Perceptions...

[EsquE]

The whole little FFTactics conversation got me thinking about some games that I initially disliked but came to love. Most of these games I played while I was writing for RPGFan and was thus playing with a more critical eye than I normally would. Playing them again just for fun was like playing an entirely different game...when I was reviewing I was so detatched from the experience that the fun was taken away. That's why I just stopped reviewing altogether...

FFTactics - Damn did the hate mail flow when I only gave this an 80%. Eventually I just cut and pasted the reply "How often did you get an 80% in school?" to the emails. BTW, I stand by all my reviews...critically that's what the game deserved. When I played it later just for fun I got totally lost in the story...I was able to look past the translation and just become emotionally invested in it. The gameplay as well became fresh as I was able to take my time and dig beyond the surface, find secrets and just enjoy it for what it was, not what it wasn't.

Breath of Fire 3 - Again, in the course of reviewing it...just plain painful to play. Almost a year later I picked it up again and enjoyed the hell out of it. Dragon genes, apprenticeships, the hidden depths of the story and artwork, FISHING!!! Even the flat out obnoxiousness of the lead before he grows up didn't bother me...it just felt right. (still, the hero shouldn't swing his sword with his eyes closed...EVER!!)

Thousand Arms - Same story...first impression was that the game was extremely gay and extremely annoying. I was looking forward to playing a genuine dating sim and wound up just wanting to tell the gals to shut up or make up their minds...giving it a second go I had a blast with it. A case of going in with pre-conceived notions of what I was getting, not getting that, and then refusing to even try and like what I got. Good thing I don't sell or trade in games too often...

That's all I can think of right now...anyone else give a game a second chance and surprise themselves?

[Tortolia]

I liked reviewing. Still do. I detested giving scores.

Generally if I'm going to play a game all the way through (and most of the RPGFan reviews I did were voluntary - the only games I was assigned were the Interplay/Bioware/Black Isle PC RPGs and Blaze & Blade), I'm going to generally enjoy the experience, and be able to pick up on the things I like.

This is supposed to be for fun, after all. Sitting there dwelling on the negative shit while playing just kinda tanks the experience. So most of my review scores were skewed upwards, even if I'd revise some of them down now.

[Nev]

No, but I'd imagine some of you guys remember my Star Wars Ep. III rant, most of which I had to reverse on seeing it again.

[Don]

FFT had a lot of technical flaws. The characters are poorly developed and die before you can find out anything interesting about them (Izlude/Dyceberg/Zalbag/Rofel/Kletian the list goes on and on). Beyond the starting 4 (Alma/Teta/Ramza/Delita) the only other character of significance was Wiegraf and even out of the 4 Alma/Teta are pretty poorly developed. The game system was simplistic and easy to abuse. I feel FFT was a lot like Grandia 1 where there is absolutely nothing redeeming about the game besides the combat engine itself, but somehow it's enough to get you past the game's other flaws. It's a game where that should have a low score if score is a summation of the parts, but somehow plays better than just the sum of the parts.

For the story, I don't know if I stated it before but I hate Ramza Beoulve. I know the game tries to make him as the real hero but there is no doubt in my mind the true hero of the war was Delita Hyral, not Ramza. He was unable to protect the one who trusted him implicitly (Ovelia) and pretty much left Ivalice to rot because he saved the world. Ramza, to me, is a lot like Squall, a character whose ends is supposed to justify the means. We're supposed to believe he's a great guy who did everything to save Ivalice because he killed 8 Zodiac Beasts with one hand tied behind his back, but if you look at what Ramza actually did, he pretty much just go one area to another killing random people that happened to disagree with him and doing absolutely nothing about the behind-the-scenes stuff (he didn't even stop Dyceberg, just happened to be at home just went Zalbag conveniently found out Dyceberg was behind all this).

As for BoF3 and Thousand Arms, I didn't find either enjoyable. I guess in my case for TA I already know dating sims suck so I wasn't expecting much out of it. TA is a game that seems to exist just for being a parody of RPG themes, and while it's pretty funny, I don't think that's enough to call it substance.

I don't think there's a game where I changed my mind from playing it a second time. If I don't like it the first time, I'm not going to like it a second time, either. I also play very few games more than once.

[SineSwiper]

Ahh, bask in Don Wang's negativity...

[Eric]

Don plays the devil's advocate. I love him for it. :p

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, but you get the idea that he's loathing every single game he plays. "God, this game sucks sooooo bad, but I must continue to play it in the name of science." :)

[Eric]

He's like the Simon of video game reviews.

[Julius Seeker]

Well, my opinion didn't change on Breath of Fire III, I enjoyed the game until the final battle. I didn't replay the game after my first run through. It was one that I felt had its ups and downs.

Final Fantasy Tactics; on character development, I didn't feel it was very necessary for this game. Also, as far as the story goes, Ramza is a hero for stopping a conspiracy set up by the church to take over the nation. Final Fantasy 8, I do not understand why you think a character has to be a kind hearted extrovert in order to be powerful. One major theme of the story is people being pushed through destiny (Squall in particular), the title of the opening song Liberi Fatali translates from Latin to Children of Destiny. Who pushes Squall? Cid Kramer, Edea (unpossessed), and Ellone. He was essentially their weapon to use against The Sorceress (Ultimecia) who they knew was coming (you find out why in the ending). On the story of Ultimecia:

1) The Sorceress lineage began deep in the past after the defeat of a God named Hyne, he split his powers up among the sorceresses. When a sorceress dies, she passes her power onto another.

2) Kind of like Hilander, the sorceress lineage eventually became smaller until only two remained, Adel and Edea.

3) During Laguna's time, Adel had dissappeared from history, so Adel's power was lost to Ultimecia and Ultimecia could not gain all the power of the God Hyne (just as none of the immortals in Hilander could gain all the power if other immortals were locked in suspended animation)

4) Ellone is a girl who can send peoples consciousnesses back through time.

5) Dr. Odine studied Ellone built a machine which would mimic her ability, and he had it built by before the main part of the story.

6) Ultimecia used a future incarnation of the machine to send herself back through time, unfortunately for her, the machine could only go so far back as to when the first model had been completed. So she went back and possessed Edea.

7) She began searching for Ellone, the girl who the machine was based on, and one who could send her back in time far enough to reach Adel.

At some point though, Adel had been located by Ultimecia. Adel was sealed (in suspended animation) in a tomb in outerspace which was guarded by a field which eliminated all magic.

9) Ultimecia then gave orders to Seifer (after the battle in Galbadia garden on disk 2) to trigger a Lunar Cry at a specific time when Adels Tomb could be knocked from space to the Earth.

10) At the same time, Ultimecia who had possessed Rinoa, went into outer space and actually unlocked Adel's tomb, allowing her consciousness to pass through into Adel. So Ultmecia awoke in Adel.

11) Rinoa managed to get back alive, so in the final scene of disk 3, Ultimecia in Adel's body instead began to absorb Rinoa but Adel was defeated before that could occur.

12) At this point, Ultimecia possessed Rinoa again, and Ellone sent her consciousness back in time to when Adel was younger. Immediately, Ultimecia cast the spell Time Compression which allowed material objects to move through time.

13) Squall and SeeD lept into the time compression vortex and followed Ultimecia to the future for the final battle.

[Don]

I'm deeply bothered by illogical justification to the plot more than anything else. It's one thing plot in a fantasy or whatever setting doesn't have to make sense (i.e. monsters come out from the Moon, new boss time!) but it has to be at least logical.

Ramza had the power to expose the whole Zodiac Brave Story but he did not. If what he really wanted is truth he should've just drag the carcass of one of the many Zodiac Beasts he killed to show people that this is actually what was happening instead of being a fugetive and conveniently killing every single person that went after him because of that (Meliadoul is the only one who went after him and didn't die because she joined at the end). The theme of FFT is that Ivalice is basicaly one big lie with everyone double crossing or even triple crossing each other, and Ramza did nothing but perpetuate this lie even more. He obviously had no clue who's actually going to take care of this messed up place so he just left Ivalice to rot. Don't forget the game even says it was Delita who led Ivalice to a long and peaceful reign. Yeah he backstabbed just about everyone to get there but he was the one who solved all the problems. Ramza's just content he took out all these supernatural beings and then happily retire/disappear.

[Nev]

Yeah, but you get the idea that he's loathing every single game he plays. "God, this game sucks sooooo bad, but I must continue to play it in the name of science."

That's pretty funny. BTW, Eric, who's Simon?

[Don]

Yeah, but you get the idea that he's loathing every single game he plays. "God, this game sucks sooooo bad, but I must continue to play it in the name of science."

Nah, there's always something redeeming about the game I play, otherwise I wouldn't play them. After Beyond the Beyond I stopped playing a game for the sake of finding out how bad a game can possibly get.

[Julius Seeker]

Simon is a British guy that makes fun of everyone on the American version of Idol. He kicks almost as much ass as the Don (Donald Trump).

[Nev]

Oh...Simon Cowell.

[Zeus]

That's all I can think of right now...anyone else give a game a second chance and surprise themselves?

Two that I can think of initially: Castlevania 64 and Kingdom Hearts. When I first played both, they pissed me off inexplicably. Castlevania because the camera was god-awful and that ledge grabbing in the beginning of the first level was atrocious. But once you got past them (I did after I came back to it), the game was quite good and you learned how to get past the camera issues. With Kingdom Hearts, the story and premise was always fantastic, but the fighting was very simplistic and boring and the camera looked like it was attached to your back and gave you NO view. But then you get used to it and you see just how cool the story is and how neat some of the fights really are. You have things to deal with, but you learn to overlook them and just enjoy the game.

Never worked with FF7 though, could never bring myself to pick that one up again :-D

[SineSwiper]

The entire history of the Nintendo 64 was camera issues. Sometimes, I wondered why they even bothered with 3D so much.

[Eric]

The entire history of the Nintendo 64 was camera issues. Sometimes, I wondered why they even bothered with 3D so much.

CRIKEY! My name is Eric, and I'm out here in the beautiful jungle formerly known as The Otherworlds Shrine.

Just recently we've seen the dictator board editing creature known as the Sineswiper put out bait for the Nintendard only known as "The Seeker". This creature's favorite passtime is defending any shot taken at nintendo. Let's see how long it takes for him to take the bait yes?

[Zeus]

The entire history of the Nintendo 64 was camera issues. Sometimes, I wondered why they even bothered with 3D so much.

Did you ever see the sales of Mario 64? Or the awesomeness of Ocarina (which still hasn't been beaten in terms of 3D exploration and camera control)? And how many 2D games are coming out now? It was where games were going and they had to do something. Everyone did. This is why 2D only survives on the GBA. And it's not like their games didn't sell well, either, so obviously you're in the minority and they made shitloads of money. Pretty good incentive for a profit-based company.

[SineSwiper]

[Just recently we've seen the dictator board editing creature known as the Sineswiper put out bait for the Nintendard only known as "The Seeker". This creature's favorite passtime is defending any shot taken at nintendo. Let's see how long it takes for him to take the bait yes?

Ahhh, but another creature from the same species known as "Zeus" is seeming to walk towards the trap. This is just as good.

[Zeus]

I figured my response would kill the thread, I was right :-)

[Julius Seeker]

Hey, I agree, Mario 64's camera was annoying and it blew; I believe Mario 64 is the number 1 most overated game in history, even ahead of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Final Fantasy 7. Zelda, Conker, and BK had near perfect camera angles though. Either way, I don't care about the label, it's about the quality of the games for me; I am one of the only people here who has favourite games on every major system. I remember when people called me ultra biased towards Sega, just because I liked games on Genesis.

For the record, I don't hate FF7, I think it is an average game by Square. I am actually playing the game right now and keeping a journal of it.