The Shrine

Continuing my efforts to catch up on console gaming, beat FFX-2 tonight.

All in all? Pretty solid. Story wasn't bad, though the nonlinearity of the game meant they couldn't go too in-depth with things. Switching jobs in the middle of battle was a damn nice feature. Fun selection of jobs overall, though it was kind of odd seeing the old standards like white/black mage and warrior end up being so puny in comparison to jobs like dark knight, berserker, and alchemist.

My only real complaint was the fact that so much of the game damn near required checking FAQs to avoid missing too much. I can understand not being able to pull a perfect 100% completion game out of nowhere, but when you can miss out on jobs or entire quests by missing a single conversation, that's a bit much. It's just not something I expect out of a FF game.

Overall, though, not as good as FFX, but a respectable followup. Glad I checked it out.

Tortolia wrote:My only real complaint was the fact that so much of the game damn near required checking FAQs to avoid missing too much. I can understand not being able to pull a perfect 100% completion game out of nowhere, but when you can miss out on jobs or entire quests by missing a single conversation, that's a bit much. It's just not something I expect out of a FF game.

Oh man...that sort of thing makes me want to put down a game more than anything. I only read the FAQs if I'm really stuck, or at the end of the game, so reading that I missed this and missed that doesn't really add to the replay value. It just make me so angry to not even bother any more.

Tortolia wrote:
My only real complaint was the fact that so much of the game damn near required checking FAQs to avoid missing too much. I can understand not being able to pull a perfect 100% completion game out of nowhere, but when you can miss out on jobs or entire quests by missing a single conversation, that's a bit much. It's just not something I expect out of a FF game.

Yeah no kidding. I always play through RPG's without checking any FAQ's the first time. I always thought I was a pretty through person, but I only got about 65-70% my first time through. Had to refer to FAQ's like crazy the 2nd time through.

I always start out by reading a FAQ first before I play a game because I don't feel like playing the game a second time just to get something I missed, unless it's a game I either don't care enough about to miss the secrets, or a game I wouldn't mind playing a second time.

For FFX2, I'm not really sure how there's a coherent story. You sort of run around and do stuff that magically has something to do with the ending. It's like girl's day out and then it somehow leads to saving the world and while there certainly has been more unlikely heroes than the RYP bunch, I think they're by far the most irrelevant world-saviors. That is, it is not at all obvious from how any of the thing you do actually leads to saving the world at the end. While world saviors get no respect in RPG in general, in RYP's case I think they actually earned it because I sure can't tell they're doing anything important.

I feel the game is inferior to the first part in almost every single aspect. They seem to have taken a step backwards with the gameplay. Then again, my judgement shouldn't hold much weight, I have not played more than a few hours into the game.

Id like to play it, just to continue the story. I loved FFX (even though I mostly just watched Sine play)

It's not so much the fact that you could miss stuff that bothered me. I mean, I play PC RPGs all the damn time, and those are generally non-linear. It's that the criteria for certain things just seem off.

I mean, I got 86% completion on the game and got full area completion for 12 of the 15 game areas. In damn near any other game, that would be more than adequate to get the "good" ending - yet I didn't get it because I didn't somehow pick up on an extremely subtle clue that I needed to actually interact with the game during a single cutscene (and, really, how often in an RPG is cutscene interaction a factor?). I mean, it's not like I'm angry about it, since I downloaded videos of both the good and perfect endings, but that single moment of responsiveness should not make or break your ending choice (regardless of how much story sense it makes).

For the most part, the game is pretty forgiving. With the exception of the Mascot job, it's generally extremely apparent how to get a job, or you have multiple opportunities to do so. Missing a quest early on generally doesn't completely stop future events in that area. There's just enough "Shit, I can't get this because I missed that detail?" moments that it becomes an actual annoyance.

The game has enough overall charm to it that I still enjoyed most of it, and the combat is fast enough that it's almost an action RPG. Overall it's pretty well done - there's just a few design decisions that are pretty baffling.

No matter, I'll replay (New Game +, whee!) sometime down the line and get the Mascot job. The idea of Paine in a tonberry suit is too goddamn amusing not to do it.