DeviousJinjo
1989
A soulful, loving grindfest that is so eclipsed by its sequel that it's no longer worth the time. Huge, ambitious, and clearly inexperienced. If you like Mother 2 and 3, then sure, give it a look. It's just not something you're likely to come back to over and over.
My first playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (there will be more) took over one hundred and thirty hours. I spent most of that time screaming.
I have complaints, make no mistake. The demo for Rebirth cooled me off so significantly that I almost started squirming about the fact that I had taken time off work for the full release. There were a few choice moments where unnecessary deviations from the original's storytelling, such as in one of the first battles of the entire game, left me sour and skeptical. I have read every Final Fantasy VII book, or at least some shitty fan translation thereof. I know just how bad ALL of the compilation stuff is, and even after what I felt was an adequate performance in Remake, I still had my doubts about how well the writing staff truly grasped their own story. Some of those minor changes made me question this, and at other times an overwrought orchestra drowned what should definitely be an emotional scene wrapped in golden silence, but I could not have possibly imagined the absolute mastery Rebirth has over the characters and tone of its source material.
The moment-to-moment character and scene writing in Rebirth is the best that Square has ever produced. I refuse to dilute that statement with qualifiers. It is as hilarious as it is impactful. It is a script that could only ever be written by someone who is in deep, sincere love with every one of its characters, as well as the quaint yet outlandish stupidity of 90's video games and everyone who loved them. It is a blatant refusal to tone down its freakish, lovable soul.
Rebirth is the best time I've had with a video game in almost a decade. It represents everything that anyone has ever liked about Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts II, Final Fantasy XV, or even Chrono Trigger. It is a non-stop landslide of delightful surprises, and it had me yelling aloud at what must have been close to once per hour. Its characterization is flawless, its music is divine, its visuals remain on the cutting edge, and for most of my seventeen-day playthrough I could not stop smiling.
I would be willing to name Rebirth my Game of the Year here and now, in March, by virtue of the writing's perfect audacity and unmatched playfulness alone. Fortunately for me, I don't have to pretend that gameplay doesn't matter. Remake's battle system was already the best Final Fantasy had ever seen, and one of the best in Action RPG history. In Rebirth it has been further improved by valuable tweaks to the various characters, new mechanics, and better encounter design. Considering that players spend probably a third or more of their time in Rebirth fighting, that's an obvious blessing.
In discussing the rest of Rebirth's gameplay activities, I'm going to play coy, as the surprises should remain surprises, but I will at least address the somewhat depressing presence of towers and map icons. To put it briefly and simply, they're fine. The concept itself may be played out, and some players may sigh in exhaustion at the very thought of them, but Rebirth's map icons are, for the most part, well-varied, entertaining, and unlikely to incite much tedium. They are distributed reasonably well and contain enough diverse flavors of interest to be worthy supplemental story material. Frankly, after finishing a marathon of tightly scripted narrative setpieces, it's nice to have some more "filler" activities to hang out with at one's leisure.
The greatest strength of the SNES and Playstation Final Fantasies was that they never lingered on any one thing long enough for the player to get bored of it. They were iconic, memorable setpiece parades, full of goofy, stupid minigames, bizarre sidequests, lovable characters, and eventually wild, confusing twists that online gorillas will fixate on in a way that is devastatingly literal and utterly oblivious to thematic intent. Many, including me, thought the exact cocktail represented here to be fully extinct. Having it served to me now, by largely the same people who wrote the recipe, roughly twenty years after I began to fear it lost, is rapturous. Rebirth has given me some of the most glorious highs of my entire gaming career.
For the first time since Final Fantasy X, I feel entirely satisfied with a full Final Fantasy release in the way I did when I was a child. It fills me with hope for the near future, and an absolute, unconditional confidence in the inevitable Final Fantasy X-3.
I have complaints, make no mistake. The demo for Rebirth cooled me off so significantly that I almost started squirming about the fact that I had taken time off work for the full release. There were a few choice moments where unnecessary deviations from the original's storytelling, such as in one of the first battles of the entire game, left me sour and skeptical. I have read every Final Fantasy VII book, or at least some shitty fan translation thereof. I know just how bad ALL of the compilation stuff is, and even after what I felt was an adequate performance in Remake, I still had my doubts about how well the writing staff truly grasped their own story. Some of those minor changes made me question this, and at other times an overwrought orchestra drowned what should definitely be an emotional scene wrapped in golden silence, but I could not have possibly imagined the absolute mastery Rebirth has over the characters and tone of its source material.
The moment-to-moment character and scene writing in Rebirth is the best that Square has ever produced. I refuse to dilute that statement with qualifiers. It is as hilarious as it is impactful. It is a script that could only ever be written by someone who is in deep, sincere love with every one of its characters, as well as the quaint yet outlandish stupidity of 90's video games and everyone who loved them. It is a blatant refusal to tone down its freakish, lovable soul.
Rebirth is the best time I've had with a video game in almost a decade. It represents everything that anyone has ever liked about Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts II, Final Fantasy XV, or even Chrono Trigger. It is a non-stop landslide of delightful surprises, and it had me yelling aloud at what must have been close to once per hour. Its characterization is flawless, its music is divine, its visuals remain on the cutting edge, and for most of my seventeen-day playthrough I could not stop smiling.
I would be willing to name Rebirth my Game of the Year here and now, in March, by virtue of the writing's perfect audacity and unmatched playfulness alone. Fortunately for me, I don't have to pretend that gameplay doesn't matter. Remake's battle system was already the best Final Fantasy had ever seen, and one of the best in Action RPG history. In Rebirth it has been further improved by valuable tweaks to the various characters, new mechanics, and better encounter design. Considering that players spend probably a third or more of their time in Rebirth fighting, that's an obvious blessing.
In discussing the rest of Rebirth's gameplay activities, I'm going to play coy, as the surprises should remain surprises, but I will at least address the somewhat depressing presence of towers and map icons. To put it briefly and simply, they're fine. The concept itself may be played out, and some players may sigh in exhaustion at the very thought of them, but Rebirth's map icons are, for the most part, well-varied, entertaining, and unlikely to incite much tedium. They are distributed reasonably well and contain enough diverse flavors of interest to be worthy supplemental story material. Frankly, after finishing a marathon of tightly scripted narrative setpieces, it's nice to have some more "filler" activities to hang out with at one's leisure.
The greatest strength of the SNES and Playstation Final Fantasies was that they never lingered on any one thing long enough for the player to get bored of it. They were iconic, memorable setpiece parades, full of goofy, stupid minigames, bizarre sidequests, lovable characters, and eventually wild, confusing twists that online gorillas will fixate on in a way that is devastatingly literal and utterly oblivious to thematic intent. Many, including me, thought the exact cocktail represented here to be fully extinct. Having it served to me now, by largely the same people who wrote the recipe, roughly twenty years after I began to fear it lost, is rapturous. Rebirth has given me some of the most glorious highs of my entire gaming career.
For the first time since Final Fantasy X, I feel entirely satisfied with a full Final Fantasy release in the way I did when I was a child. It fills me with hope for the near future, and an absolute, unconditional confidence in the inevitable Final Fantasy X-3.
Guess I originally decided not to log Birthright because I played it as DLC, but that's stupid.
Birthright is also stupid because all of Fates is stupid. As a player that is usually primarily motivated by narrative, I find it less offensive than Conquest and Revelation, but that's faint praise and so subjective as to be worthless anyway.
Birthright is also stupid because all of Fates is stupid. As a player that is usually primarily motivated by narrative, I find it less offensive than Conquest and Revelation, but that's faint praise and so subjective as to be worthless anyway.
1984
Adequate.
1981
One of Namco's weaker showings. There's stuff going on, but it's a little too slow and stiff and imprecise to shine like so many others.
1977
The fact that one of the best games of 1977 is basically a Pong inversion with a pretty coat of paint should give you a pretty good idea of where video games were at.
1981
Well... it's better than Space Invaders.
1985
Picking up Robotron's baton, but not running far enough with it.
1986
Lord, I hope you brought friends, because you are NOT supposed to play this solo.
1982
Like Balloon Fight, but earlier and worse!
Wow! A whole game that's only the good part of classic Megaman???
Feels less consistent than the first one, but whatever. It's pretty.
1980
Listen to the guy in here opining on this as a piece of serious Cold War commentary. I think he's probably onto something.
1986
Cute only gets you so far.
I was thoroughly unprepared for the excellence of Ace Combat... or at least the impression that AC5 would make on me as my first game in the series. I had been told by people whose opinions I don't... UNCONDITIONALLY trust, that this was "the one with the good story" and that it was generally the most beloved. Going in, I expected the story to be "pretty good", and I expected to play this one, be content that I had pretty much seen all there was to see from Ace Combat, and happily leave the other entries alone.
Ace Combat 5 is the sort of game that inspires such a love in you that staying unacquainted with its siblings feels almost disrespectful, as if you owe it to Ace Combat 5 to meet its parents and treat them with kindness. I have no intention of rushing these meetings, but this desire is so much more than anything Armored Core stirred in me when I first inspected it last year. Ace Combat 5, and I suspect the same of at least a few earlier entries, is a dream realized. It is the dream of every boy who encountered Top Gun in the 1980s, delivered with love, joy, and generosity. It is a dream that pervaded video games as early as Jet Rocket in 1970, and only unmerged from Star Wars in the late 90's. Ace Combat indulges a specific fantasy in ways that cannot be found elsewhere, and that's because Namco Bandai or Bandai Namco or Namcai Bundo or Bonklo Numbdy knows what they're doing.
With as much shit as people give that particular conglomerate for their assembly line anime tie-ins, it's easy to forget that Namco, patron god of Actually Fun Arcade Games yet lives, and the blood remains strong. There is one element of Ace Combat 5 (and I presume, other entries) that surprised me more than any other, and that is variety. I very much presumed that Ace Combat's missions would almost universally revolve around "Kill Enemy Planes Until I Say Stop." In truth it has dogfights, stealth missions, air-to-ground escort missions, survival missions, flight maneuverability challenges and more. At no point did I feel that missions were overly repetitive, or that the mission I was playing did not bring something interesting to the table.
I did, however, experience spikes in frustration. Certain missions do not communicate certain nuances of their objectives in the best of ways, and some defense targets are frighteningly stupid. Sea Goblin, you could fly LITERALLY ANYWHERE that is not along this narrow strip of magically appearing SAMs, and you would be just fine. You are in a helicopter. Also, I didn't experiment with this too much, but I suspect that most of the special weapons just kind of suck? Definitely feels as if there's room for improvement with designing around them or making them more interesting.
In some ways, the story exceeded my estimations, and in others it did not. I played, quite intentionally, with the English dub, and I was not disappointed. I kept expecting the voice acting to tip over into "hilariously bad" or "just seriously actually bad", but that never really happened. Most performances are awkward, yes, as is a lot of the dialogue, but for a video game dub from 2004, Ace Combat 5 has survived the rigors of time surprisingly intact. The awkwardness is endearing, and not particularly distracting. It has a strong soundtrack, good looking cutscenes for its time, and lands some surprisingly emotional punches. I won't act as though there aren't times when it feels like the story stands still a little too long, or like every story beat is explored to its full potential, or like the ending doesn't feel a touch anti-climactic, but the game invests players in its characters and in the concepts of its war story well enough.
Ace Combat 5 has been enough to give me a genuine fondness for a whole new genre of thing. While playing it, I watched both Top Gun and Top Gun Maverick for the first time each. I at once understood that Fantasy Flight Simulators should have always been a video game genre held in at least as high esteem as the racing game. Sooner or later, I'm going to play more Ace Combat.
Ace Combat 5 is the sort of game that inspires such a love in you that staying unacquainted with its siblings feels almost disrespectful, as if you owe it to Ace Combat 5 to meet its parents and treat them with kindness. I have no intention of rushing these meetings, but this desire is so much more than anything Armored Core stirred in me when I first inspected it last year. Ace Combat 5, and I suspect the same of at least a few earlier entries, is a dream realized. It is the dream of every boy who encountered Top Gun in the 1980s, delivered with love, joy, and generosity. It is a dream that pervaded video games as early as Jet Rocket in 1970, and only unmerged from Star Wars in the late 90's. Ace Combat indulges a specific fantasy in ways that cannot be found elsewhere, and that's because Namco Bandai or Bandai Namco or Namcai Bundo or Bonklo Numbdy knows what they're doing.
With as much shit as people give that particular conglomerate for their assembly line anime tie-ins, it's easy to forget that Namco, patron god of Actually Fun Arcade Games yet lives, and the blood remains strong. There is one element of Ace Combat 5 (and I presume, other entries) that surprised me more than any other, and that is variety. I very much presumed that Ace Combat's missions would almost universally revolve around "Kill Enemy Planes Until I Say Stop." In truth it has dogfights, stealth missions, air-to-ground escort missions, survival missions, flight maneuverability challenges and more. At no point did I feel that missions were overly repetitive, or that the mission I was playing did not bring something interesting to the table.
I did, however, experience spikes in frustration. Certain missions do not communicate certain nuances of their objectives in the best of ways, and some defense targets are frighteningly stupid. Sea Goblin, you could fly LITERALLY ANYWHERE that is not along this narrow strip of magically appearing SAMs, and you would be just fine. You are in a helicopter. Also, I didn't experiment with this too much, but I suspect that most of the special weapons just kind of suck? Definitely feels as if there's room for improvement with designing around them or making them more interesting.
In some ways, the story exceeded my estimations, and in others it did not. I played, quite intentionally, with the English dub, and I was not disappointed. I kept expecting the voice acting to tip over into "hilariously bad" or "just seriously actually bad", but that never really happened. Most performances are awkward, yes, as is a lot of the dialogue, but for a video game dub from 2004, Ace Combat 5 has survived the rigors of time surprisingly intact. The awkwardness is endearing, and not particularly distracting. It has a strong soundtrack, good looking cutscenes for its time, and lands some surprisingly emotional punches. I won't act as though there aren't times when it feels like the story stands still a little too long, or like every story beat is explored to its full potential, or like the ending doesn't feel a touch anti-climactic, but the game invests players in its characters and in the concepts of its war story well enough.
Ace Combat 5 has been enough to give me a genuine fondness for a whole new genre of thing. While playing it, I watched both Top Gun and Top Gun Maverick for the first time each. I at once understood that Fantasy Flight Simulators should have always been a video game genre held in at least as high esteem as the racing game. Sooner or later, I'm going to play more Ace Combat.