MaxTurbo
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Citizen Sleeper
2022
In 2017 Apple one of the world's biggest companies admitted to intentionally slowing down phone batteries. Referred to as "Batterygate" this action opened up a string of lawsuits that Apple were intentionally using 'planned obsolescence' to encourage people to upgrade their phones or fork out to apple for replacement batteries. Apple always denied this by all reports stating it was actioned to preserve the device.
Moving forward 5 years and we have Citizen Sleeper, an indie game made by a one person studio Jump Over the Edge. In this game you play as a Sleeper, an emulated copy of a person with no rights as part of a Essen-Arp Megacorporation contract. Through design without the right treatment your body will decay over time making you reliant on them in a form of indentured servitude. Planned Obsolescence of a copied person. You escape however ending up on the Eye, a self run Space station surviving after the collapse of the Megacorporation Solheim it and many companies were once part of. Somewhat lawless but welcoming, it's a perfect place for a Sleeper trying to survive.
The lore and world created here is a fascinating one. The way the game takes examples of situations like that of Apple as a form of consumer control but exaggerated into the extreme Cyberpunk Megacorp world really stands out. The characters you meet on this independent space station are broken, struggling, running and surviving but are a great cast to interact with as further world building about the outside universe is dribbled to you through these events.
The game actually plays akin to a visual novel mixed with a dice placement tabletop board game with a few light sprinklings of RPG stats on top. Each turn or cycle (as there is no day and night on a space station) you get several dice rolls based on your Sleeper's physical health condition. Each dice can be used towards actions, some immediate some building up charges to complete. Depending on the number result of the roll will depend on it's chance for success with a positive (5-6), neutral (3-4) or negative (1-2) outcome. These numbers can be bolstered with + values depending on the skill involved and you level in it such as 'engineering +1' to increase your chance. All along the station are different locations with different characters and events that can feed you, repair you or push along character quest lines.
How you choose to progress is entirely up to you after the opening couple of quests. It's a fairly open ended adventure with multiple different endings depending on who you interact with and when. This is both a positive and negative in my view having seen them all. Citizen Sleeper despite it's grand ideas for the outside lore of the world feels more like a slice of life story so each character questline is personal and don't interconnect with each other in anyway leaving everything feeling a little directionless. Additionally though your circumstances are in many ways quite dire it never feels that way in the writing which at times is a little too matter a fact. What writing there is though outside of that small caveat is excellent. The characters, their problems and events are all really interesting, I got rather absorbed into their lives and personal struggles which is why I went out of my way to see all the endings on offer.
My only real issue with the game is actually if you are wanting to see all events there is a lot of downtime mechanically. Initially every dice you use has to be really thought out in regards to survival / story progress balance but it soon becomes extremely obsolete meaning you are mostly just burning down clock cycles to get to the next story beat sometimes doing nothing. The thing is I am a board gamer and this reminds me a lot of a game called Alien Frontiers where you place dice for resources to build colonies. What I hope Citizen Sleeper learns from this is to use the full range of numbers for actions rather than high = good and low = bad. Have certain actions only available on a 1 or 2 etc. and smaller ways of knocking them up and down would have made the turn based element more strategic and interactive throughout.
When all is said and done though I had a really good time with this and the fact that it was made by mostly one person is pretty nuts. The wonderful character art, somber music and writing pushing this along make for a wonderful experience and I do look forward to the announced sequel.
+ Fantastic art, music and atmosphere.
+ Citizen Sleepers universe and lore.
+ Mostly excellent writing and characters.
- Dice mechanic could have been more interesting.
- Sleepers personal situation often felt detached from events writing wise.
Moving forward 5 years and we have Citizen Sleeper, an indie game made by a one person studio Jump Over the Edge. In this game you play as a Sleeper, an emulated copy of a person with no rights as part of a Essen-Arp Megacorporation contract. Through design without the right treatment your body will decay over time making you reliant on them in a form of indentured servitude. Planned Obsolescence of a copied person. You escape however ending up on the Eye, a self run Space station surviving after the collapse of the Megacorporation Solheim it and many companies were once part of. Somewhat lawless but welcoming, it's a perfect place for a Sleeper trying to survive.
The lore and world created here is a fascinating one. The way the game takes examples of situations like that of Apple as a form of consumer control but exaggerated into the extreme Cyberpunk Megacorp world really stands out. The characters you meet on this independent space station are broken, struggling, running and surviving but are a great cast to interact with as further world building about the outside universe is dribbled to you through these events.
The game actually plays akin to a visual novel mixed with a dice placement tabletop board game with a few light sprinklings of RPG stats on top. Each turn or cycle (as there is no day and night on a space station) you get several dice rolls based on your Sleeper's physical health condition. Each dice can be used towards actions, some immediate some building up charges to complete. Depending on the number result of the roll will depend on it's chance for success with a positive (5-6), neutral (3-4) or negative (1-2) outcome. These numbers can be bolstered with + values depending on the skill involved and you level in it such as 'engineering +1' to increase your chance. All along the station are different locations with different characters and events that can feed you, repair you or push along character quest lines.
How you choose to progress is entirely up to you after the opening couple of quests. It's a fairly open ended adventure with multiple different endings depending on who you interact with and when. This is both a positive and negative in my view having seen them all. Citizen Sleeper despite it's grand ideas for the outside lore of the world feels more like a slice of life story so each character questline is personal and don't interconnect with each other in anyway leaving everything feeling a little directionless. Additionally though your circumstances are in many ways quite dire it never feels that way in the writing which at times is a little too matter a fact. What writing there is though outside of that small caveat is excellent. The characters, their problems and events are all really interesting, I got rather absorbed into their lives and personal struggles which is why I went out of my way to see all the endings on offer.
My only real issue with the game is actually if you are wanting to see all events there is a lot of downtime mechanically. Initially every dice you use has to be really thought out in regards to survival / story progress balance but it soon becomes extremely obsolete meaning you are mostly just burning down clock cycles to get to the next story beat sometimes doing nothing. The thing is I am a board gamer and this reminds me a lot of a game called Alien Frontiers where you place dice for resources to build colonies. What I hope Citizen Sleeper learns from this is to use the full range of numbers for actions rather than high = good and low = bad. Have certain actions only available on a 1 or 2 etc. and smaller ways of knocking them up and down would have made the turn based element more strategic and interactive throughout.
When all is said and done though I had a really good time with this and the fact that it was made by mostly one person is pretty nuts. The wonderful character art, somber music and writing pushing this along make for a wonderful experience and I do look forward to the announced sequel.
+ Fantastic art, music and atmosphere.
+ Citizen Sleepers universe and lore.
+ Mostly excellent writing and characters.
- Dice mechanic could have been more interesting.
- Sleepers personal situation often felt detached from events writing wise.
Final Fantasy II
2001
I went into Final Fantasy II with trepidation. This is the Final Fantasy game everyone seems to hate. Lot of words out there on the Internet about having to whack your own party members in the back of their plush, malleable skulls until they learn to have better HP. Literal tomes about memorizing complex sequences of key words to further the story, like a child learning to navigate the English language. "Final Fantasy II sucks!" all my friends shout, "Play Alan Wake 2, god damnit!"
"No, no, it's not on disc! I have to play a 2001 remake of a 1988 NES JRPG!" I cry out, seeing no other option.
This game is nearly as old as I am, and like me, it has some good ideas, and a whole lot of poorly aged ones that repulse the youth. For example, every stat from strength and endurance to weapon and spell proficiency is increased based on use, which is where a lot of the advice about hitting your own party members comes from as it seems like an efficient way to simultaneously build your offense, defense, and curative abilities. This system and the criticisms of it have largely informed my perception of the game, but now that I have FFII's 20+ hour campaign under my belt, I can safely say it's all a little overblown.
I was able to get by just fine playing the game like normal, and never once did I feel like I needed to grind. It wouldn't surprise me if the WonderSwan remake - and by extension, the PlayStation port that I played - smooths over and expedites stat progression, but outside of faster gains to weapon proficiency, I couldn't find what exactly was changed and what remained the same.
It's not a flawless system, though. I did find that prioritizing weapons over magic was the best COA (course of action), as you're always building stats into your preferred weapon type whereas each individual spell needs to grow on its own. This makes late game spells like Flare and Holy remarkably weak starting out, incentivizing you to hold the X button and essentially auto-attack through every battle. Swords are also ridiculously good and have a far more varied pool to choose from, including those imbued with elements to bypass physically resistant enemies, and the health syphoning blood sword that initially appears to have meager stats, but which everything in the end game (including the final boss) is severely weak to. About halfway through the game you can safely ditch shields and start dual-wielding, and once you're flailing two blood swords around, there's really no going back. I'm surprised anyone has any trouble with this game's difficulty as I mostly found it to devolves into utter banality, and that's probably where I'd fault Final Fantasy II the most.
One other part of FFII's dated design that gave me trouble was the key word system. You have to "memorize" highlighted words in a conversation and then present them to other NPCs to gain new key words or open up events that progress the story, but god help you if you forgot one key word somewhere in the world. Imagine getting in your car and driving all the way to the grocery store to pick up a refreshing beverage only to find that you hadn't internalized the term "NOS Energy Drink" and are unable to proceed unless you turn around and go find the one random schmuck who can tell you what you want. This has happened to me a lot throughout my life, I think it's a memory problem (probably from drinking too much NOS!), and I don't like it when it's in my video games!
This key word system is at least interesting on paper. Final Fantasy II is far more narrative driven than the last game, so needing to bank highlighted words and present key items to NPCs makes you a more active participant in the story. I get why it's here, it just never materializes into anything valuable.
For all its faults, I don't think Final Fantasy II lives up to its negative reputation, or least this version doesn't. I had fun with it overall, even if I might prefer the original game a little bit more. Should you play it? No! I gave Lies of P a 2/5 and Castlevania: The Adventure a 4/5, I am disconnected from reality. I drench my brain in CMPLX6 and high quantities of disodium EDTA daily, you cannot hope to process video games the way I do.
"No, no, it's not on disc! I have to play a 2001 remake of a 1988 NES JRPG!" I cry out, seeing no other option.
This game is nearly as old as I am, and like me, it has some good ideas, and a whole lot of poorly aged ones that repulse the youth. For example, every stat from strength and endurance to weapon and spell proficiency is increased based on use, which is where a lot of the advice about hitting your own party members comes from as it seems like an efficient way to simultaneously build your offense, defense, and curative abilities. This system and the criticisms of it have largely informed my perception of the game, but now that I have FFII's 20+ hour campaign under my belt, I can safely say it's all a little overblown.
I was able to get by just fine playing the game like normal, and never once did I feel like I needed to grind. It wouldn't surprise me if the WonderSwan remake - and by extension, the PlayStation port that I played - smooths over and expedites stat progression, but outside of faster gains to weapon proficiency, I couldn't find what exactly was changed and what remained the same.
It's not a flawless system, though. I did find that prioritizing weapons over magic was the best COA (course of action), as you're always building stats into your preferred weapon type whereas each individual spell needs to grow on its own. This makes late game spells like Flare and Holy remarkably weak starting out, incentivizing you to hold the X button and essentially auto-attack through every battle. Swords are also ridiculously good and have a far more varied pool to choose from, including those imbued with elements to bypass physically resistant enemies, and the health syphoning blood sword that initially appears to have meager stats, but which everything in the end game (including the final boss) is severely weak to. About halfway through the game you can safely ditch shields and start dual-wielding, and once you're flailing two blood swords around, there's really no going back. I'm surprised anyone has any trouble with this game's difficulty as I mostly found it to devolves into utter banality, and that's probably where I'd fault Final Fantasy II the most.
One other part of FFII's dated design that gave me trouble was the key word system. You have to "memorize" highlighted words in a conversation and then present them to other NPCs to gain new key words or open up events that progress the story, but god help you if you forgot one key word somewhere in the world. Imagine getting in your car and driving all the way to the grocery store to pick up a refreshing beverage only to find that you hadn't internalized the term "NOS Energy Drink" and are unable to proceed unless you turn around and go find the one random schmuck who can tell you what you want. This has happened to me a lot throughout my life, I think it's a memory problem (probably from drinking too much NOS!), and I don't like it when it's in my video games!
This key word system is at least interesting on paper. Final Fantasy II is far more narrative driven than the last game, so needing to bank highlighted words and present key items to NPCs makes you a more active participant in the story. I get why it's here, it just never materializes into anything valuable.
For all its faults, I don't think Final Fantasy II lives up to its negative reputation, or least this version doesn't. I had fun with it overall, even if I might prefer the original game a little bit more. Should you play it? No! I gave Lies of P a 2/5 and Castlevania: The Adventure a 4/5, I am disconnected from reality. I drench my brain in CMPLX6 and high quantities of disodium EDTA daily, you cannot hope to process video games the way I do.
Final Fantasy
2000
Played as part of the Final Fantasy Origins collection for the PlayStation 1.
I take shots at the prices of old games in some of my reviews, but despite recognizing how miserable the market has become, I all too frequently indulge in a bit of Gamer-brained overspending. Typically, I get fixated on one specific series or platform and chip away at every title on my list until I'm satisfied. Recently it's been OPM demo discs and the PlayStation 1 releases of Final Fantasy, which initially started as simply wanting to pick up FFVII and FFVIII before spinning out to everything. Why yes, I spent 35$ on a sealed copy of Final Fantasy Chronicles despite being told repeatedly by people on this very site that at least one of the two included games (Chrono Trigger) is borderline unplayable. I'll never be able to afford a house, but if I buy enough PlayStation crap I can simply build shelter out of jewel cases!
This demented urge to own some of the worst versions of classic Final Fantasy titles also means I'm beholden to finishing them. No longer can I load a ROM of Final Fantasy, beat Garland, shrug and go "that's an old RPG!" No, this is a real game, it exists physically on a disc, I invited it into my home and that means I have formed a contract with it.
The PlayStation version - which itself is based on the WonderSwan Color edition of the game - makes several improvements over the 1987 original, most obviously in presentation, but also by restoring functionality to a staggering amount of spells that were outright busted and potentially harmful to the player. Look, I was also born in 1987 and didn't come out right, so I'm sympathetic. This is a major change that takes a considerable burden off the player, but Origins: Final Fantasy is otherwise faithful to the structure of the NES release, meaning it is no less tedious and demanding.
Encounter rates border on self-parody, and frequently difficulty spikes mean grinding is mandatory. God help you if you decide to skip the late game class upgrades, or worse, forgo having a white mage entirely. There's only one type of restorative potion in the game and it does not scale with you, and since phoenix downs didn't exist yet, Life and Life2 become your only means of reviving downed party members outside of towns. A significant portion of the Final Fantasy experience involves inching your way through dungeons, gaining a level or two, warping out and healing up in town, then running the gauntlet again. You make a bit more progress each time until eventually you're powerful enough to take on the boss.
I have a notebook full of grievances against this game, like how all your attacks miss for the first few hours until you can get better equipment, or how everything costs so damn much that you have to grind Gil using the hidden 15-Puzzle minigame (thank you, Nasir Gebelli.) Just like real life, I'm spending all my money on funny tasting potions so I can't afford a damn cottage. The final dungeon is excessive and brutal and locks you behind a point of no return that can only be circumvented with the Warp spell, so if your White Wizard dies you get to reset the console. I could go on, but all of this is part and parcel with RPGs of its era. It's not like I expected Final Fantasy to be anything other than this and going in knowing it would not be a fully "modernized" enhancement allowed me to sink in and enjoy the game for what it is and not what I would like it to be. And I think I... like this.
There were definitely some rough patches, but Final Fantasy kept me engaged the whole way, and I actually found myself eager to get home and play it. It's been storming out lately, and leaving the blinds open while rain patters against the window and Final Fantasy buzzes on my TV has become something of a comforting experience as my state absorbs the aftermath of California's hurricane. I also have to compliment Final Fantasy for having a functional buff/debuff system that matters and bosses who can be inflicted with status ailments, a layer of strategy that the series pushed away from at some point and trivialized to the point of near unimportance.
Actually sitting down with this game has also given me a greater appreciation for why it caught on here and how important it is to the development of the JRPG genre. Games like Ultima and Wizardy served as strong points of inspiration to Sakaguchi and his team, with mechanics like choosing your own class and elemental affinities having their roots in Western roleplaying games. It's not hard to see why it caught on here when so much of our own DNA is present, and it's hard to imagine what shape roleplaying games would've taken had it not been so successful. If I weren't an embryo when this first released, I bet I would've had a great time with it, warts and all.
Despite ultimately having a good time, Final Fantasy is still antiquated and difficult and tough to recommend. It requires patience and probably a guide (gotta love the obtuseness of late 80s roleplaying games), and it's certainly a good idea to stick to something like Origins or the Pixel Remaster than play the original NES release if you do decide to commit your time and energy to it. I'm glad I did, though. New Weatherby comfort game, for sure. Excited to get to Final Fantasy II, I hear everyone likes that one the most. Yup, nothing but love for Final Fantasy II.
I take shots at the prices of old games in some of my reviews, but despite recognizing how miserable the market has become, I all too frequently indulge in a bit of Gamer-brained overspending. Typically, I get fixated on one specific series or platform and chip away at every title on my list until I'm satisfied. Recently it's been OPM demo discs and the PlayStation 1 releases of Final Fantasy, which initially started as simply wanting to pick up FFVII and FFVIII before spinning out to everything. Why yes, I spent 35$ on a sealed copy of Final Fantasy Chronicles despite being told repeatedly by people on this very site that at least one of the two included games (Chrono Trigger) is borderline unplayable. I'll never be able to afford a house, but if I buy enough PlayStation crap I can simply build shelter out of jewel cases!
This demented urge to own some of the worst versions of classic Final Fantasy titles also means I'm beholden to finishing them. No longer can I load a ROM of Final Fantasy, beat Garland, shrug and go "that's an old RPG!" No, this is a real game, it exists physically on a disc, I invited it into my home and that means I have formed a contract with it.
The PlayStation version - which itself is based on the WonderSwan Color edition of the game - makes several improvements over the 1987 original, most obviously in presentation, but also by restoring functionality to a staggering amount of spells that were outright busted and potentially harmful to the player. Look, I was also born in 1987 and didn't come out right, so I'm sympathetic. This is a major change that takes a considerable burden off the player, but Origins: Final Fantasy is otherwise faithful to the structure of the NES release, meaning it is no less tedious and demanding.
Encounter rates border on self-parody, and frequently difficulty spikes mean grinding is mandatory. God help you if you decide to skip the late game class upgrades, or worse, forgo having a white mage entirely. There's only one type of restorative potion in the game and it does not scale with you, and since phoenix downs didn't exist yet, Life and Life2 become your only means of reviving downed party members outside of towns. A significant portion of the Final Fantasy experience involves inching your way through dungeons, gaining a level or two, warping out and healing up in town, then running the gauntlet again. You make a bit more progress each time until eventually you're powerful enough to take on the boss.
I have a notebook full of grievances against this game, like how all your attacks miss for the first few hours until you can get better equipment, or how everything costs so damn much that you have to grind Gil using the hidden 15-Puzzle minigame (thank you, Nasir Gebelli.) Just like real life, I'm spending all my money on funny tasting potions so I can't afford a damn cottage. The final dungeon is excessive and brutal and locks you behind a point of no return that can only be circumvented with the Warp spell, so if your White Wizard dies you get to reset the console. I could go on, but all of this is part and parcel with RPGs of its era. It's not like I expected Final Fantasy to be anything other than this and going in knowing it would not be a fully "modernized" enhancement allowed me to sink in and enjoy the game for what it is and not what I would like it to be. And I think I... like this.
There were definitely some rough patches, but Final Fantasy kept me engaged the whole way, and I actually found myself eager to get home and play it. It's been storming out lately, and leaving the blinds open while rain patters against the window and Final Fantasy buzzes on my TV has become something of a comforting experience as my state absorbs the aftermath of California's hurricane. I also have to compliment Final Fantasy for having a functional buff/debuff system that matters and bosses who can be inflicted with status ailments, a layer of strategy that the series pushed away from at some point and trivialized to the point of near unimportance.
Actually sitting down with this game has also given me a greater appreciation for why it caught on here and how important it is to the development of the JRPG genre. Games like Ultima and Wizardy served as strong points of inspiration to Sakaguchi and his team, with mechanics like choosing your own class and elemental affinities having their roots in Western roleplaying games. It's not hard to see why it caught on here when so much of our own DNA is present, and it's hard to imagine what shape roleplaying games would've taken had it not been so successful. If I weren't an embryo when this first released, I bet I would've had a great time with it, warts and all.
Despite ultimately having a good time, Final Fantasy is still antiquated and difficult and tough to recommend. It requires patience and probably a guide (gotta love the obtuseness of late 80s roleplaying games), and it's certainly a good idea to stick to something like Origins or the Pixel Remaster than play the original NES release if you do decide to commit your time and energy to it. I'm glad I did, though. New Weatherby comfort game, for sure. Excited to get to Final Fantasy II, I hear everyone likes that one the most. Yup, nothing but love for Final Fantasy II.
Final Fantasy IX
2000
I am not particularly enamored with the Final Fantasy series despite playing most of the numbered entries. Final Fantasy IX, however, is easily one of my favorite games of all time. Admittedly, a significant amount of my reverence for it has to do with the time and place in which I first played the game, and the state of mind I was in. Without dumping a bunch of personal details out on the internet, I will say that I was having to reckon with the loss of a loved one and was in a particularly poor place. Final Fantasy IX deals heavily in themes of death, especially with how the main cast of characters deal with the concept of mortality and their embrace (or rejection) of it.
I wasn't really expecting that. Most of my memories of Final Fantasy IX prior to actually playing it were watching a few friends struggle with the final boss and thinking it just looked "cool." Which, it is. But I think most people have forgotten this game, or lack the sort of affection for it that is typically heaped upon FFVII and VIII. It's a bit of an odd one, the middle child of sorts, stuck in that transition from Final Fantasy's golden years into the next generation of gaming. And yet, I think it's not only the strongest in terms of the story it tells, but in how it plays as well.
Sure, I've complained in the recent past about Final Fantasy's core battle system not really evolving, and it's true that IX doesn't make any attempts to break the mold. But the characters are so well-defined in battle and have a practicality to them that helps add some excitement to combat. You are greatly limited in how you compose your party, as whoever is active in battle is typically dictated by whoever the story deems the most important at the time. But Square tailored encounters and dungeons around who you would have in your party, which goes a long way in ensuring combat stays engaging.
I also think I have an inherent appreciation for Final Fantasy games that primarily adopt a more medieval aesthetic, especially when they work in some anachronisms. IX really feels like it's playing up the "fantasy" in Final Fantasy, and it's refreshing given how strongly the series leaned into high tech futurism after the success of VII. At the time it came out I'm not sure that's what people really wanted, but I sure as hell appreciate it. In fact, FFIX holds up better graphically than VII or VIII, or indeed many other games of its era. This is thanks in part to releasing so close to the end of that console generation, at a point when Square had a proficiency with the hardware and a team large enough to take on something so large in scope; but a lot of it is thanks to excellent visual design. The character designs are really some of the best in the entire franchise.
I think about this game a lot, and I really ought to go back to it for another playthrough. I wouldn't say FFIX helped me understand death or carried me through a hard time or anything so dramatic, but it did resonate with me more strongly than it would have if I played it in a vacuum. So maybe I'm a little biased, maybe I like it more than I should, but I do think it holds up incredibly well and is worthy of a second look if you dismissed it back in the day. You can also buy it brand new, physically, from Square's online store. That's crazy.
I wasn't really expecting that. Most of my memories of Final Fantasy IX prior to actually playing it were watching a few friends struggle with the final boss and thinking it just looked "cool." Which, it is. But I think most people have forgotten this game, or lack the sort of affection for it that is typically heaped upon FFVII and VIII. It's a bit of an odd one, the middle child of sorts, stuck in that transition from Final Fantasy's golden years into the next generation of gaming. And yet, I think it's not only the strongest in terms of the story it tells, but in how it plays as well.
Sure, I've complained in the recent past about Final Fantasy's core battle system not really evolving, and it's true that IX doesn't make any attempts to break the mold. But the characters are so well-defined in battle and have a practicality to them that helps add some excitement to combat. You are greatly limited in how you compose your party, as whoever is active in battle is typically dictated by whoever the story deems the most important at the time. But Square tailored encounters and dungeons around who you would have in your party, which goes a long way in ensuring combat stays engaging.
I also think I have an inherent appreciation for Final Fantasy games that primarily adopt a more medieval aesthetic, especially when they work in some anachronisms. IX really feels like it's playing up the "fantasy" in Final Fantasy, and it's refreshing given how strongly the series leaned into high tech futurism after the success of VII. At the time it came out I'm not sure that's what people really wanted, but I sure as hell appreciate it. In fact, FFIX holds up better graphically than VII or VIII, or indeed many other games of its era. This is thanks in part to releasing so close to the end of that console generation, at a point when Square had a proficiency with the hardware and a team large enough to take on something so large in scope; but a lot of it is thanks to excellent visual design. The character designs are really some of the best in the entire franchise.
I think about this game a lot, and I really ought to go back to it for another playthrough. I wouldn't say FFIX helped me understand death or carried me through a hard time or anything so dramatic, but it did resonate with me more strongly than it would have if I played it in a vacuum. So maybe I'm a little biased, maybe I like it more than I should, but I do think it holds up incredibly well and is worthy of a second look if you dismissed it back in the day. You can also buy it brand new, physically, from Square's online store. That's crazy.
Final Fantasy VII
1997
I didn't have a Playstation when I was a kid, but my neighbor did. Reflecting back on that time, it's easier now to admit that the only reason I maintained that friendship was because he had Crash Bandicoot 2, and my adolescent mind was utterly blown by that game. He also had a few demo discs, and on one in particular was a demo for Final Fantasy VII.
You know the one, I'm sure. It was the "bombing mission" that opens the game, the single most elegantly paced slice they could press on a disc to show off the first ever 3D Final Fantasy. Sure, it wasn't nearly as impressive to me visually as Cortex's giant disembodied head, but there was a certain tension to the events in the demo that was exhilarating all the same. By the time the guard scorpion was jumping down I was already sold. It wouldn't be until several years later that I got my own Playstation, and while my aforementioned friend had long since moved to parts unknown, I had a new friend who happened to have a copy of Final Fantasy VII he was willing to trade for my Virtual-On: Oratorio Tangram.
This is the story of the worst deal I've ever made in my entire life.
This was a big deal back in 1997. The battle drums of the console wars changed in pitch and timbre when 3D gaming entered the home, and one oft repeated cry from the Playstation side was that Final Fantasy VII was too big for Nintendo's antiquated cartridges. They weren't wrong, but the grandeur of FFVII extends well beyond how many bytes it is. The game is cinematic in ways previous gen titles could not be with its lovingly rendered FMVs, stellar soundtrack, and its complex story that was so rich it needed three discs to tell. It's an important game, but it's a game from 1997 during the middle of a massive paradigm shift in the industry. There's rough edges.
Take the battle system, for example. It's still built upon the same foundation as previous games in the series but augmented through the introduction of Materia. This is something the Final Fantasy games do quite often. They don't stray too far from what makes Final Fantasy feel like "Final Fantasy," but try to give each game its own mechanical identity. The problem is that the foundation they're building upon is so dull that battles almost always break down the same way no matter what game you're playing. Pick your best attack and spam it until the credits roll. Status ailments, buffs/debuffs, elemental affinities? All meaningless. Hell, you don't even really need to summon unless you want to watch the little cutscenes that play, which are actually pretty great but also unskippable and incredibly long, so you probably won't even do that for very long.
Materia allows players to slot magic, skills, and passive abilities into their weapons and level them up over time. This allows you to build each character however you wish, no matter how much their designs might code them as being specific classes. But since this progress is tied to the Materia itself, it feels like characters end up lacking an identity in battle. My party composition usually broke down to whoever I liked the look of, because the free-form nature of Materia keeps everyone on about the same level playing field. This could be a positive for many people, but personally I like each character to have a more defined function that makes weighing team composition strategic. Outside of Limit Breaks (which are admittedly cool and I like them a whole bunch), everyone just kinda feels... samey.
So what about the story? I mean, those are pretty damn important to a JRPG too.
It's fine. It's well known by now that it suffers from a very poor translation that makes some scenes and plot points needlessly hard to follow, but it's also far from the most convoluted story in the franchise. The bare bones of what it is I think is pretty good, and I like the characters quite a bit, but I also think it's in dire need of a retranslation. The atmosphere and settings are great, though. I'm a big fan of pre-rendered backgrounds and FFVII's has some of the best. There's a style here that I really struggle to put into words... Everything feels like it's a set or a diorama, and I think the effect is unintended, a byproduct of trying to emulate the sort of overworld style of previous games while embracing 3D. This is why everyone has hooves for hands, something I'm a lot less crazy about. The music also does a fantastic job of evoking just the right mood from the player, it's easily some of the best in the series.
There's also loads of minigames, something else Final Fantasy is known for. I think most of them play pretty poorly in this with the snowboarding minigame being perhaps the biggest offender of the bunch, but they're also pretty straight-forward and don't break the pacing of the game too badly. Something Square will screw up on both fronts in their next game.
I still have a lot of fondness for Final Fantasy VII. It was the first real RPG I sank my teeth into, and I respect it for what it is and what it meant for the industry. I also just don't think it's very fun to play. You know what is fun to play? Virtual-On: Oratorio Tangram. I was swindled.
You know the one, I'm sure. It was the "bombing mission" that opens the game, the single most elegantly paced slice they could press on a disc to show off the first ever 3D Final Fantasy. Sure, it wasn't nearly as impressive to me visually as Cortex's giant disembodied head, but there was a certain tension to the events in the demo that was exhilarating all the same. By the time the guard scorpion was jumping down I was already sold. It wouldn't be until several years later that I got my own Playstation, and while my aforementioned friend had long since moved to parts unknown, I had a new friend who happened to have a copy of Final Fantasy VII he was willing to trade for my Virtual-On: Oratorio Tangram.
This is the story of the worst deal I've ever made in my entire life.
This was a big deal back in 1997. The battle drums of the console wars changed in pitch and timbre when 3D gaming entered the home, and one oft repeated cry from the Playstation side was that Final Fantasy VII was too big for Nintendo's antiquated cartridges. They weren't wrong, but the grandeur of FFVII extends well beyond how many bytes it is. The game is cinematic in ways previous gen titles could not be with its lovingly rendered FMVs, stellar soundtrack, and its complex story that was so rich it needed three discs to tell. It's an important game, but it's a game from 1997 during the middle of a massive paradigm shift in the industry. There's rough edges.
Take the battle system, for example. It's still built upon the same foundation as previous games in the series but augmented through the introduction of Materia. This is something the Final Fantasy games do quite often. They don't stray too far from what makes Final Fantasy feel like "Final Fantasy," but try to give each game its own mechanical identity. The problem is that the foundation they're building upon is so dull that battles almost always break down the same way no matter what game you're playing. Pick your best attack and spam it until the credits roll. Status ailments, buffs/debuffs, elemental affinities? All meaningless. Hell, you don't even really need to summon unless you want to watch the little cutscenes that play, which are actually pretty great but also unskippable and incredibly long, so you probably won't even do that for very long.
Materia allows players to slot magic, skills, and passive abilities into their weapons and level them up over time. This allows you to build each character however you wish, no matter how much their designs might code them as being specific classes. But since this progress is tied to the Materia itself, it feels like characters end up lacking an identity in battle. My party composition usually broke down to whoever I liked the look of, because the free-form nature of Materia keeps everyone on about the same level playing field. This could be a positive for many people, but personally I like each character to have a more defined function that makes weighing team composition strategic. Outside of Limit Breaks (which are admittedly cool and I like them a whole bunch), everyone just kinda feels... samey.
So what about the story? I mean, those are pretty damn important to a JRPG too.
It's fine. It's well known by now that it suffers from a very poor translation that makes some scenes and plot points needlessly hard to follow, but it's also far from the most convoluted story in the franchise. The bare bones of what it is I think is pretty good, and I like the characters quite a bit, but I also think it's in dire need of a retranslation. The atmosphere and settings are great, though. I'm a big fan of pre-rendered backgrounds and FFVII's has some of the best. There's a style here that I really struggle to put into words... Everything feels like it's a set or a diorama, and I think the effect is unintended, a byproduct of trying to emulate the sort of overworld style of previous games while embracing 3D. This is why everyone has hooves for hands, something I'm a lot less crazy about. The music also does a fantastic job of evoking just the right mood from the player, it's easily some of the best in the series.
There's also loads of minigames, something else Final Fantasy is known for. I think most of them play pretty poorly in this with the snowboarding minigame being perhaps the biggest offender of the bunch, but they're also pretty straight-forward and don't break the pacing of the game too badly. Something Square will screw up on both fronts in their next game.
I still have a lot of fondness for Final Fantasy VII. It was the first real RPG I sank my teeth into, and I respect it for what it is and what it meant for the industry. I also just don't think it's very fun to play. You know what is fun to play? Virtual-On: Oratorio Tangram. I was swindled.
Final Fantasy VI
1994
I have a confession: I don't really care for JRPGs of the NES and SNES generations. Final Fantasy 4 and 5 did absolutely nothing for me, I found them to be slogs and nothing about them compelled me to persevere to the end game. Before going into Final Fantasy 6 I had to do a little prep to hype myself up, reminding myself that this was one of the best, topping many people's "best of" lists alongside Final Fantasy 7. I kept telling myself that I couldn't not like this one, it just wasn't allowed. I've already got too many bad opinions about 7 (I'll get to it...), could I physically survive having bad opinions about 6 too?
Well thankfully it turns out Final Fantasy 6 is a really good game and I don't need to worry about it. Ok, that's the review, byeee!
Ok, so my thoughts are a little more complicated than that, but only just a little. See, Final Fantasy 6 is in fact a very good game, and genuinely impressed me with its scope. There's nowhere this is more apparent than metric ton of playable characters the game drops on your lap. Everyone knows about this, it's like the one element of the game even the uninitiated have absorbed through osmosis (second only to suplexing a train.) You may even wonder as I did if such a bloated cast would make it all too easy to lose the thread on how characters fit into the larger narrative, or whether your team will be saddled with too many party members that lack any real utility. Well, you'd be wrong. Square does a surprisingly good job of keeping each and every party member relevant and engaging.
One of the ways they accomplish this is built right into the game's structure. You're never given a ton of characters and told to compose a team, at least not for quite some time. Instead, your party is mostly metered out to you as you progress through the story, with new and old characters swapping in and out as their own personal stories loop through the main plot. You get just enough time with everyone to know who they are, to invest in their story, and to build them into a useful member of your team. Each party member also plays substantially different from one another, drawing a clear line between classes (or "jobs" in Final Fantasy parlance), which is welcomed given the rudimentary nature of the game's core battle system.
Not much has changed there, unfortunately. It's still Final Fantasy, which means you have your basic elemental magics that can be safely ignored due to the under-reliance on affinities, and stat buffs/debuffs that might as well not even exist. Final Fantasy 6 is at its worst when it can be played like any other Final Fantasy game, which is to say mashing out the same attacks ad nauseam because the lack of depth means nothing matters. This is, however, a rarer occurrence here, and I found FF6's combat to be a lot more engaging than past and future entries.
The story is much more character-driven than other Final Fantasy games, which get too bogged down in contrivances to really resonate with me the way 6's does. Your party's bond is at the heart of the game, and everyone's little vignettes are compelling in their own ways. The opening is of course iconic in its own right, but the way the game closes out is just as indelible in my mind. I don't want to give a whole synopsis of it. By this point you're already familiar with the game and know, or you've managed to stay just as blind as I did and should go in unspoiled.
While it may not be my favorite Final Fantasy, it's still a damn good one and easily among the best. Despite my reservations and my bias, I can see what people appreciate about this game and find plenty to love myself. This is well worth checking out if it's somehow passed you by after all this time.
Well thankfully it turns out Final Fantasy 6 is a really good game and I don't need to worry about it. Ok, that's the review, byeee!
Ok, so my thoughts are a little more complicated than that, but only just a little. See, Final Fantasy 6 is in fact a very good game, and genuinely impressed me with its scope. There's nowhere this is more apparent than metric ton of playable characters the game drops on your lap. Everyone knows about this, it's like the one element of the game even the uninitiated have absorbed through osmosis (second only to suplexing a train.) You may even wonder as I did if such a bloated cast would make it all too easy to lose the thread on how characters fit into the larger narrative, or whether your team will be saddled with too many party members that lack any real utility. Well, you'd be wrong. Square does a surprisingly good job of keeping each and every party member relevant and engaging.
One of the ways they accomplish this is built right into the game's structure. You're never given a ton of characters and told to compose a team, at least not for quite some time. Instead, your party is mostly metered out to you as you progress through the story, with new and old characters swapping in and out as their own personal stories loop through the main plot. You get just enough time with everyone to know who they are, to invest in their story, and to build them into a useful member of your team. Each party member also plays substantially different from one another, drawing a clear line between classes (or "jobs" in Final Fantasy parlance), which is welcomed given the rudimentary nature of the game's core battle system.
Not much has changed there, unfortunately. It's still Final Fantasy, which means you have your basic elemental magics that can be safely ignored due to the under-reliance on affinities, and stat buffs/debuffs that might as well not even exist. Final Fantasy 6 is at its worst when it can be played like any other Final Fantasy game, which is to say mashing out the same attacks ad nauseam because the lack of depth means nothing matters. This is, however, a rarer occurrence here, and I found FF6's combat to be a lot more engaging than past and future entries.
The story is much more character-driven than other Final Fantasy games, which get too bogged down in contrivances to really resonate with me the way 6's does. Your party's bond is at the heart of the game, and everyone's little vignettes are compelling in their own ways. The opening is of course iconic in its own right, but the way the game closes out is just as indelible in my mind. I don't want to give a whole synopsis of it. By this point you're already familiar with the game and know, or you've managed to stay just as blind as I did and should go in unspoiled.
While it may not be my favorite Final Fantasy, it's still a damn good one and easily among the best. Despite my reservations and my bias, I can see what people appreciate about this game and find plenty to love myself. This is well worth checking out if it's somehow passed you by after all this time.
Final Fantasy IV
1997
After sinking more than a hundred hours into Rebirth, I know the last thing I should do is try to bite off more Final Fantasy. I've already had too much, I'm bloated on chocobos and moogles and nearly ready to burst, and yet I've been eyeballing Final Fantasy IV and thinking "I can handle it." Comparatively speaking, 23 hours of gameplay is light, downright brisk. Rebirth's after dinner mint... Why shouldn't I indulge?
Well, back-to-back negative reviews from mutuals - both of which abandoned the game - should be reason enough for me to pass, at least for the time being.
It's so over.
Or is it? I'm Weatherby, when have I ever listened to anyone about how bad a game might be? Especially for a game I already paid my money for. The cellophane on this unopened Final Fantasy Chronicles is coming off, baby!
We're so back!
It's probably worth pointing out up front that by going with the Chronicles version of the game, I am effectively playing the real Final Fantasy IV, which originally released stateside on the SNES as a port of Japan's easy mode. For babies. I'm not a baby, how hard can this version of the game be?
Turns out very, at least in fits and bursts. Final Fantasy IV is a very inconsistent game in a lot of ways, and I think a lot of this inconsistency is born from the unique space it occupies in the overarching trajectory of the franchise. The SNES allowed Square to do so much more than what they previously accomplished with the NES trilogy, especially in regard to story, but a lot of FFIV's mechanical features feel as though the game has one foot firmly rooted a generation behind. Things like a highly restrictive inventory is just unnecessary thanks to the SNES' expanded memory space, and the encounter rate is just as bonkers as it was on the NES, sometimes sending you from one daunting battle to the next with only a mere tile separating them.
Guest characters, something Final Fantasy II leaned on with its rotating fourth party slot, are commonplace in the early half of FFIV, and a some of them feel more like a hindrance, resulting in a lot of stretches where you need to nanny idiots like Edward, who has no useful abilities, low health, and straight up runs off screen when you try to heal him up. Likewise, you'll occasionally be gifted with guest characters that are too good, creating this pendulum swing of the game being "too annoying" and "too easy."
This combination of antiquated design elements and inconsistent party composition makes the early game a drag, and it's no wonder I ditched the GBA version around Mt. Ordeals back when I originally played it in 2005.
It's so over.
Final Fantasy IV's story also struggles in the early half of the game and spends a bit too long meandering around. It is interesting to play this right off the heels of Final Fantasy III as both games feature numerous character sacrifices, though the greater scope of FFIV means you'll get to spend more time with them rather than coming upon each character briefly before they like, chuck themselves into a furnace or whatever. Each death feels meaningful, which is why it's a bit upsetting that FFIV walks back most of them, sheepishly shrugging and going "I don't know, they lived I guess."
Thankfully, both the story and gameplay eventually find their focus, and once FFIV dials things in, I found that I was starting to have a really good time with the game. Turns out a stable party of well-rounded characters who share a clear and common goal is just what you need to get me invested, even if it may not address every single problem I had with the game up to that point.
By the time the party awakens the Lunar Whale and takes a trip up to the god damned moon, I was fully in it, and I loved the way the game handles the reveal of its true antagonist, Zeromus, who is less a singular consciousness driven by focused malice and more representative of the game's greater themes concerning good and evil, its presence in all men, and the cyclical nature of war and peace. I am a noted Necron defender, so the idea that the party has to do battle with something more representative of a thought or manifestation of man's own nature is my kind of thing.
Also, he's got a sick battle theme.
We're so back
Unfortunately, actually fighting Zeromus is another matter entirely. I thought the Cloud of Darkness was a motherfucker, but this might be the most I've struggled with a final boss in any Final Fantasy game. Apparently this guy can cast Meteo, Holy, Bio, AND Flare, but you'd never know it because he spends 90% of the fight spamming Big Bang over and over again. The solution here is to let Rydia stay dead as all of her spells will result in an immediate counterattack that operates separately from the fixed timer that dictates Big Bang. This also buys you better healing as Rosa only has to split Curaja between four characters instead of five. At the 11th hour, Final Fantasy IV deigned it necessary to saddle me with more dead weight, and the constant run back through several floors with high encounter rates and ~ten minutes of mashing through mandatory dialog is a steep price for failure, which unfortunately sucked a lot of the wind out from Final Fantasy IV's ending.
it's so over. literally, i am done playing this video game
Rating games in a series can be a little tricky, but I think I've more or less settled on a curve when it comes to Final Fantasy. I gave the original game a 3.5/5, which seems a bit high when you consider how approachable, engaging, and bombastic later titles are. All qualities I would assign to FFIV even if I think it spends a little too much time playing around in the protoplasmic puddle left behind by the previous three entries. That's why it's simultaneously the easiest of these four for me to sit down with, yet it's also a 3/5.
Maybe one day I'll check out the SNES version. I am genuinely curious if the easier difficulty curve results in a more evenly paced game, or if it simply makes combat dull and predictable.
Anyway, the next game has a protagonist name Butz. We're so back.
Well, back-to-back negative reviews from mutuals - both of which abandoned the game - should be reason enough for me to pass, at least for the time being.
It's so over.
Or is it? I'm Weatherby, when have I ever listened to anyone about how bad a game might be? Especially for a game I already paid my money for. The cellophane on this unopened Final Fantasy Chronicles is coming off, baby!
We're so back!
It's probably worth pointing out up front that by going with the Chronicles version of the game, I am effectively playing the real Final Fantasy IV, which originally released stateside on the SNES as a port of Japan's easy mode. For babies. I'm not a baby, how hard can this version of the game be?
Turns out very, at least in fits and bursts. Final Fantasy IV is a very inconsistent game in a lot of ways, and I think a lot of this inconsistency is born from the unique space it occupies in the overarching trajectory of the franchise. The SNES allowed Square to do so much more than what they previously accomplished with the NES trilogy, especially in regard to story, but a lot of FFIV's mechanical features feel as though the game has one foot firmly rooted a generation behind. Things like a highly restrictive inventory is just unnecessary thanks to the SNES' expanded memory space, and the encounter rate is just as bonkers as it was on the NES, sometimes sending you from one daunting battle to the next with only a mere tile separating them.
Guest characters, something Final Fantasy II leaned on with its rotating fourth party slot, are commonplace in the early half of FFIV, and a some of them feel more like a hindrance, resulting in a lot of stretches where you need to nanny idiots like Edward, who has no useful abilities, low health, and straight up runs off screen when you try to heal him up. Likewise, you'll occasionally be gifted with guest characters that are too good, creating this pendulum swing of the game being "too annoying" and "too easy."
This combination of antiquated design elements and inconsistent party composition makes the early game a drag, and it's no wonder I ditched the GBA version around Mt. Ordeals back when I originally played it in 2005.
It's so over.
Final Fantasy IV's story also struggles in the early half of the game and spends a bit too long meandering around. It is interesting to play this right off the heels of Final Fantasy III as both games feature numerous character sacrifices, though the greater scope of FFIV means you'll get to spend more time with them rather than coming upon each character briefly before they like, chuck themselves into a furnace or whatever. Each death feels meaningful, which is why it's a bit upsetting that FFIV walks back most of them, sheepishly shrugging and going "I don't know, they lived I guess."
Thankfully, both the story and gameplay eventually find their focus, and once FFIV dials things in, I found that I was starting to have a really good time with the game. Turns out a stable party of well-rounded characters who share a clear and common goal is just what you need to get me invested, even if it may not address every single problem I had with the game up to that point.
By the time the party awakens the Lunar Whale and takes a trip up to the god damned moon, I was fully in it, and I loved the way the game handles the reveal of its true antagonist, Zeromus, who is less a singular consciousness driven by focused malice and more representative of the game's greater themes concerning good and evil, its presence in all men, and the cyclical nature of war and peace. I am a noted Necron defender, so the idea that the party has to do battle with something more representative of a thought or manifestation of man's own nature is my kind of thing.
Also, he's got a sick battle theme.
We're so back
Unfortunately, actually fighting Zeromus is another matter entirely. I thought the Cloud of Darkness was a motherfucker, but this might be the most I've struggled with a final boss in any Final Fantasy game. Apparently this guy can cast Meteo, Holy, Bio, AND Flare, but you'd never know it because he spends 90% of the fight spamming Big Bang over and over again. The solution here is to let Rydia stay dead as all of her spells will result in an immediate counterattack that operates separately from the fixed timer that dictates Big Bang. This also buys you better healing as Rosa only has to split Curaja between four characters instead of five. At the 11th hour, Final Fantasy IV deigned it necessary to saddle me with more dead weight, and the constant run back through several floors with high encounter rates and ~ten minutes of mashing through mandatory dialog is a steep price for failure, which unfortunately sucked a lot of the wind out from Final Fantasy IV's ending.
it's so over. literally, i am done playing this video game
Rating games in a series can be a little tricky, but I think I've more or less settled on a curve when it comes to Final Fantasy. I gave the original game a 3.5/5, which seems a bit high when you consider how approachable, engaging, and bombastic later titles are. All qualities I would assign to FFIV even if I think it spends a little too much time playing around in the protoplasmic puddle left behind by the previous three entries. That's why it's simultaneously the easiest of these four for me to sit down with, yet it's also a 3/5.
Maybe one day I'll check out the SNES version. I am genuinely curious if the easier difficulty curve results in a more evenly paced game, or if it simply makes combat dull and predictable.
Anyway, the next game has a protagonist name Butz. We're so back.
Final Fantasy Origins is an impressive little collection that bundles the Wonderswan remakes of Final Fantasy I & II for the PlayStation, with a slew of quality-of-life improvements that make Final Fantasy's earliest entries more accessible to new audiences without cheapening their "old school" difficulty. About the only impressive thing Final Fantasy Chronicles does is introduce intrusive load times and slowdown to Super Nintendo games in the year 2001 and with the full space of dedicated CDs at Square's disposal. Astonishing.
I'm sure there's worse ways to play these games. I know my ears wouldn't be able to tolerate a full playthrough of Final Fantasy IV for the Game Boy Advance, at least, but Chronicles is still less than ideal. I didn't tear into the technical aspects of the game in my review of FFIV, but the amount of slowdown here is agonizing. Scroll through your inventory mid-battle and watch it tick by like molasses slowly pouring from the tap. I also encountered a somewhat frequent bug where Rydia's summons would appear for a couple of frames and then vanish, taking any ensuing effects or damage along with them. Granted, I have no (contemporary) frame of reference to say whether these problems are unique to Chronicles or simply part of the FFIV experience, but it definitely hampers the experience of playing this release regardless.
Chrono Trigger is a game I don't currently have the motivation to sit down and fully replay, but I did mess around in it for a while just to get a sense of what the Chronicles edition was like. Bad, it turns out! The load times are so disruptive to the pace of the game that I can't see myself bearing it for a full play in the same way I can FFIV. You do at least get a nicely animated FMV intro, but hear me out: you can just watch that on YouTube before starting an ill-gotten SNES ROM up in your emulator of choice.
Final Fantasy IV also gets an FMV intro, but uhh... uhhhhhh.... Square was respected for the quality of their CGI cutscenes during the PlayStation era, so what happened here? Was all their money tied up with Spirits Within?
There are simply better ways to play these games, and the only real value I see in Chronicles today is if you're trying to fill out a PlayStation 1 collection and are still in the "I don't want to spend a lot on old games" phase of what is sure to be a mounting problem that will ultimately lead you to financial ruin, like it has me. It starts with this and then the next thing you know you're eyeballing copies of Ehrgeiz and Xenogears and contemplating taking out a loan. I'm writing this review on a Chromebook from the back of my 2003 Toyota Avalon, which I live out of now because i bought too many video games, please donate to my patreon i need to eat i promise i won't spend it on Suikoden II thats not who i am anymore i've changed!!
I'm sure there's worse ways to play these games. I know my ears wouldn't be able to tolerate a full playthrough of Final Fantasy IV for the Game Boy Advance, at least, but Chronicles is still less than ideal. I didn't tear into the technical aspects of the game in my review of FFIV, but the amount of slowdown here is agonizing. Scroll through your inventory mid-battle and watch it tick by like molasses slowly pouring from the tap. I also encountered a somewhat frequent bug where Rydia's summons would appear for a couple of frames and then vanish, taking any ensuing effects or damage along with them. Granted, I have no (contemporary) frame of reference to say whether these problems are unique to Chronicles or simply part of the FFIV experience, but it definitely hampers the experience of playing this release regardless.
Chrono Trigger is a game I don't currently have the motivation to sit down and fully replay, but I did mess around in it for a while just to get a sense of what the Chronicles edition was like. Bad, it turns out! The load times are so disruptive to the pace of the game that I can't see myself bearing it for a full play in the same way I can FFIV. You do at least get a nicely animated FMV intro, but hear me out: you can just watch that on YouTube before starting an ill-gotten SNES ROM up in your emulator of choice.
Final Fantasy IV also gets an FMV intro, but uhh... uhhhhhh.... Square was respected for the quality of their CGI cutscenes during the PlayStation era, so what happened here? Was all their money tied up with Spirits Within?
There are simply better ways to play these games, and the only real value I see in Chronicles today is if you're trying to fill out a PlayStation 1 collection and are still in the "I don't want to spend a lot on old games" phase of what is sure to be a mounting problem that will ultimately lead you to financial ruin, like it has me. It starts with this and then the next thing you know you're eyeballing copies of Ehrgeiz and Xenogears and contemplating taking out a loan. I'm writing this review on a Chromebook from the back of my 2003 Toyota Avalon, which I live out of now because i bought too many video games, please donate to my patreon i need to eat i promise i won't spend it on Suikoden II thats not who i am anymore i've changed!!
Sonic Adventure 2
2001
A couple months ago, I decided to breathe some new life into my old, beat up Sega Dreamcast, and transferred its internals into a new shell. While I was up in them guts, I figured I'd go the extra mile and put in a PicoPSU, Noctua fan, and (most importantly) a GDEMU clone. I own three Dreamcast games on disc, they're all Sonic and they're all scratched to hell, and considering the longevity of Dreamcast disc drives, it did not pain me to rip that sucker out of there. Besides, an SD card opens me up to games I'd never dream of affording...
Anyway, I 100%'d Sonic Adventure 2 again. God damnit, why do I keep ending up here?
I explicitly told myself I would not, but looking at my childhood save file, I was maybe eight to ten hours of actual work shy of running through Green Hill, which I've previously unlocked twice on two different versions of the game (the Dreamcast original via emulation, and Battle for the GameCube.) It's not like I had something to prove so much as I hated the idea of leaving something undone, even if it meant feeding a Chao the same skeleton dog over and over again for three hours while alone in a dark room. Oh well, my time could not be less valuable.
I bring all this up because I'm going to say some fairly disparaging things about Sonic Adventure 2 - which for a lot of people sits in this exalted "sacred cow" position - and I just need everyone to accept that I've done my time with this game and feel pretty strongly about it.
Sonic Adventure 2 condenses Sonic Adventure's six distinct gameplay styles into three, and makes each of them more robust, which on paper sounds great. Sounds like something you'd do with a sequel, cut all the filler and build out from what worked... Only, I think adding more to the mech and emerald hunting stages makes them a total drag to play. What was once arcadey and enjoyable is now bloated and boring, sometimes outright frustrating. Sonic and Shadow get the best levels of the bunch, but given how often these brief bursts of fun are interrupted, does it even really matter?
Even setting aside my grievances with the way these modes are designed, I feel like Sonic Adventure 2 is just... sloppy. It has the collision detection of a cheap D-tier licensed platformer, with characters constantly juttering and clipping when making slight contact with uneven surfaces. Even flat surfaces are temperamental given how often Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles will catch on some 1 pixel tall seam. The camera is uncooperative, characters move inconsistently, and every part of the geometry feels like it's held together by Elmer's glue and tongue depressors. So much as brush a corner wrong and the game will shut off whatever complex calculation it needs to run to determine momentum. Having done this three times now, I can confidently say the worst part of the 180 emblem experience is fighting with the parts of the game that are unpredictable, like, you know, landing on a solid stationary platform and just falling through it.
This is all coming from the guy who frequently writes Labyrinth Zone apologia on Backloggd Dot Com, so I can't stress enough that my opinion on this shouldn't be taken as some condemnation of those who enjoy Sonic Adventure 2, or a statement that I'm more right for having a dissenting opinion. There's thousands of you and uh... I don't think there's even a dozen people that like Labyrinth. And hey, Sonic Adventure 2 isn't without its charm. I've previously praised the excellent soundtrack, which I remember owning once on CD (which also got scratched to hell), and though I hated the tonal shift SA2 made at the time, I think it's probably the best part of the game now. The voice clips cutting off, Grandpa Robotnik being put in front of a firing squad... it's not good, but it's good.
Unfortunately, it's not enough to bring me around on the game as a whole package, and I feel like the amount of hours I've logged both qualifies my dislike while calling into question my sanity. Sometimes you go for 180 emblems in Sonic Adventure 2 while playing Mario Party 6 while playing In Sound Mind while playing Shining in the Darkness. Sometimes you're just that kind of depressed, where you're glad you don't live with someone who could walk by your room and see you running through Mad Space and think "oh god he's spiraling." But it doesn't matter now. I'm finished. I never have to do this ever again.
Oh hey, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is on sale on Xbox...!
Anyway, I 100%'d Sonic Adventure 2 again. God damnit, why do I keep ending up here?
I explicitly told myself I would not, but looking at my childhood save file, I was maybe eight to ten hours of actual work shy of running through Green Hill, which I've previously unlocked twice on two different versions of the game (the Dreamcast original via emulation, and Battle for the GameCube.) It's not like I had something to prove so much as I hated the idea of leaving something undone, even if it meant feeding a Chao the same skeleton dog over and over again for three hours while alone in a dark room. Oh well, my time could not be less valuable.
I bring all this up because I'm going to say some fairly disparaging things about Sonic Adventure 2 - which for a lot of people sits in this exalted "sacred cow" position - and I just need everyone to accept that I've done my time with this game and feel pretty strongly about it.
Sonic Adventure 2 condenses Sonic Adventure's six distinct gameplay styles into three, and makes each of them more robust, which on paper sounds great. Sounds like something you'd do with a sequel, cut all the filler and build out from what worked... Only, I think adding more to the mech and emerald hunting stages makes them a total drag to play. What was once arcadey and enjoyable is now bloated and boring, sometimes outright frustrating. Sonic and Shadow get the best levels of the bunch, but given how often these brief bursts of fun are interrupted, does it even really matter?
Even setting aside my grievances with the way these modes are designed, I feel like Sonic Adventure 2 is just... sloppy. It has the collision detection of a cheap D-tier licensed platformer, with characters constantly juttering and clipping when making slight contact with uneven surfaces. Even flat surfaces are temperamental given how often Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles will catch on some 1 pixel tall seam. The camera is uncooperative, characters move inconsistently, and every part of the geometry feels like it's held together by Elmer's glue and tongue depressors. So much as brush a corner wrong and the game will shut off whatever complex calculation it needs to run to determine momentum. Having done this three times now, I can confidently say the worst part of the 180 emblem experience is fighting with the parts of the game that are unpredictable, like, you know, landing on a solid stationary platform and just falling through it.
This is all coming from the guy who frequently writes Labyrinth Zone apologia on Backloggd Dot Com, so I can't stress enough that my opinion on this shouldn't be taken as some condemnation of those who enjoy Sonic Adventure 2, or a statement that I'm more right for having a dissenting opinion. There's thousands of you and uh... I don't think there's even a dozen people that like Labyrinth. And hey, Sonic Adventure 2 isn't without its charm. I've previously praised the excellent soundtrack, which I remember owning once on CD (which also got scratched to hell), and though I hated the tonal shift SA2 made at the time, I think it's probably the best part of the game now. The voice clips cutting off, Grandpa Robotnik being put in front of a firing squad... it's not good, but it's good.
Unfortunately, it's not enough to bring me around on the game as a whole package, and I feel like the amount of hours I've logged both qualifies my dislike while calling into question my sanity. Sometimes you go for 180 emblems in Sonic Adventure 2 while playing Mario Party 6 while playing In Sound Mind while playing Shining in the Darkness. Sometimes you're just that kind of depressed, where you're glad you don't live with someone who could walk by your room and see you running through Mad Space and think "oh god he's spiraling." But it doesn't matter now. I'm finished. I never have to do this ever again.
Oh hey, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is on sale on Xbox...!
In Sound Mind
2021
"Curiosity killed the uncool cat, ya dig?" - Chad Ghostal
Stop me if you've heard this one before: a first-person horror game where your character wakes up in an abandoned building and has to solve paint-by-numbers puzzles while armed with a flashlight that has limited battery power.
In Sound Mind makes a poor first impression, its opening oddly lifeless for a game touting the collaboration of The Living Tombstone and presenting itself with psychedelic cover art. However, as I got my bearings in its first hour, hunting down a cassette tape that would whisk me away to its first proper level, I remained hopeful that the game would make good on its promise. I pet my cat before I left and got a trophy, "GOTY 10/10." Bad sign.
Protagonist Desmond Wales is as poor a therapist as he is a pet owner, inviting poisonous plants into his home and staring out the window while his patients doom spiral. Now you have to repair their broken psyches and give them closure while unraveling a conspiracy involving the highly psychoactive drug Agent Rainbow, which led to their deaths. What this means from a gameplay perspective is that each level centers around a specific patient in a location pertinent to them, such as... an abandoned grocery store. An abandoned lighthouse. An abandoned factory. An abandoned military base. This may all be the doing of Agent Rainbow, but each of these locations are drab, downright colorless both in aesthetic and flavor, occupied only by cookie-cutter enemies (of which there are three variants through the whole game) and uninspired puzzles.
Desmond's patients also haunt their respective levels, having mutated after succumbing to their inner-demons. You can't just shoot them like your typical fodder-type enemies and will need to employ more inventive methods to counteract them, with most of these encounters doubling as a means to solve environmental puzzles, like luring Max Nygaard - now a disembodied mechanical bull head - into breakable walls.
The problem is that much like all the other puzzles you run into, once the solution has been presented to you, you're expected to repeat it ad infinitum. Shining a light to scare away Allen Shore (nice Alan Wake reference) loses all its tension when you find yourself doing it a dozen different times, never once iterating on the mechanic after its introduction. The third level has you ferrying three CPUs between power panels to unlock doors, and by that point I became conditioned enough to know that would be my main method of progression through the next two hours of game. Everything you're tasked with feels like it was written out for you on a torn piece of notebook paper and stuck to the fridge, just a list of chores no more engaging than taking out the trash.
Speaking of trash: this game's performance. Something about open environments is incredibly disagreeable with the framerate, and unfortunately most of In Sound Mind takes place outdoors, so the game is constantly choking to death. It also has a tendency to checkpoint you in the middle of hazards, nearly locking me in a death loop once as I was stuck respawning on top of a toxic puddle while getting hit by an enemy with 30% of my HP remaining. I managed to wriggle my way out of that after multiple attempts, despawn the mob, and then ate a candy bar which made Desmond go "Nom~" in a cutesy voice. Almost shut the game off there.
And I wish I had, because In Sound Mind's technical problems ultimately resulted in the game becoming unbeatable. During the last leg of the final boss, all objects became non-interactive, something that permeated through several earlier saves and which could not be resolved by restarting the app or the console. Just locking me minutes from rolling credits, something it could've had the decency to do hours earlier. I don't normally rate games I abandon, but considering the conditions under which I did and how close I was at the end, I'm comfortable giving this a 1/5. Would've clocked it at a 2/5 before that.
We Create Stuff is an aptly named studio, because "stuff" is such a vague, "whatever" term for an end product that there's no promise of it being worthwhile. In Sound Mind is just that, a cobbled together collection of rote design elements scraped off the bottom of the first-person horror barrel, served up with no imagination, neither invested in saying anything or being fun, it's just stuff. Great job, guys.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: a first-person horror game where your character wakes up in an abandoned building and has to solve paint-by-numbers puzzles while armed with a flashlight that has limited battery power.
In Sound Mind makes a poor first impression, its opening oddly lifeless for a game touting the collaboration of The Living Tombstone and presenting itself with psychedelic cover art. However, as I got my bearings in its first hour, hunting down a cassette tape that would whisk me away to its first proper level, I remained hopeful that the game would make good on its promise. I pet my cat before I left and got a trophy, "GOTY 10/10." Bad sign.
Protagonist Desmond Wales is as poor a therapist as he is a pet owner, inviting poisonous plants into his home and staring out the window while his patients doom spiral. Now you have to repair their broken psyches and give them closure while unraveling a conspiracy involving the highly psychoactive drug Agent Rainbow, which led to their deaths. What this means from a gameplay perspective is that each level centers around a specific patient in a location pertinent to them, such as... an abandoned grocery store. An abandoned lighthouse. An abandoned factory. An abandoned military base. This may all be the doing of Agent Rainbow, but each of these locations are drab, downright colorless both in aesthetic and flavor, occupied only by cookie-cutter enemies (of which there are three variants through the whole game) and uninspired puzzles.
Desmond's patients also haunt their respective levels, having mutated after succumbing to their inner-demons. You can't just shoot them like your typical fodder-type enemies and will need to employ more inventive methods to counteract them, with most of these encounters doubling as a means to solve environmental puzzles, like luring Max Nygaard - now a disembodied mechanical bull head - into breakable walls.
The problem is that much like all the other puzzles you run into, once the solution has been presented to you, you're expected to repeat it ad infinitum. Shining a light to scare away Allen Shore (nice Alan Wake reference) loses all its tension when you find yourself doing it a dozen different times, never once iterating on the mechanic after its introduction. The third level has you ferrying three CPUs between power panels to unlock doors, and by that point I became conditioned enough to know that would be my main method of progression through the next two hours of game. Everything you're tasked with feels like it was written out for you on a torn piece of notebook paper and stuck to the fridge, just a list of chores no more engaging than taking out the trash.
Speaking of trash: this game's performance. Something about open environments is incredibly disagreeable with the framerate, and unfortunately most of In Sound Mind takes place outdoors, so the game is constantly choking to death. It also has a tendency to checkpoint you in the middle of hazards, nearly locking me in a death loop once as I was stuck respawning on top of a toxic puddle while getting hit by an enemy with 30% of my HP remaining. I managed to wriggle my way out of that after multiple attempts, despawn the mob, and then ate a candy bar which made Desmond go "Nom~" in a cutesy voice. Almost shut the game off there.
And I wish I had, because In Sound Mind's technical problems ultimately resulted in the game becoming unbeatable. During the last leg of the final boss, all objects became non-interactive, something that permeated through several earlier saves and which could not be resolved by restarting the app or the console. Just locking me minutes from rolling credits, something it could've had the decency to do hours earlier. I don't normally rate games I abandon, but considering the conditions under which I did and how close I was at the end, I'm comfortable giving this a 1/5. Would've clocked it at a 2/5 before that.
We Create Stuff is an aptly named studio, because "stuff" is such a vague, "whatever" term for an end product that there's no promise of it being worthwhile. In Sound Mind is just that, a cobbled together collection of rote design elements scraped off the bottom of the first-person horror barrel, served up with no imagination, neither invested in saying anything or being fun, it's just stuff. Great job, guys.