I’m a Final Fantasy XIII sicko so when I found out that Get in the Car, Loser! was heavily inspired by the divisive but unique 2009 JRPG, I raised a brow in curiosity. A lot of indie JRPGs are concerned with “fixing” the typical idea of the genre which has never grabbed my interest. Someone making something inspired by FF13, though? That is a decision. Call me a “l’cie” because playing that game would be my Focus.
Get in the Car, Loser!’s take on FF13’s combat sands off a lot of the extraneous math from the original game’s design and simplifies things, for the better I think. The lack of proper exploration that most JRPGs have makes GITCL snappier. There isn’t a lot of stat math, either. The game gets a lot out of a little and maybe it wears out its mechanics quicker than other RPGs but that’s okay because it’s also a shorter experience, clocking in at about ten hours.
The combat loop took some getting used to but once I wrapped my head around it, I liked shifting through the three boards the game gives you and then topping off a cycle with Grace’s Fate attack. There’s more customization and equipping trinkets to switch up a hero’s moveset is the most drastic (and dynamic) difference between this game and the FF13 that inspired it.
I didn’t like juggling elemental affinities, though. Too often did I restart a battle because I had a Ravage attack the same element as an enemy. On the positive side: healing spells being temporary worked as a good balance between the urgency of combat compared to the long-term strategy of a battle.
On that note, making the protagonist a support character (instead of a mainline fighter) is a nice twist on a JRPG trope. I guess maybe that’s why the story is so focused on personal problems rather than a big fantastic plot? I can’t say I like it, though. There is some cool lore in this game that feels very inspired by later Final Fantasy games, but most of the in-car dialogue is concerned with the anxieties of the characters rather than the plot at hand. I don’t mind a lot of soul-searching– road trip stories typically have their characters be introspective and reflect on things– but the balance is heavy on the contemplation side and not enough on anything else. A lot of the discussion is about queerness and a lot of it was stuff I’ve seen before. It’s took until Act III and Sam to examine her own problematic thoughts for anything to get interesting. The game also employs that “texty” ironic dialogue style unconcerned with correct punctuation and spelling and I am not the person for that.
The villains are modern fascists taken wholesale out of the real world. The game opens with some dickweed harassing Sam with a monologue you could read off of Twitter. I don’t mind these kinds of jagoffs being the villains in the story but it’s extremely blunt with it. The fascists worship the main villain the but the rest of the narrative doesn’t do a good job of tying queerness and fascism to the world-building in a way that feels like a wasted opportunity.
The game’s road trip theming and modernpunk setting feels distinctly inspired by Final Fantasy XV. I like how all the healing items are corner store food like samosas and bottles of iced tea. I like the general style of the game, too. The music’s great. It seems to take more from the Persona games than any Final Fantasy with its funk-soul flavour across many tracks. The vocal track battle themes quickly got stuck in my head and I’m also a big fan of the “Store ‘n’ Gas” theme with its psyched up production.
I complain a lot but this ended up being my favourite new game experience of 2024 and I this is still very much worth checking out even if you are not a FF13 goblin like myself.
Get in the Car, Loser!’s take on FF13’s combat sands off a lot of the extraneous math from the original game’s design and simplifies things, for the better I think. The lack of proper exploration that most JRPGs have makes GITCL snappier. There isn’t a lot of stat math, either. The game gets a lot out of a little and maybe it wears out its mechanics quicker than other RPGs but that’s okay because it’s also a shorter experience, clocking in at about ten hours.
The combat loop took some getting used to but once I wrapped my head around it, I liked shifting through the three boards the game gives you and then topping off a cycle with Grace’s Fate attack. There’s more customization and equipping trinkets to switch up a hero’s moveset is the most drastic (and dynamic) difference between this game and the FF13 that inspired it.
I didn’t like juggling elemental affinities, though. Too often did I restart a battle because I had a Ravage attack the same element as an enemy. On the positive side: healing spells being temporary worked as a good balance between the urgency of combat compared to the long-term strategy of a battle.
On that note, making the protagonist a support character (instead of a mainline fighter) is a nice twist on a JRPG trope. I guess maybe that’s why the story is so focused on personal problems rather than a big fantastic plot? I can’t say I like it, though. There is some cool lore in this game that feels very inspired by later Final Fantasy games, but most of the in-car dialogue is concerned with the anxieties of the characters rather than the plot at hand. I don’t mind a lot of soul-searching– road trip stories typically have their characters be introspective and reflect on things– but the balance is heavy on the contemplation side and not enough on anything else. A lot of the discussion is about queerness and a lot of it was stuff I’ve seen before. It’s took until Act III and Sam to examine her own problematic thoughts for anything to get interesting. The game also employs that “texty” ironic dialogue style unconcerned with correct punctuation and spelling and I am not the person for that.
The villains are modern fascists taken wholesale out of the real world. The game opens with some dickweed harassing Sam with a monologue you could read off of Twitter. I don’t mind these kinds of jagoffs being the villains in the story but it’s extremely blunt with it. The fascists worship the main villain the but the rest of the narrative doesn’t do a good job of tying queerness and fascism to the world-building in a way that feels like a wasted opportunity.
The game’s road trip theming and modernpunk setting feels distinctly inspired by Final Fantasy XV. I like how all the healing items are corner store food like samosas and bottles of iced tea. I like the general style of the game, too. The music’s great. It seems to take more from the Persona games than any Final Fantasy with its funk-soul flavour across many tracks. The vocal track battle themes quickly got stuck in my head and I’m also a big fan of the “Store ‘n’ Gas” theme with its psyched up production.
I complain a lot but this ended up being my favourite new game experience of 2024 and I this is still very much worth checking out even if you are not a FF13 goblin like myself.