Final Fantasy XV: First Impressions

Final Fantasy XV is a game I've been playing lately, which is something I thought I would be saying 9 or 10 years ago, or never. Back when it was announced as "Final Fantasy Versus XIII". For reference, George W. Bush was still the president of the united states when this game was announced. Then we went  through the ENTIRE Obama administration, in the time it took for this game to be developed and then released.

That's a long fucking time to be working on and funding a video game. Like "The Last Guardian", it was one of those "vaporware" projects that became a running joke about how it would never be released. Both games came out in 2016. Both of those games now exist in a finished state and are in my house, and I still don't quite have the words to describe what that feels like. It's as surreal as if Half-Life 3 got a trailer and was announced for release in october this year. Even if I saw it on store shelves, my brain would still resist it. It can't be real. It's been the Not Real thing for so long. Surely this must be some mistake.


But it's there. It's real. I'm about 40 hours into it. I don't remember a whole lot, most of the characters are pretty unmemorable, and the game is too in love with open-world game concepts, without working to mitigate the more annoying aspects of those games(such as vast, empty spaces of no engaging content, and too-long trips back and forth between areas to cash in on finished quests.)

But I don't hate it. I want to play more. If nothing else, it FEELS like Final Fantasy, even if through a very warped modern lense. If nothing else, I'm glad Final Fantasy games really try to experiment with the brand.


That said, fuck whoever thought there should be a fishing mini-game. Fuck everything about that. Those are the Water Levels of mini-games.


END OF LINE

~A.H.

Final Fantasy X: Nemesis

Over the last year, I've spent 108 hours in Final Fantasy X min/maxing my team to defeat "Nemesis", the insanely high-level optional superboss. This is something I rarely if ever do in these types of games. I've come close a few times, but this is the first time I can ever say I haven't just beaten a game: I've annihilated it.

Via finalfantasy.wikia.com

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"Yes! I am the ASS-Assin!"

First "Ezio" from Assassin's Creed 2 gets into Soul Calibur V, a fighting game known for its bizarre cameos(from The Legend of Zelda, to Star Wars). Which I guess makes sense, since it's kind of a historical setting, and Ezio is a character from around the time DaVinci was still alive. Makes more sense from a context perspective than, say, Spawn at least.

But now he's getting a costume in Final Fantasy XIII-2, a futuristic fantasy game, and I am officially calling this weird.

Weird.

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Character Showcase: "Zargabaath"

Final Fantasy XII is not an exceptional product by any means. One of the most troubled development cycles in gaming history led to multiple rewrites, delays, shuffling of creative employees and at least one person who was so screwed up by the bureaucratic process that he became violently ill and stepped down from a producer role. It rips off Star Wars with less shame than any other story I've seen, and tries to hide its tracks by making its events as convoluted as possible. 90% of the recorded dialogue is heavy breathing. Its battle-system allowed zero input from the player, but the level grind demands were fucking atrocious. Basically you did nothing, and had to do nothing for a long damn time.

And you spent that time with a bunch of insufferable transvestites. There is one major protagonist who has some small charm, but he's surrounded by shitheads. It's the Left 4 Dead 2 of JRPGs. So hopefully now you can understand why this character showcase is for a minor background presence. Sometimes a character manages to leave a strong impression even when they don't have a lot of lines or even a substantial screen presence.

Character Showcase: Vivi

I consider myself a character designer by heart. In order to make this blog a bit less ranty, maybe I should sometimes talk about a specific character design that works for me. Why it works for me, how it compares to similar designs, and what we can stand to learn from them. It could be from anything really. A book, a movie, a video game. Something with at least some semblance of a narrative, or at least something featuring a defined identity.

It could be a spotlight for protagonists, or some of my favourite villains. Or maybe an under-appreciated background character. It won't always be very in-depth or long, but I can never underestimate my debilitating need to not shut up.

We'll start with a character whose small stature belies his significance to me:

Classic Friday: "We Summon Rock"

Square-Enix is releasing a rhythm-based music game based on music from the Final Fantasy franchise. Sounds interesting to me, since I'm a huge Nobuo Uematsu dork. Today's Friday, Classic was written before the keytar was added to these games, and before the Rock Band/Guitar Hero plastic instrument franchise fad died off(or was it murdered?). That said, I still prefer my idea: