphics? I've got news for you, boys; they're not impressive anymore now that games like Bayonetta, Bioshock and Resident Evil 5 are out. Hell, even Muramasa: The Demon Blade has a fresher and more appealing visual style, and that's on the Wii. The Wii!

So how about this: If you must insist on making nothing but forgettable shovelware from this point on, at the very least you should optimize it for the platform you're releasing it on. There's absolutely no excuse for all of this popup and load time in an Xbox 360 game when first-generation games like Dead Rising could have hundreds of autonomous enemies onscreen at a time without even any slowdown. If a few college-age dorks on the Internet can make an emulator for the PSP that runs Nintendo 64 games almost flawlessly, there's no reason why you, with your vast programming staff and inside knowledge on the system and its hardware, can't get a Playstation 1 game running without lag and bad sound quality. (Comparison) It's especially inexcusable when the original game is available on PSOne Classics and runs without any flaws whatsoever on the same platform! I shudder to think of how badly the Xbox port of Final Fantasy XIII is going to operate; I won't be paying a dime to find out, by the way.

---

Spoony had planned to trade the game toward the Phantom Brave remake on the Wii, but unfortunately it was delayed at the time. So instead it was put toward Devil Survivor, a game which, within its first hour, manages to present a believable, detailed cast of characters, a story whose every element isn't recycled from a dozen better games, and a unique spin on the standard grid-based tactical combat system. It also doesn't take three full minutes for each combat turn to complete and graphics don't randomly drop in and out during every single camera cut; imagine that!

 

 

Or: The game Xbox owners desperately tried to convince themselves was quality because there weren't any other RPGs released on the thing.

The setting is some shithole town in the middle of the woods, which quickly gets burned to the ground and everyone within murdered except for the hero. Lucky for him, some serious-looking dude* teleports him to safety and enrolls him in a generic hero academy.

* That's a lie; he looks like Ganondorf's wimpy cousin.

Headmaster: There, now you know how to use a sword, a bow, and magic thanks to fifteen minutes of training.
Spoony: Yeah. Too bad ten full seconds of electrocution and eight arrows to the face do less damage than one sword swing.
Headmaster: You are ready to move on. Behold, the generic quest list!
Spoony: Oh god, not this shit again. Why can't "Massive, Epic RPGs" just have a contiguous plotline or a game world more than four miles across anymore?
Headmaster: No, no, it's nothing like Final Fantasy Tactics Advance or Atelier Iris.
Spoony: Prove it.
Headmaster: You can be good OR evil during each of them!
Spoony: You don't care which, huh. Fine then, from this day forth it is my goal to become the biggest bastard who has ever lived.
Headmaster: Logically I'd try to sway you from this path or at least show some sign of lament for this monster I've created, but instead I'm just going to sit here and repeat the same three lines over and over again for the rest of the game!

A few quests are completed for the measly reward of some bad Karma and barely enough gold coins to buy a single health potion. The developers try to get you to care a bit more by introducing a rival character who takes up the mantle of good, but this fails utterly because she's just blindly opposing you for the hell of it regardless of the path you choose, not because of any actual character motive.

Spoony: Say, I wonder what these F-key functions do.

It turns out they're a fart button, a belch button, and most embarrasingly, a middle finger button, apparently solely included to provide cheap amusement for the game's target audience of seven-year-olds.

Spoony: ...So it's not necessary for your game to have an actual plotline, a single compelling character, or even anything to do outside of boring fetch quests, but it's absolutely imperative that you include THAT piece of childish nothing. Good job Lionhead, you've really gotten your priorities straight since your last overhyped mind dump, Black & White.*

*Okay, so I didn't actually play Black & White. But when your "groundbreaking new game" comes out and all its fans seem interested in talking about is the ability to fling your monster's turds around the screen, it doesn't really inspire much confidence.

A few more quests are done for little to no reward, and the list only grows longer and longer as more get done.

Spoony: Alright, I've seen enough. I'm bored out of my skull, the laws of Albion make no sense at all (belching and farting at people in high enough quantity is just as bad a crime as murder, but neither have any lasting consequences as long as you run back to the guild hall and call "SAFE!" before the guards kill you), and there's at least a dozen better games I could be playing right now. Forget this.
Fantards: Keep playing, dude! You didn't even give it a chance!
Spoony: Piss off, I've sat here for over three hours doing the same boring shit over and over again.
Fantards: It gets good soon, we promise!
Spoony: Fine, fine. At your insistence, I'll suffer a bit longer.

The fantards built a house of lies, as all that waits is more of the exact same "help this guy or slit his throat and take his wallet" dillemma we've already seen fifty times over. Picking the latter choice each time STILL has no lasting consequences as long as you can outrun the guards (which is dead easy).

Spoony: Okay, fuck this small-time crap. I'm pulling out all the stops.

Spoony decides to steal everything that isn't nailed down, murder people right in front of their crying children, and slowly and painfully cook the entire academy's student body from the inside out, one at a time, with lightning magic to see if anybody will ever break away from their busy daily routine of standing in one place and repeating the same two lines endlessly to arrange a lynch mob. But big surprise, nobody notices, nobody cares what he's done, and nobody even bats an eye when the same dude who wiped out their entire village yesterday takes a morning stroll right through Main Street unarmed, naked and totally vulnerable. In fact, all he has to show for it is that his skin has spontaneously grown tattoos.

Spoony: This is so fucking retarded. Where's the law? Where's the price on my head? Where are the pissed off relatives and mercenaries seeking vengeance? Why in the FUCK am I still getting job offers when they know I'm just going to stab them and take all of their money? If the game doesn't take any interest whatsoever in its OWN good-and-evil mechanic, why the hell should I?!
Fantards: Keep playing, keep playing! It eventually gets good after about fifteen more hours of quests!
Spoony: And what entails "good" to you?
Fantards: You can marry two men or two women! Dude that's so cool, no game's ever done that before!
Spoony: Except Fallout 2, five years ago. Anything else?
Fantards: You can fart on people, it's so FUNNY!
Spoony: Only if you're in the third grade. Try harder.
Fantards: As a matter of fact, I am. And... uh... you can sell a house to someone and then kill them and then sell it again!
Spoony: I have a better idea. Watch this.

Spoony uninstalls the game, sells it on eBay (for less than a third of what he paid, natch) and replays Baldur's Gate 2 instead, which has several interesting features Fable lacks. These include a storyline, a decent game engine, a combat system that requires planning and strategy rather than mindless button mashing, and actual characterization instead of Fable's one-dimensional caricatures. Having consequences for your actions, whether good or evil, certainly doesn't hurt either. And all this from a game that came out four years before Fable did; that should tell you something!

Four months pass and everyone forgets about the game, just like every other piece of forgettable shovelware Lionhead Studios has ever made. Fable 2 is eventually announced, toting itself as "the great game we MEANT to make last time, but instead we rushed out a half-finished, shoddy product for a quick buck"; Spoony just wonders who would be dumb enough to get conned again, rolls his eyes and returns to playing Earth Defense Force 2017.

 

 

Writing one for a game I played almost a decade ago purely off memory. Whee! Oh, and like all my Nutshells and pretty much everything else I write, don't take it too seriously.

You get a choice of characters to play at the start. This makes almost no difference, since they meet up about five minutes in, you can assume direct control of any character in your party, and their stories don't diverge from one another in any significant way.

Claude: We're on a random shitplanet. Hey look, a mysterious technological artifact!

Mysterious Artifact starts up and Claude gets teleported to Disc1

Rena: Holy shit, an enormous gorilla that isn't native to this area at all!
Claude: Time to spank this monkey!

Claude destroys the thing in three hits with his awesome beam pistol, which breaks down seconds later since even though technology has progressed to the point where humanity can create anything out of thin air, they still can't make a reliable weapon. Disc1's primitive swords, bows and axes, on the other hand, never ever break down or require maintenance in any form.

Claude: 10 points for me!
Rena: Hi, I'm Rena. If you haven't guessed by now I'm the female lead.
Claude: And the only decent healer to boot.
Rena: Yep. Too bad my AI is garbage and I spend all my MP casting shitty attack spells instead even when specifically told to do otherwise.
Claude: Yeah...

A bunch of boring stuff happens, but at least the music is pretty

Village Elder: Claude, you are the hero destined to save our world. Now you must go on some vaguely-defined quest.
Claude: Okay...

They decide to go kill a generic cave monster for no real reason

Celine: I arbitrarily decide to join you. You have no choice in this matter.
Claude: Since I'm stuck with you, what can you do?
Celine: I'm a mage, which just means I stand in one spot and waste all my MP, rendering myself useless within three battles.
Claude: Well, there's nobody else to swap you out for yet so I guess I'll have to put up with it.

They plow their way through more generic enemies, earning more of Claude's imaginary points.

Claude: ....Wait a second. There's two settings for combat. As far as I can tell, the only difference is that you need to hold down the Square button to move with one of them, while the other just lets you use the D-Pad.
Rena: Yeah. So?
Claude: So what's the point of that?
Rena: I really don't know.
Claude: While we're on the topic, why does the attack command have me randomly break off from my target, run to the top corner, touch it, and run back before actually attacking?
Rena: Shoddy programming. Wasn't the constant freezing enough of a clue?
Spoony: No kidding. Even Ultima VII running on my old piece of shit 486 Packard Bell didn't lock up this often.

Like every fight so far, the battle with the cave monster ends in about thirty seconds of button mashing.

Claude: That's uh, 80 Points!
Rena: Seriously Claude, what the hell are you talking about?
Claude: ...I don't know. I'm not convinced the writers or translators do either.

They leave and come to some other town

Rena: Oh look, a tournament!
Claude: A cheap excuse for more fights. And more points!

Claude enters, Claude gets his ass beat regardless of what equipment you bring with you, rendering the choice and the entire tournament scene pretty much moot. Also, the game freezes again after you lose. This results in much frustration since you have to sit through all those scenes AGAIN.

Claude: Well, that was excruciating. What's next?
Rena: There's some plot about a war but it was so uninteresting that Spoony can't recall it at all, so he's just going to discuss the recruitable characters instead.

Dias: I'm apparently supposed to be the HARDCORE character since I have a gruff voice and treat everyone like shit. I'm also completely useless in combat because I insist on running up and then stopping dead FOR A FULL FUCKING SECOND before I swing, leaving myself wide open to attack.
Claude: Yeah, you suck hardcore. Back row for the rest of the game.

Bowflex: I shoot tornadoes out of my hands.
Claude: Awesome!
Bowflex: I should also add that my voice clips all sound like they were recorded on a shitty 1979 microphone while my actor was shouting through a pillow, but that's nothing new with this game.

Leon: I'm another crappy mage character, but at least I spice it up a little by wielding books that shoot demons that shoot swords.
Claude: Neat.

There's probably more, but I didn't care enough to check. I will say that Precis' voice is probably what you'd hear if Satan cross-bred a fire alarm with Gilbert Gottfried; it was so completely awful that I restarted the whole game to get her the hell out of my party.

More boring stuff happens and they decide to climb up a tower.

Evil Circlejerk: Boo! We are the main villains!
Claude: This game has villains? That's surprising.
Evil Circlejerk: We are a not-so-subtle reference to the twelve Apostles, and our minions are all vaguely angelic! Beware our clichedom!
Claude: Thanks a million for that one, Evangelion.

The villains are all invincible and can crush the characters' rib cages with one finger flick, so Claude's just forced to run circles around them until they get bored and call off the fight. With no explanation the party gets dumped onto some other planet

Claude: Okay, where are we now?
Stooge: Planet Disc2. Disc1 was destroyed.
Claude: Destroyed?!
Stooge: Disc2 crashed into Disc1 and somehow emerged completely unharmed.
Claude: That makes no sense whatsoever.
Stooge: Tell it to the writing staff. Anyway I'm done talking, go to the lab and get your requisite airship... err, fetus creature.

For no particular reason, the fetus creature escapes and you're forced to beat it into submission first, which proves suprisingly difficult. But after being pelted with a relentless barrage of spells and sword skills for fifteen minutes, the beast submits

Claude: Finally, we won!

The game freezes for the eighth time

Spoony: GODDAMNIT. GOD FUCKING SHIT DAMN CUNT LUMPS! CAN'T THESE IDIOTS PROGRAM A FUCKING GAME?!

The CD gets frisbeed across the room and left untouched for two months. Due to either boredom or severe masochism it eventually gets dug out from under a pile of old homework and the story (I use the term loosely) continues

Claude: Okay, the bosses on Disc1 were all really easy, so they're making up for it by making all of Disc2's bosses ridiculously cheap and giving you no good places to level.
Rena: Claude, you're supposed to use your technical skills.
Claude: No, screw that. I've thrown away so many skill points and raw materials and at best I always end up with a basic, shitty dagger that barely costs a third of what I spent on the ore. The only useful thing I've gotten of these is the stat boosts.
Rena: Well then steal something decent.
Claude: Unlike Ultima, where theft is the key to the universe, everyone in these games either carries bad checks, scribbled-on pieces of paper or just barely enough gold for one measly health potion, so that skill's also a waste.
Rena: Fine, back to more tedious grinding.

A lot of other boring stuff happens, Rena and Claude get some mediocre weapons with flashy names like "Fallen Hope" and "Crescent Moon" and they're off to the Evil Circlejerk's tower, where EVERY SINGLE ENEMY is more powerful than Jesus. Since just one of these assholes can wipe out the entire party in a matter of seconds, Claude and company just end up running past them all.

Flamecunt: WE MUST FIGHT!

Flamecunt wipes out the entire party by spamming a move where he covers the entire battlefield in flames while shrieking "OH-HO-HO IT'S HOT!" at ear-splitting volume. The party is unable to defeat him and between the frequent crashes and the overpowered enemies, they're unable to get back out and grind some more. Spoony declares this a victory for the forces of extremely lame evil, not really knowing or caring what their motives were, and goes back to playing SaGa Frontier.