Final Fantasy X Review

Happy new year! What, you didn’t think I was going to build up the pre-Final Fantasy X Playstation 2 without getting to the main event itself did you? You may have guessed, but I’m not exactly a final fanboy. I like some games in the series, and like other less. Where does X rank in? Well, I’m not going to tell you. Yet. That’ll be another article. For now, let’s just look at the iconic series’ first entry onto the PS2.

Final Fantasy X starts out with a flashback, where the main character asks you to listen to his story, while the camera pans across the party camping out in the ruins of a city. Then you cut to the main character, default name Tidus, playing the silliest sport since Quidditch. This turns out to be a flashback in your flashback so you can flashback while you flashback. Confused? So is Tidus, when he comes to in some ruins and gets rescued by scuba divers. Eventually, he ends up washed ashore on the island of Besaid, where he meets most of the party, including his love interest, and sets out on a quest to save the world from the terrible monster that destroyed his home hundreds of years ago. For all that it’s a cookie-cutter plot, there is some decent political intrigue going through this game, and mildly interesting twists which, of course, I’m not going to get into.

The characters are mostly meh, with Tidus being pretty annoying and bratty for a main character. Wakka’s got his Hawaiian accent, Kimahri’s all stoic, and Rikku’s almost painfully chipper. The real up note is Auron. Everyone says it, but I’ll repeat; Auron is a badass. He always wears those shades, carries that booze for all he’s worth, and is the only one who consistently calls all the other characters on their idiocy. There’s a lot of that going around in this game. The villains are pretty bland. Really, they just want to destroy/rule the world. Nothing much to see here, move along.

The gameplay is pretty solid. Battles are turn-based for the first time in a while for the Final Fantasy series, but the pace doesn’t slow down much because of the way all the enemies and characters are animated. They never stop moving, and do a lot more than just bob up and down. Anyhow, characters’ abilities are an interesting mix of class and customizable. When a character gains a sphere level, they can move one space on the sphere grid, a massive board-game-like map of abilities and attribute bonuses. They all share the same map, but locks at various points make it so characters are stuck in a particular role until the locks can be removed. So at the beginning of the game, there are distinct character roles, while by the end of the game you can mould your characters however you wish. It satisfies both types of players, and that’s a pretty hard thing to do.

The replay value of this game is pretty limited. Sure, you can understand what the Al-Bhed are saying if you collect the primers on your first playthrough, but that’s not much. The character customization system means that you’re going to be stuck with characters who look pretty much the same at the beginning of the game, so there’s not much you can do to change things up until late in the game. I’d say this game is a “once through, twice only for the most devoted of completion whores.” It’s a fun game and all, but let’s not kid ourselves, there’s no particular reason to play the game again except for nostalgia, which you either have or you don’t.

Final rating? Well, I’ll try to be fair. I don’t want to get hate mail over this, because I know some people really like this game, but I also don’t want to underrate this game. It’s well-made, represents the first RPG on the system that made extensive use of voice actors (Shadow Hearts had some, but only occasionally), and set the standard for the system in terms of RPGs. Well, enough talk, this game gets a 8.2 out of 10. It’s better than your average game, and certainly better than most if not all of the other RPGs that preceded it on the system, but in the grand scheme of things, unremarkable. Unremarkably good, but unremarkable nonetheless.

Quick Tip: You might be tempted go straight through someone’s sphere grid. You might want to wait around at some lock spheres until you get key spheres to open them, since you can get to some potent abilities or combinations of abilities by doing this.

Fun Fact: Wakka and Kimahri have the same voice actor; John DiMaggio. He also voices Bender from Futurama.

If you liked this game, you should take a look at one or more of these games. Final Fantasy XII has good visuals and voice acting, a system of leveling up that is somewhat similar, and a plot chock full of excellent politics. The whole Xenosaga series (Episode I Der Wille zur Macht, Episode II Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Episode III Also Sprach Zarathustra) gets you into the story really well with gratuitous cutscenes, and there is some degree of customization of characters in it as well. Tales of Symphonia has a similar initial premise for the story, and has a similarly staggering array of sidequests.

Ephemeral Fantasia Review

Continuing with our month of pre-Final Fantasy X Playstation 2 games, I’m going to talk about one that was not quite so good as one might hope. It was originally slated for Dreamcast, but got a port to the Playstation 2. Now, just because it was going from a system with less impressive statistics to one that was more solidly established, that doesn’t mean it would be a bad game. If you ignore graphics, like I usually do, it’s quite possible that great battle systems and stories can make such a game really great, even though it might not stand up to contemporaneous games. No, there’s a very good reason why Ephemeral Fantasia is a sub-par game.

The opening of the game follows our silent protagonist, Mouse, as he lands on the island nation of Pandule. Apparently, he’s there to perform at the princess’s wedding. His talking guitar-thing, Pattimo, reveals that the two usually engage in theft as well as performance. He’s met by female stri- oh, wait, that’s the female guards uniform? Ooookay… well, there’s a pervert somewhere in that outfit’s past. Well, whatever. You meet the princess, she’s all melancholy and doesn’t want to marry the guy, who totally can’t be a villain. No one with long silver hair is ever a villain in an RPG. Nope. So, you decide to save the chick, and then Sephiroth-wannabe freezes your behind in place, and when you wake up, you’re coming in on the boat you sailed in on. And it’s five days before the wedding, just like when you arrived. GROUNDHOGDAY! And so, you have to figure out how to make people remember previous iterations and so on. It’s not a terrible story, though it’s not very original even in the RPG world.

Well, now that we’ve got the story out of the way, let’s dive right in to where this game fails. Because of the time sensitive nature of the plot, you have a watch that ticks away the hours. An in-game hour occurs in an out-of-game minute. So, you’ll frequently have to reach spots in town or around the island in what works out to 8 minutes or less. That’s tough, but should be doable. What really makes things problematic is that the island, its main town, and all of its dungeons are set up like mazes, making it very difficult at first to figure out where you’re going. To compound this problem, you have to find pieces of the map to even be able to access a bird’s eye view of your location. So, the first several times you run around the island, you’re going to be late for everything. When the margin for being late is a matter of minutes, or rather seconds, being on time is extremely difficult. And because being on time is how you make the plot advance, things get dicey fast. The quests you have to do to change events on the island, unlock characters, and so on, are hindered by lack of hints, mediocre translation at times, and simple obscurity of what you have to do, quite apart from the necessity to be on time. And if you haven’t reach a certain point in the quest by the end of the week, all your hard work poofs with the next time reliving the week. AAAAAARGH! This is easily the worst aspect of this game, making things controller-breakingly hard in a seriously annoying way.

Now, the characters are actually decent. The royal guard Rummy, who meets you when you first get to the island, has a crush on another character, which causes her to try to murder a romantic rival, until you can stop her. Kyte, the fisherman (who wields fish as his weapon, by the way), has his tragic issues resulting from memories of his comrades who drowned during a mysterious ship wreck. There’s also the leader of the bandits, Galhint, who already knows about everything, but goes along with the script out of fear for his cohorts. Even the villains are pretty sympathetic, with the main baddy having a very legitimate reason for setting things up the way he had. Sure, there’s some characters who are a little bland, like Ano the magic scientist, who doesn’t do much. The characters who are well done, however, are pretty well done indeed. What is especially impressive is that each character has an almost entirely different combat style that makes it so no two characters use exactly the same strategies. The status effect user, who inflicts negative status effects on enemies, is useful against normal enemies, while the buffer character has some good skills for boss fights. There’s a character who has terrible physical skills, but has the best healing magics in the game. And so on. There are characters you may not like as much, but it is easily possible to use each one effectively.

Talking about the battles reminds me that the battle system is quite good. It’s a system similar to the active time battle system, where you wait for all of your characters to charge up before they can act. However, there is no simple “attack” option. Each character has physical skills that frequently deal damage, but can have other effects, like healing or stat buffs. Each of these skills has a different energy rating. The higher the energy rating, the longer it will take a character to act again in battle. And each skill levels up as you use it, which can unlock other skills, especially when the multiple skills are at certain levels. There’s also magic, which you learn at certain character levels, and cost magic points to use. You also have a party level, which dictates the max hp and mp of the characters, while character level dictates defense and attack power. There’s also an incredibly complex elemental system, but I won’t get into that too much. All you need to know is there are four elemental houses (so to speak) with three tiers. There’s an extra 13th element, which just adds to the confusion.

Replay value is another area where this game falls flat. There’s tons of characters to use, and a number of fun minigames that can only be played for a certain portion of the game, but there’s a lot of busy work involved in trekking around the island. Plus, you’ll have a lot of trouble getting through the game in the first place because of the difficulty resulting from poor design. So, I’d give this game “play it once with a walkthrough handy.” The beginning of the game is horribly difficult and annoying, but as you approach the middle and end of the game, there are some great rewards for you, in the story and the battle system. So, if you can get through the early bit without raging, the latter portion of the game is quite fun. The best way to do that is to follow a walkthrough pretty religiously.

So, yeah. This game’s one of them where the premise is pretty decent, but the execution ruins it. And really, it’s only because of one area of bad design. Still, the game’s major failing, the time based puzzles, is the focal point of the game, which means that you can’t really ignore it. So, right down to it, this game’s got a rating of about 7.2 out of 10. I enjoyed it a lot, but I referred constantly to a walkthrough, and even when I did, there were some frustrating parts. It gets as high a score as it does mostly because the battle system is really good, and the characters and story are adequate to good.

Quick Tip: Power Jump is the most useful skill in the game. It allows you to jump to any map square that you have found. You get it by having Rummy use diving kick, which she learns from using hi-kick, from hard punch. Get this skill as early as humanly possible.

How I Broke Game: I beat the final boss with Rinna and Lloyd-L. The loli with no good attacks and the princess with no good attacks or spells. To be fair, I wanted to use Rindrinna, but she froze the game every time. Probably a glitch.

If you liked this game, you should try one of the following games. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask is the same groundhog plot device done well, with better-designed puzzles and dungeons. Final Fantasy VI has a similarly large cast of unique characters, each of whom are quite usable in their own right. Okage: Shadow King is an unexpectedly good choice for those who liked Ephemeral Fantasia, because they both have their quirkiness, and both of them have a bit more challenge than your average mainstream RPG.

Okage: Shadow King Review

 

What would happen if you got Tim Burton to make a console RPG instead of a movie? Well, it would probably suck. But, looking at the pre-Final Fantasy X PS2, there’s one game that has a similar aesthetic to some of Burton’s works, especially “The Nightmare before Christmas” and “Corpse Bride.” That game is Okage: Shadow King. This game, though not hugely popular, has quite a vibrant fan base, making this a definite cult classic. But why is that? Well, let’s dive in and find out!

The story starts you off in the role of Ari, a boy with a weak presence. After his sister gets possessed by a ghost, causing her to speak only pig latin, Ari valiantly “volunteers” to sell his soul to Evil King Stanley Hihat Trinidad the XIVth. In exchange, Stan removes the curse, leaving in its place the lesser curse of a pink shadow. From there, Stan orders Ari to help him in his quest to regain his rightful title of Evil King by defeating lesser fake evil kings, so he can once again terrorize the world. It’s not your typical jRPG plot, though it does have some classic elements, like a princess who you have to save, collecting pieces of something or other to make a greater whole, and the fact that your main character is a chosen one with extra-ordinary powers. But… well, come on! Pink shadows? Saving the world for evil? This game’s plot is, well, quirky.

Quirky is a word that describes a number of things about this game, especially the characters. There’s Rosalyn, the expert hero who, because of a run-in with Stan, wields a parasol to hide her pink shadow. Or Linda, the Teen Idol Evil King, who takes over a whole town by, using her songs to make them idolize her. Or Epros, the Phantom Evil King, who uses playing cards as weapons and always talks in rhyme. He does it all the time. That’s right, those are all playable party members. Fortunately, though each of them has significant quirks, they rarely get annoying, because this game does not take itself seriously at all. You can’t help but chuckle at the characters, because, while their facial expressions aren’t as graphically sophisticated as in, say, Final Fantasy X, they just look funny. Stan is especially over the top, with puzzled, angry, and even default facial expressions looking just like a jack-o-lantern.

Right. Enough of that, on to the battle system. While you’re walking around on the map, ghosts will appear and try to chase you. If they catch your back, you’ll be ambushed, and if you catch their back, then Stan will ask you some questions, and if you get them right, he’ll attack the enemies for you. His questions are on the order of “How would you describe the bowel shaking terror that I inspire,” which sometimes leads to hilarious responses, even when you’re actually answering correctly. You might think that you can just avoid battles period, if you’re good, but the longer you go between battles, the faster and more frequent ghosts become, so eventually you’ll get caught. When you do, the system is pretty standard. Wait your turn, enter command, added to queue. Enemies and allies can act simultaneously, so it’s a little different, but  basically, your standard active time battle system.

You’ll want to get used to the battle system, because if you don’t (and even if you do, to some degree) this game has a wonky level curve. In most RPGs, you can advance to the next area immediately after defeating the boss, with only mild difficulty. If you take the time to buy new equipment, the next area will be almost easy. In Okage, if you get all the new equipment for all of your characters after beating the boss of an area, and then venture into the next area, you’ll be annihilated within around three battles. What it all boils down to is, level grinding. Get used to it.

Replay value is a tough call. You won’t see a sequel of this game, so you might play it again to get the most out of the world that you can. Plus, there is a relationship system hidden in the game, so you can experiment at finding different ways to do things. But, then again, the large amount of grinding might put you off, especially since there is no new game plus. I’m going to have to give this one a “play it again once in a long while, but not frequently.” It’s a fun game, but its issues make it so you really only want to relive the story, not the gameplay.

Well, I guess it’s time to get down a rating. Okage is a game that drags you into the world, and makes you sad when it’s over. Since there’s no sequel, you’ll have to settle for whatever the fandom has cooked up or replay the game. Really, it’s almost enough to make you forget how much of a pain power leveling was. So, as far as numerical ratings go, this guy gets a 7.6 out of 10. Just a hair above average (remember, 5 is the baseline for an RPG for me, so it’s something like 2.6 out of 5). I really like the plot, the characters, and the art style, but the gameplay is mediocre at best. Still, it’s fun while it lasts, and part of the thrill is looking forward to the next story segment. That might just get you through the grinding.

Quick Tip: During the part of the game when random encounters don’t happen (you’ll know when that is), you should take the time to try and find all the tiny gears you can. It’s annoying, but not as annoying as searching while ghosts blow you. Woo woo.

If you liked this game, you might give one of these games a shot. Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, has the same irreverent quality to it, and also has a pretty fun little world. Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is very much in the same vein. A tongue in cheek approach to RPG conventions, a look at the bright side of the dark side, and fun characters. Thousand Arms, again for a lot of strangeness and laughing at RPGs.

Dark Cloud Review

At the beginning of most console’s lives, it’s not entirely clear what that console is capable of. Like, how could it possibly be better than the last system? Then a new game comes out that really showcases the new capabilities, and you go “Wow.” For the Playstation 2 RPG fans, many would say Final Fantasy X is that game. They’ve got a definite point. But there were earlier RPGs on the PS2, and the one I’m going to talk about today is Dark Cloud. This action RPG looked, to some people, like “just a way to kill time until FFX came out.” I’d like to take a quick look at this early PS2 game, to see what it did in a pre-Final Fantasy X world.

Dark Cloud starts out with a cutscene showing the villain reviving the Dark Genie, who had nearly destroyed the world long ago. Cut to our main character, peacefully enjoying a village festival. The Dark Genie strikes, and the entire town and everyone in it is destroyed. Or are they? An old geezer named the fairy king tells you that they’re all just sealed in big rocks, and that you can free them and rebuild the world. The rest of the game is basically you going from town to town, meeting people as you rebuild their homes. It doesn’t seem like much of a story, until the very end of the game, when you’re treated to a kinda cool fairy tale style story. No, I won’t spoil it, just letting you know that there is a little more depth to this game.

The characters are… well, kinda bland. They get a little dialogue during the time when you meet them, and after that they’re completely undeveloped. It’s too bad, because you’d think that some of them would have the potential to be pretty interesting, like the literal cat girl, the moon rabbit mech pilot, or the genie. I guess you get a little bit of personality from their minor battle noises and their play style, but… yeah, not much going here.

The main game follows this flow. You go into a dungeon, find seal rocks (Atla) rebuild as you can, get a new party member halfway through the dungeon, all while upgrading your weaponry. The dungeon floors are randomized, meaning you could end up with the exit right in front of you. You need a key obtained by defeating one randomly selected monster though, so no luck manipulation speedruns here. The biggest issue is that you’ve got three separate gauges that you need to keep track of per character. Character HP, thirst, and weapon HP. When Character HP runs out, you’ll have to leave the dungeon or switch to a different character. When thirst runs out, you’ll start taking damage every couple of seconds. When weapon HP runs out, your weapon disappears. This is especially worrying since powering up your weapon is the main form of leveling up in this game.

Ah, yes, the weapon level up system. When you use a weapon to defeat enemies, it gains experience and eventually levels up, though you have to trigger this level gain. Each weapon can equip a certain number of “attachments” which get absorbed during a level up, permanently adding to the capabilities of the weapon. You can also “build up” weapons after meeting certain prerequisites (fire element 15, beast attack 10, magic power 7, etc.), which evolves the weapon into a stronger weapon with higher max values. Some weapons have special abilities, which you’ll want to add in to other weapons by “status breaking” a weapon and turning it into an attachment. It’s pretty well laid out, but if you want to get a really powerful weapon, you’ll have to put in a fair amount of grinding.

Combat in the dungeons is adequate. You’ll probably want to use specific characters for specific enemies, because each character has a form of attacking that help kill certain enemies but makes killing others really hard. There’s some annoyances in combat, like trying to dodge attacks and the lack of a guard mechanic. It does at least have a lock on feature, which is a good thing. All in all, it’s good enough, but not perfectly polished.

The other main aspect of the game is the town building, which works something like a puzzle, where you have to fit houses and things around the requests of the residents. This can get pretty tricky, when three houses have to be around one thing in a certain orientation. Still, a seasoned player will have these puzzles solved without undue walkthrough consultation.

And now to talk about graphics. Wait, what? No! The game has graphics, they work for what they were intended, seeing the game, and that’s all you need! It’s no Final Fantasy X, but who cares?

Would I play this game again? Well… probably not from the beginning. This game rates more like “why play it from the beginning again? Almost everything good about the game is still accessible on my old save,” on replayability. Still, you might pick it up to finish up that optional end dungeon.

Well, it’s been an interesting voyage into an early PS2 RPG. For better or for worse, a lot of RPGs take their cues from the Final Fantasy series. Dark Cloud, however, came out before Final Fantasy X, and so entered onto the PS2 with a clear field. Though it’s got some failings, it does a lot of things quite well. The final rating I’d give for this game is 8.0. It seems to be really uncomplicated until the very end, at which point the rather weak story kicks into high gear. However, the character whose psyche you get the most insight into isn’t the main character. He’s not even playable. But the weapon upgrade system is good, the dungeon crawling adequate, and the world building simple and interesting.

How I broke game: When I played this game, I got Steve and a durable weapon while going through the first dungeon. Pretty lucky, but who cares? Well, I upgraded Steve to Super Steve, and then, going through the final dungeon, got another Steve. Lol.

Quick Tip: When combining weapons with canceling abilities, the one that is already on the weapon takes precedence and remains, meaning that you need to add the good ability before you add the bad ability.

If you liked this game, you might want to look at the following games. Legend of Mana has a similar world building mechanic, a weapon-making system, and an action RPG system. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is just a great game all around, and has similar combat strategies and complex boss fights. Dark Cloud 2  is just Dark Cloud with a graphics update (big whoop), voice acting (… okay), a little more of a story, and polished mechanics.

Top 10 RPGs by Minigames

What is it that makes a great RPGs? Some would say that good story is a must. They have a good point. Some people would say that a solid battle mechanic is imperative. That’a also a good judge of an RPG. Some people might say that graphical sophistication is the hallmark of a good RPG. They’re wrong. But I think that one of the hallmarks of a fun RPG is the quality of the minigame or minigames found within the title. So this week, I’m going to do a quick special. I’m listing the top 10 best RPGs based on minigames.

Why minigames? Well, it doesn’t go back all that far. There’s only so much you can do with a snes game. In some Playstation RPGs, some extra space was available for a minigame. With the space for a minigame, came the opportunity to insert a game that, while fun, enjoyable, or addictive, would not merit its own independent release. Simply put, while one might want to play a casino game as a break from something else, most people would quickly lose interest if that was the only thing to do in a game.

What is a minigame, you ask? Well, for the purposes of this review, minigames adhere to a few principles. One is that a minigame features a different system than that found in the main game. This distinction means that some things are minigames only in certain contexts. For example, a real time strategy segment is only a minigame if the rest of the game isn’t real time strategy. Even if it’s the same genre, a different system still makes for a minigame. Like a monster breeding RPG in a standard RPG might count. Another rule of thumb is that a minigame must be repeatable, for a significant portion of the game. Something that only happens once, or you can only do until you leave a certain area for the first time, does not count as a minigame. That’s an event. Finally, a supposed minigame that is simply a way to get you used to various aspects of the controls used in the main game is really more of a training exercise. This type is common in a number of action RPGs, where you might have different rules than the normal game (limited swings, different targeting, unusual goals), but it still helps you coordinate your use of the controls.

So, without further ado, the list!

10: Any RPG with a fishing minigame as the sole minigmame. Usually these are just a little bit above a button mashing minigame, which are not included on this list because they’re hardly interesting. There’s soooo many RPGs that have a fishing minigame. I figure it’s because fishing games sell terribly on their own, so the only way to get them to sell is to bundle them with an RPG. For the sake of this list, figure that my example is Persona 4.

9: Any RPG with a standard casino game (poker, roulette, slots, blackjack) as the only minigame. Examples might include a number of the Pokémon games, but I’ll officially put Dragon Warrior VII as the example for the sake of this article. These games are fun, generally have some good in-game purpose –getting prizes— and usually are repeatable after you get to the casino. Still, they’re not very original, and there’s not much in the way of variety or exciting mechanics.

8: Breath of Fire III. This game is mainly about its fishing minigame, which deserves mention because it is a cut above most such games. In addition to detailed selection of rods and lures, fish swim around, will only go for certain lures, and fight back in various ways once hooked. This game also has a sort of town building minigame in the form of the faerie village. In the faerie village, there is a way to get a “casino.” The two games are High/Low and Number Guessing. The former is just like the boring half of a poker game where you’re allowed to double up, but the latter is essentially Mastermind, with better prizes the fewer guesses you use. One good minigame, one decent minigame, and one boring minigame put Breath of Fire III on the list, and above the generic examples to boot!

7: Final Fantasy X. Well, this game at least has a lot of minigames, so you’re likely to really enjoy one of them. I liked blitzball, but there’s also the chocobo racing game, and butterflies. Still, most of these minigames are mediocre, hence rating this game rather lower than Final Fantasy VIII, which has a very good minigame.

6: Final Fantasy VIII. Sigh. I’d really like to put this game higher, but it only has one minigame. Still, Triple Triad is an excellent minigame, with a fair amount of strategy involved, and a huge payout if you follow it religiously. There’s been some efforts made to make sure that having the best cards doesn’t automatically win you the game, which is refreshing.

5: Thousand Arms. While I’d hesitate to call the dating sim segments minigames—after all the game is supposed to be an RPG/date sim— there’s all the minigames involving the various girls. Blackjack, Super RPS (don’t ask), cooking, whack a mole, shooter, a warehouse cleaning game, something like tanagrams, and memory make an intimidatingly large list of minigames, and while none of them are groundbreaking on their own, adding them up means you’ve got a long list of adequate minigames.

4: Ephemeral Fantasia. This is one case where the minigames might actually be better than the main game. The rhythm game is pretty good, as are the drinking game and the domino game. The only problem with the rhythm game is the lack of songs. There’s only 6. Still, between the minigames, there’s a lot to like, even if the game itself is a chore to play.

3: Kingdom Hearts 2. Okay, this game has sooooo many minigames that it’s impossible that you don’t like at least one. Though it does have a lot of training style events that aren’t “true” minigames, it contains a huge number of legitimate minigames. Some of the highlights include the gummy ship segments, which received a HUGE improvement over the first game. While in the first game, you simply got from point A to point B or C with lasers blazing, in Kingdom Hearts 2, there are actually missions you can undertake, secret parts to be found, and points to be earned. The builder even got a bunch of cool parts. There’s all of the Winny the Pooh minigames, of which I personally enjoy the bouncing one most. There’s the cycle minigame in Tronland. The present game in Halloweentown, and last but… actually, probably least, the Atlantis singing game. This minigame is infamous mostly because it includes absolutely terrible songs, and mediocre voice acting. The game itself would be fairly inoffensive if it the sound were turned off, but in a rhythm game, that kind of defeats the purpose.

2: Xenosaga Epsiode I: Der Wille zur Macht. Well, this game has a large variety of minigames. The mech battle game, the drill game, the casino, and the card game. The first two are generally fairly forgettable, though they do have their fun bits. The casino is your RPG standard, more or less. But the card game is phenomenal. This is a card game that is at least as complex as the Pokémon card game, and has significant strategy involved. You can set up combos, or just pound away. The only real issue is that, once you’ve got a good deck, you’ll rarely lose against the computers, who only have one or two really good decks.

1: Final Fantasy VII. In my opinion, this is the real reason that FF7 is legitimately one of the best RPGs ever made. This game has so many minigames, it’s hard to keep track of them all. The submarine game, the snowboarding game, the rail-shooter, chocobo racing, even the somewhat lackluster minor minigames in the Gold Saucer. My only gripe is that I wish they’d let you play the rts game of defending Fort Condor again. Still, the minigames in FF7 were truly great, and make the game well worth sinking some extra hours into.

Threads of Fate

Okay, so next up on the list of games to review is… Threads of Fate! Woohoo! Wait, you’ve never heard of it? It’s also know as Dewprism. Still no? Well, I guess there’s some good reasons for that. It came out around the same time as Chrono Cross, and so it might have slipped under some people’s radars. That said, it does have its own issues. Without further ado, let’s dive into this under-appreciated action RPG.

One of the interesting features of this game is that you have two choices of main characters. Rue’s a guy on a quest to save someone very important to him, possessing bizarre shapechanging powers. Mint’s on a quest for revenge and world domination. Together, they fight crime! Both characters have some pretty interesting mechanics. Rue’s monster transformations drive his puzzling, and Mint uses magic spells to the same effect. Rue actually stands out a little as being on the boring side, compared to all the energetic characters in the game, which can be a little annoying. You kinda don’t care about Rue at all. Mint, on the other hand, is not a sympathetic character, but she’s still pretty fun in the way she acts. There’s a host of quirky characters in the background of this game, and you get to know a fair number of them pretty well, even some characters that might seem like fairly generic npcs. Overall, the characters immerse you in the game world, which is usually a plus.

The gameplay is super simple. Equipment is the only thing that increases defense and attack. Once you get the next piece, the old one is removed from your inventory. You level up the other two statistics hp and mp, by losing the relevant point. Get damaged to level up hp, use magic to level up mp. For an RPG, that’s about as simple as it gets. In a long game, that could really get annoying.

For better or for worse, Threads of Fate is not a long game. It’s really short for an RPG. Reeeeally short. I beat it twice in 18 hours, and I’m not one to speed run or skip side quests and stuff. Threads of Fate barely has any side quests, and I think a good speed runner could get through in about 4 hours, most of which would be dialogue. It’s a good thing that the game encourages you to play through twice, because otherwise this game would be too short by half. On the sliding scale from  “Do not WAAAANT!” to “The Only RPG you’ll ever need,” this guy clocks in at about “twice through, play it again for kicks, then to the dust bunnies with it.” It’s fun, even though Mint and Rue’s storylines don’t have much difference in their dungeons or anything, and the two paths together just about make up one very short RPG.

Don’t worry though. It’s also a platformer! Yay, horrible camera angles, precision jumping, and blind leaps! Seriously, I died more times my first time playing the game from missing jumps and running out of hp than from anything else. Most bosses only took one try. The platforming’s some of the toughest stuff in the game, because it’s not very polished.

Graphics? Who cares? It’s an RPG, graphics seldom make much difference there, I’m not gonna talk about it. That’s it. Game over.

My conclusion? Well, this game is not as good as some RPGs. It feels rushed, since Rue’s shapechanging mechanics are much less complicated and mostly recycle the monster specs, as compared to Mint’s magic, which has a whole system of colors and shapes. It’s almost like the developers finished Mint’s half of the game, called it good, but then realized that the game was too short, and inserted Rue’s section at the last minute. The simplicity of the RPG system attached to the game supports this reading. But, on the other hand, the well developed characters, and significant interpersonal relations argue for a well planned game, if one that was planned to have a small scope. My numerical rating for this game is 7.2. It’s pretty fun while it lasts, and you’ll want to charge right into the second playthrough, but even when you’re done with that, it leaves you wanting more, while at the same time knowing that it couldn’t deliver a better product if it did give you more of the same. It's not a great technical accomplishment, and the leveling up would get really old over a longer game, but it's just short enough a game that these technically inferior aspects don't detract too much from the game, but the game is too short, which is another problem.

Fun Fact: Ken Akamatsu was briefly engaged to do a manga adaptation of this game, which, when the game didn’t sell well, got repurposed into Negima!

Quick Tip: Don’t sell anything “Legendary.” If you give them all to the barkeep, he’ll make you power-ups, at the (relatively) low cost of around 50 of a certain monster coin.

If you liked this game, you might want to try playing one of these games. Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 are very similar in their basic combat set-up, and Sora handles quite a bit like Rue. Dual Hearts has a nice, encapsulated world like in Threads of Fate, and both are action-RPGs with a fairly simple level-up process.

Battle of the Valkyries

This week we’ve got a very special double header. I’m going to do the Battle of the Valkyries, and compare Odin Sphere to Valkyrie Profile! As a result, we’re going to run a little long, so I’d like you to consider this two weeks worth of JRPG Corner. Don’t look so glum! These two are both highly rated games! Just sit back and enjoy the show. Ragnarok will be here all too soon…

Valkyrie Profile is the story about Lenneth Valkyrie, who was incarnated into the world of Midgard by All-father Odin while she was not needed in Valhalla. When the final battle approached, she died in Midgard, and ascended to Asgard, forgetful of all her time as a mortal. But what of those still alive in the realm of men who still remember the girl Platina, Lenneth’s mortal shell? I’m not going to say any more, but most of the story revolves around the various einherjär that Lenneth recruits to fight in the war with the Vanir. Treated as individual stories, some of them are pretty moving. Especially Yumei’s and Gray’s. Or at least, those are my favorites. The overarching plot is not so great, and it takes a bit of work to make it actually appear.

Odin Sphere tells the story of the end of the world, as seen by five young people. Gwendolyn learns to accept the love of another while sacrificing everything for her father, Demon Lord Odin. Cornelius tries to regain his human form after a wretched curse turns him into a pooka, all the while making sure that his beloved remains safe from the shadows. Mercedes learns how to govern the faerie people, having to deal with a civil war as well as the loss of the magical cauldron that is the key to the apocalypse. Oswald finds meaning in his own existence through is love for another, defeating all who get in his way. And Velvet puzzles out the meaning behind a prophecy foretelling the end of the world. Each tale is a fully fleshed out story in itself, and together they create a metaplot that has some of the grandeur of Wagner’s famous opera, upon which the story is loosely based.

On the story front, the point has to go to Odin Sphere. Valkyrie Profile has some great moments, but the metaplot is fairly obscure, and isn’t even strictly necessary to play the game. In striking contrast, Odin Sphere’s metaplot is intricately linked with the individual stories of the actors.

Looking at the characters of Odin Sphere is obviously what you’re expected to do when playing the game. The whole of each chapter is devoted to looking at one of the characters and evolving them. Gwendolyn’s arc is excellent, but Cornelius’s is only so-so. Mercedes has some pretty interesting points, as does Oswald’s. Velvet’s is actually pretty lame. Some of the supporting cast is pretty cool, like Demon Lord Odin, Ingway, and Inferno King Onyx have their especially sneaky and excellent moments. Some characters aren’t as fleshed out, but the ones who are make pretty cool characters.

The characters in Valkyrie Profile are also the focus of that game, but there are some problems. It’s actually pretty rare to have them interacting with each other, and so a lot of the characterization comes out of the initial sketch involving them. A lot of these sketches are pretty good, but there’s not a lot of development, though how they fare once they have been sent to Valhalla ameliorates this problem slightly. There’s a few side characters that are pretty awesome, like Lezard Valeth and Loki, that magnificent bastard.

Again, the point goes to Odin Sphere, though by a smaller margin. There’s just a few more interesting characters, and more characters gain some development in Odin Sphere than in Valkyrie Profile.

Well, enough dwelling on story and other aspects. The G in RPG is game, right? So how good is the game play in Valkyrie Profile? Well, frankly, it’s excellent. In dungeons, you play a side scrolling platformer, with enemies that you can hit to gain the advantage in battle. There’s also crystals you can fire, which can freeze enemies or, if fired at a wall, create a step that you can jump on. Almost all of the puzzles in the game revolve around the crystal shooting, but beyond the simple uses listed above, you can make showers of crystals to jump on, crystal fragments that float in water, and combinations of these with other crystals to reach significant heights. The puzzles generally aren’t too hard, though tome take a little bit of thinking and a lot of experimentation. There’s a number of other good puzzles not based on the crystals too.

The battles in Valkyrie Profile are very different from in other RPGs. Instead of selecting the attack, magic, or whatever command for each character from the character’s menu, you just get one of the four shape buttons assigned to each character. Pressing that button causes the character to attack. By combining character attacks, you can juggle the enemy, or break its guard, or pound it into the ground. It is possible to cast extra powerful magic spells and use items from the menu, but that’s not the main way that battles are carried out. Still, the system is turn based, because you attack until none of your characters have attack actions left, and then the enemy attacks.

Odin Sphere has some interesting gameplay as well. Dungeons take the form of connected circles. Each of these areas loops back on itself, but has at least one exit leading to another such area. Most of them have enemies, which you fight in a real time style. You jump, fly, swing, and spin to avoid enemy attacks, and attack with the weapon of whatever character you’re playing. However, each attack depletes the Power bar, so some pauses are necessary to fight effectively. Plus, each character has a list of psypher skills, which are essentially magics that do various things, like turn your character invisible or release a powerful attack. There’s also a ton of items that you’re going to use. After you’ve defeated all the enemies in an area for the first time, you get a grade. This is directly based on how long you took to defeat the enemies, and how much damage you took. The less time, the better the score, and the less damage, the better the score. With a good score, you get more items as a bonus for completing the level.

The way you level up in Odin Sphere is pretty novel. Instead of experience, each enemy releases phozons when it dies. By pressing a certain button, you can suck them into your weapon, which increases the attack power of the weapon as well as charging the gauge from which psypher skill uses are deducted. Or, you can plant seeds that grow from a certain number of phozons into a fruit or sheep (yes, sheep grow on trees. Vegan mutton!). These foodstuffs level up your hit points as well as restoring hp.

The overall gameplay point goes to Valkyrie Profile. Odin Sphere has its charms, and the level up system is pretty cool, but Valkyrie Profile has more variety of experience, from puzzling to platforming to battling. Odin Sphere has a little platforming near the end, but no real puzzles.

Both Odin Sphere and Valkyrie Profile have item creation sections, so I’m going to take a quick look at these. In Odin Sphere, by mixing special alchemical base materials with living plant creatures called mandragoras, you can create potions that can be used to improve performance or damage enemies. But first, you have to have the proper recipe. Some of the most useful recipes are revealed early on in the game, but a few don’t show up until quite late. In Valkyrie Profile, you can transmute one item into another. By equipping one of two specific accessories on Lenneth, you can change what the transmuted item will be from the base. The basic transmutations are less powerful, the ones bestowed by the Creation Gem are moderately useful, and the ones opened up by the Creation Jewel are incredibly powerful. Some things can only be transmuted at one of the three level though. It’s a tough call, but I’d say Odin Sphere’s system is a little bit better. Creating the proper material takes a little bit of thought, and it progresses relatively evenly throughout the course of the game, whereas there is a big leap halfway through Valkyrie Profile from basic transmutations all the way to Creation Jewel transmutations.

Well, it’s down to replay value. Valkyrie Profile has three modes of difficulty, easy, normal, and hard. Easy’s kinda crummy, with limited characters, dungeons and endings, but normal and hard have different dungeons, and there are two different endings (three if you count the “game over” ending). With more characters than you can use in one play through, and an optional bonus dungeon after the end of the game, replay value for this game gets somewhere around “two times through and a bit more.” You’ll want to play through both hard and normal, and get both the normal and good endings.

Odin Sphere has four difficulties, though you have to unlock the final level. There isn’t much difference between easy, normal, and hard, except minor enemy power ups. But in the highest difficulty, Heroic, unlocked by beating the game and getting the good ending, your hp never increases. This means that you have to get really good at dodging attack patterns. It’s fun to try out, just to figure out the best way to beat the game without relying on higher hp totals. Oh, and if you unlock all of the apocalypse scenes, you’ll get a special extra scene. The end result is that this game gets “beat it once, then go for the challenge of Heroic mode.”

Valkyrie Profile wins the replay value point, just because there’s actually good story reasons to enjoy a second playthrough of the game. Odin Sphere is fun, and you can pick it up and fool around for an hour or two, but there’s nothing new to the game on a second playthrough except higher difficulty.

On to numerical ratings! Valkyrie Profile, despite its issues, is a very fun game to play. The overarching story may be mostly irrelevant, but the way some characters’ stories intertwine is very interesting. Plus, there’s a deep item creation system, lots of choices to make each playthrough, tons of characters that handle differently, and some pretty good puzzles. I’m going to have to give this game a 9.3 out of 10. It’s truly an excellent game. There’s occasional issues with sound errors or freezing, but it’s not too frequent. Also, didn’t mention it, earlier, but the voice acting is excellent. That’s relatively rare in RPGs, so savor it.

Fun Fact: Most of the characters are voiced by the same voice acting cast as the American dub of Pokémon. Meowth’s voice actress also does Arngrim. 0_0

Quick Tip: Keep every artifact. If you send a good einherjär to Valhalla each chapter, you’ll be fine, and the artifacts are frequently pretty good (though some are absolutely useless).

If you liked Valkyrie Profile, you might try one of these games. Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria, is great for nostalgia for the first game, though it’s not as good a game on the whole. Odin Sphere because it’s Norse themed and surprisingly similar. Star Ocean: The Second Story is also by Tri-Ace, and has similar item creation and action elements.

Now for Odin Sphere. It’s a really fun action RPG, with lots of complex storytelling techniques deployed in its execution. You know how I usually say that graphics are irrelevant to RPGs? This is an exception. The graphics in Odin Sphere are gorgeous. Hand drawn, vibrantly colored, and well animated, looking at this game does in fact enhance the play experience. Well, the overall rating for this game is 8.7 out of 10. Pretty good, but there’s some load time issues involved in this game. Also, when there’s a lot of enemies and effects on screen, the game experiences significant slowdown. I happened to like that feature, because it made for a method acting approach to the game. The characters are reluctant to go to the underworld, and so are you, because you know there’s a painfully slow boss fight at the end. But, objectively speaking, it is a problem with the game. Also, it’s a fairly repetitive game in terms of battles. One of my favorites, but it does have issues.

Quick Tip: Napalm is your best friend. Keep lots of it around, it kills bosses dead.

How I Broke Game: Well, I don’t know if this really counts, but I’ve beaten the game on Heroic mode. It was pretty easy, truth be told.

If you liked Odin Sphere, you might like one of these games. Valkyrie Profile, because, well, duh, it’s based on Norse mythology. Grim Grimoire, I guess;  it’s also made by Vanillaware, and thus pretty. Tales of Destiny, because it’s a 2d action RPG, though there’s less strategy involved in that game.