So here I am at the end of Final Fantasy VIII after 44 hours and two previous attempts to finish the game.  After all that, was this game worth almost two whole days of my life?  Here’s my review.  The Presentation and Gameplay sections should be safe to read if you haven’t finished FF8 while the Story section spoils the whole dang thing.  Beware!

Presentation

After the well-received Final Fantasy 7, all eyes were on Squaresoft as they were preparing to release their follow-up.  What would it be like?  And could it top the visual feast that was FF7?  I remember watching the television ads for Final Fantasy 8 and being wowed by the characters I was seeing.  Of course I knew it was a computer animated movie that I was watching but it was still impressive.  I think a lot of people bought Final Fantasy VIII because they wanted to see something spectacular coming out of their little grey Sony box.

And they weren’t disappointed - Final Fantasy 8 is a gorgeous game.  Blah, blah, pixellated characters, blah, blah, prerendered cutscenes, blah, blah, doesn’t age gracefully and so on.  Well bite me because Final Fantasy 8 was and still remains a visually stunning game.

I have to admire the developers for taking a risk (I will be coming back to this idea frequently).  Final Fantasy 7 featured very stylized, anime-inspired characters.  They gave the game a certain look, a visual consistency even with the big heads and the low-polygon bodies and the lack of noses.  That became the look of Final Fantasy for most people.  FF8 chucked all that and gave us realistic looking characters with (well almost) normal clothes, believable movements and a much more “mature” look.  When I first saw Squall laying on the bed in the infirmary I thought “He looks real.  How’d they do that?”

Now the truth is I much prefer unique, stylized characters.  I didn’t mind Cloud’s spiky hair and Zidane’s tail was alright by me.  Looking back, I think the PS1 did a better job representing those sorts of characters than the realistic chaps populating Final Fantasy 8.  While it lost some of the traditional fantasy trappings, the technical skill involved in creating FF8’s characters is undeniable.

The backgrounds are also, once again, simply gorgeous.  Obviously they are low-rez by today’s standards but I remember what it was like when these games were released and they were beautiful.  I’m impressed at the amount of work that went into creating each screen in the game.

Final Fantasy 7 set the bar high with its CG cutscenes and everyone expected amazing things on FF8’s four CD’s.  The opening cutscene as Squall and Seifer face each other with swords and feathers and grass and Rinoa and the beach was marvelous.  Another high point is the dance between Squall and Rinoa which was lovely, overflowing with warmth and perfectly set up the contrasting lead characters.  Now I have to say that the ending cutscenes were jarring and unpleasant to watch.  Maybe they weren’t explained well by the story, but they seemed to drag on and on and had definitely lost the “wow” factor by that point.

My main criticism of the visuals in Final Fantasy 8 is that Square has created a gorgeous world that seems somewhat generic and bland.  The steampunk-meets-fantasy worlds of FF6 and FF7 were immediately appealing and made me want to learn more.  FF8 presents a standard sci-fi world that was uninspiring to me.

However, I really can’t criticize Nobuo Uematsu’s musical score.  Maybe FF8 didn’t have quite the same number of memorable songs as its predecessors but they also didn’t have Liberi Fatali - a stunning song, made more so by the fact that it sounded nothing like other Final Fantasy music.  As always, I grew tired of some of the repetitiousness of the music and Balamb Garden’s theme song was a particular culprit.  I actually liked Laguna’s battle theme more than Squall’s and Eyes on Me was okay the first time I heard it but once was enough.  But on the whole this is another superior production from Uematsu-san.

Final Fantasy VIII gets an 8 out of 10 for presentation.

Story

Most good stories have both a compelling protagonist and antagonist, someone to identify with as he or she struggles against obstacles.  Like most console RPG’s, you don’t get to choose your protagonist, you’re stuck with Squall for better or worse.  A lot of people didn’t like Squall’s whiny “dark” nature and were quickly turned off from the game.  I sympathize with them as he is a big butthead for most of the game but I really didn’t mind him.  I knew he’d redeem himself and eventually he did.  Along the way Square took an interesting approach with Squall by showing us his thoughts.  Most of the time in console RPG’s we don’t get an insight into what characters are thinking.  Instead we get the infamous “…” response.  I can’t say that knowing Squall’s whiny “dark” thoughts made a huge difference in the game but it was an interesting change for Square.

His progression in the game came mostly from his growing romance with Rinoa.  While Squall is brooding and dark, Rinoa is all smiles and lightness.  it was amusing to watch them interact and to see her gradually work her way into his heart.  They don’t really answer the question of why she would find this asshole so attractive so we’ll have to leave that question for her therapist to answer.

The supporting cast is good but doesn’t really stand out.  Selphie is the typically cute but silly female with the short dress.  Zell pumps his fists in the air and acts brash.  Irvine mostly disappeared into the woodwork and Quistis seemed like she might have had a lot of depth to her character but they never really took her there.  I wish she’d had a more clearly defined love triangle with Squall and Rinoa.  It would have been nice had there been a stronger focus on an ensemble cast as Squall just wasn’t charismatic enough to carry the game.  Cloud wasn’t either but Barett, Tifa and Aeris more than made up for it.

What about an evil villain?  There was definitely no Kefka in the background of most scenes cackling maniacally.  Edea made a respectable baddie for the first part of the game and the scene where they tried to assassinate her was a lot of fun.  But eventually we realize she’s just a tool of the evil Ultimecia who is mostly faceless and nonthreatening until the end of the game.  Seifer had the potential to be an excellent counterpart to Squall but he disappeared quickly and when he did return he was relegated to The Big Bad’s Sidekick.  Instead of being held together by a nefarious villain, FF8 emphasizes a more personal story involving Squall, Rinoa and their friends.

And the backstory with Laguna?  It was an interesting diversion but ultimately felt distracting from the main plot.  Without any clear connection between the two until much later, Squall & co.’s story completely lost momentum whenever Laguna made an appearance.  While all the loose threads with Laguna’s group eventually came together, the whole side-story felt unnecessary and should have been left on the cutting room floor.

Ultimately, Final Fantasy VIII had a merely average story that lacked the depth and breadth of other games in the series.  I appreciate what the developers were trying to do and a change from the norm is always welcome but it just didn’t work very well.  The game suffered from trying to make the story both big and small at the same time.  A good game could be made from a focus on Squall’s story, his background, his inner demons and his relationship with Rinoa and his companions.  Another good game could be made from the story of a group of students fighting the evil plans of a time-travelling sorceress.  Trying to do both, the game succeeded at neither.

Final Fantasy VIII’s story gets a 5 out of 10.

Gameplay

The gameplay in FF8 is an odd mixture of awesome and frustrating.  Once again, the developers decided to break from the traditional and do something different.  And they definitely did something very different.

Honestly, at first blush (and second… ) the Guardian Force system was practically impenetrable.  Part of that were the tutorials which threw out a massive amount of text and stats without really showing how to use them.  But the biggest part was the nature of the beast - the GF system is completely different from what came before.  The closest to it was FF5’s job system but it was nowhere near this complex.  I think another reason why I was so bewildered by it was that I typically hadn’t paid attention to character statistics in Final Fantasy games either before or after FF8.  I could complete the game and never really needed to know what Edgar’s strength statistic was.  Not so in FF8 where stats become very important and junctioning GFs are the way to increase them.

And now that I understand the system, it all seems very easy and sensible but I think a lot of gamers spent an hour with the game, got confused and gave up like I did.  I’m glad I stuck with it though as building my GF army and my characters became quite addictive for me.  I’d spend a lot of time avoiding battles and changing enemies into cards to avoid obtaining experience points.  Why?  Because the levels of monsters and bosses scale with you.  If you are low-level then pretty much all the monsters are as well.  And if you grind for experience and spend a lot of time levelling your characters you can easily find yourself facing nearly-impossible bosses later in the game, particularly if you haven’t mastered junctioning and improved your stats.  So, much like Oblivion, I tried to keep my levels as low as possible.  I made it through 80-90% of the game under level 25 and only got up to level 32 shortly before the last dungeon.  It’s an strange gameplay mechanic and I really wish the developer’s decision to level enemies along with you was made very clear from the start of the game so you could plan accordingly.  I wouldn’t have known until later in the game if I hadn’t read about it elsewhere.

Another odd design decision is that your stats are increased by junctioning magic to them.  Magic spells become a commodity in this game which is completely different from any other game I’ve played.  If you want a high HP statistic, you’ll need to junction Cure magic (or Cura, or Curaga… ) to your HP.  The more you junction the higher your HP gets.  But what if you need to cure yourself after a battle?  Then you’re taking away from your junctioned pool of magic and your stat decreases accordingly.  The end result is the system punishes you for using magic and encourages you to hoard spells like precious gold.  I grew so used to not relying on magic that even in the last couple of battles I had a difficult time forcing myself to cast those Ultima spells I’d squirreled away.

Instead I used GF attacks a lot, particularly the awesome Cactaur once I figured out where he was hiding.  The problem with GF attacks is that there’s no way to skip or shorten the summoning animations.  Some of them take the better part of a minute while others (like Cactaur) were blessedly short which meant I used them a lot.

What all this means is that if you don’t really understand the game’s mechanics you can easily paint yourself into a corner where you are high level but have poor stats and the monsters and bosses are wiping the floor with you.  Or you can deliberately keep your levels low, maximize your stats and the game becomes a cakewalk.  At the end of the game Squall was routinely doing 2,000 to 3,000 damage with basic physical attacks.  One Renzokuken limit break was enough to wipe out some bosses.  It seems odd that you are basically encouraged to “break” the game and punished for playing it traditionally.

I liked that FF7’s minigame-happy trend didn’t carry over to FF8 but the minigames that we did have were irritating.  I never want to go through Squall’s mid-air fighting game again.  And, as I mentioned before, the last dungeon sucked.  It was unnecessarily punishing and filled with somewhat obscure puzzles and boss battle after boss battle.  I can’t think of another dungeon I hated more. 

Final Fantasy’s gameplay truly had a split personality, alternating between fantastic and irritating.  I’d love to see the GF/Junctioning system make another appearance in a more polished game but I’m not sure we’ll see that happen.

Final Fantasy VIII’s gameplay gets a 6 out of 10.

Conclusion

FF8 is known as the black sheep of the franchise but there are also very zealous fans out there.  Now that I’m finished with the game I can certainly see why.  There’s a lot to like in this game but there are equally frustrating and questionable design decisions.  Kudos to Squaresoft for not resting on their FF7-colored laurels and trying to break the mold.  While they succeeded in creating a unique game, it’s difficult to overlook its shortcomings.

Final score: 6.3 out of 10.

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is the first Dragon Quest game I finished since the original Dragon Warrior. It was one of those games I started, got distracted and nearly gave up on. But once I returned to it, I was completely hooked and played until I finished it. Here are my final thoughts.

Story

I have to admit that I wasn’t particularly gripped by the story at first. Sure the characters were funny and Dhoulmagus was an interesting villain but I wasn’t sure why he had cursed King Trode and stolen the sceptre. It took awhile for the story to develop but once it did, I was much more involved and wanted to see what happened. It was pleasantly surprising to realize why Dhoulmagus had been killing people and the revelation of the actual evil presence behind the story was a lot of fun.

The story was fairly simple (or should I say straightforward?) and ultimately boiled down to “bad dude wants to destroy the world and good guys must defeat him.” There were no complicated, interweaving subplots and things seemed almost grade-school level compared to something like Final Fantasy VII and its complex and confusing narrative. But that was fine with me as DQ8’s story was told well, with a lot of personality. It’s nice to not have an angsty, dark hero at the center of things.

The real charm of DQ8’s story lies in its characters. All the major characters were great and I enjoyed finding out their backstories and watching their interactions. I think the developers did a great job of creating a party of three supporting characters that were distinctive and enjoyable to spend time with. Yangus, in particular, was a riot and I’d overhear my children saying “Cor blimey!” from time to time.

Dragon Quest VIII’s towns and their inhabitants were also a highlight of the game. I enjoyed all the side stories from Prince Charmles’ adventures to Yangus’ interaction with his love/nemesis Red to relatively minor characters like the ultra-virile Morrie. Usually I hate running through towns in RPG’s and talking to the residents there but I thoroughly explored every town in DQ8 and enjoyed speaking to every resident.

Dragon Quest VIII’s story gets a 9 out of 10.

Presentation

What can I say? I love cel-shading when it’s done well. Ever since I played Jet Grind Radio on the Dreamcast I liked the look of a cel-shaded game, and Dragon Quest VIII has to be one of the best examples of the technique. Playing through the world of DQ8 is like taking part in a high-quality anime, like a Miyazaki movie. Everything has this distinctive, consistent style from the cities to the characters to the monsters.

And I have to say the crazy monsters were one of the best things about Dragon Quest VIII. I couldn’t wait to find a new creature and my kids and I would grin at the silly animations. How many RPG’s have monsters that turn around and spank their bottoms, leaving your party members shocked and unable to move for the rest of the turn? The quality of the humor and the animations were definitely a high point of the game.

I understand that some gamers were turned off by the silly design and humor and wanted a “serious” game. That’s fine. There will always be games like Oblivion for them. But games overflowing with style like DQ8 are rare and something to be treasured.

Also remarkable is the draw distance in the game. I noticed this early on when I could see an object off in the distance and gradually work my way over to it, with no loading whatsoever. That’s just an amazing feat of programming for a system as “simple” as the Playstation 2. And even when there were loads, such as when we entered a city or a dungeon, they were brief and infrequent.

Almost as impressive as the graphics is the audio in DQ8, particularly the voice acting. With the exception of King Trode, who always had an irritating voice, every character was voiced in a very professional, brilliant way. Yangus was particularly great, but even the run of the mill characters were well-voiced. I don’t understand the reasoning for the Hero remaining silent, so the game gets a small knock for that. But otherwise I almost never skipped past a character’s speech and I usually get bored with dialogue and can’t wait to move on. Compared to Final Fantasy X, the voice acting in DQ8 was nothing short of a revelation.

Last comes the music. I know the Japanese version of DQ8 didn’t have the symphonic score that we North American types get, and that’s a shame for them as the music was uniformly great and the orchestral score really gave the game this grand scope, making it really feel like an epic adventure. It’s a testament to a game when I find myself humming tunes through the week while I’m at work, and that happened all the time with DQ8.

Dragon Quest VIII set a high water mark for presentation for a role-playing game. I give it an amazing 10 out of 10.

Gameplay

Here’s the thing about Dragon Quest VIII’s gameplay: it is, for lack of a better term, old-school. There are random monster encounters that happen frequently. Not so frequently that you can’t take ten steps before fighting but it’s definitely not a system like Final Fantasy XII where the enemies are visible and you can choose how to approach them. Battles are turn-based and can take a minute or two to resolve. This drives some people crazy but DQVIII allows several different strategies during combat. Do I put my enemies to sleep, beat the crap out of them, hit them with a fiery inferno or perhaps do the underpants dance and shock them into submission? I like this system but I understand that others don’t.

Character development is also a bit… barren. You can equip armor and weapons. You can spend points on any of the four different skill tracks for your characters, making them better at swords or bows or even magic abilities. You get new skills at prescribed times based on your level or your skill points. But that’s about it for character customization. There are no classes to change and no jobs to develop. You don’t really have a lot of choices that will influence the story or even some of the subplots.

DQ8 also suffers from being unnecessarily vague and could have benefited from more information given to the player. The alchemy pot was a big mystery and I spent (wasted) a lot of time trying to make something useful. Though the recipes were helpful, more clarity would have been nice. I also didn’t know what skills my characters would develop as they progressed up certain skill paths. I would like to have known more clearly what I was aiming for with my skill point allocations. I chose to specialize rather than spread my points among the four options so I was happy but I could see being really frustrated if I hadn’t done that and didn’t have access to some of the higher-level skills at the end of the game.

But despite all this there’s something very compelling about Dragon Quest VIII. The developers have managed to tickle that addictive nerve in me that makes me want to keep playing just a bit more. Part of it is that your characters are always learning new abilities and attacks. Part of it is the ability to make things in the alchemy pot that can give you a tremendous advantage in combat. I personally got quite addicted to the monster arena and enjoyed scouting around for notorious monsters to recruit and improve my monster team. And as I progressed I could take my monster team and call them into a battle which helped a lot with some of the later bosses.

It’s difficult to specify what makes DQ8 so addictive for me, besides just listing the things I liked. Part of the charm is just how “traditional” the game is. There’s a certain simplicity that I found really appealing. Compared to the overly-complicated systems in a game like Final Fantasy VIII, DQ8 almost seems juvenile but there are layers of depth that I discovered as the game progressed.

Dragon Quest VIII gets an 8.5 out of 10 for gameplay.

Conclusion

The true test for me of how much I liked a game is the replay factor. Would I ever want to replay this game again? And with Dragon Quest VIII the answer is definitely “yes!”. Even as I was going through it I was thinking of things I’d like to do differently on a second run-through. All in all, Dragon Quest VIII was a very polished, fun and surprisingly deep game. It had characters I liked, looked flat-out gorgeous and gave me a large world to adventure in. It’s honestly one of the best role-playing games I’ve had the joy of playing.

Final score: 9.2 out of 10

When I was reading about classic RPG’s I kept hearing people refer warmly to the Lunar games as a landmark series. Now that I’ve finished both of them I can see why. Here are my final thoughts on Lunar 2.

Story

Lunar 1 was characterized by a strong story and Lunar 2 follows suit. A good RPG needs engaging characters and the creators of Lunar have again done a great job bringing these animated sprites to life and making them seem like people. The main story centers around Hiro (okay it’s a stupid name - no question) and Lucia, a mysterious girl he finds one day. She initially is detached and weird and hard to like but as the game progresses we see her become more “human” and begin to develop feelings for Hiro. Other characters go through similar transformations: Jean comes to terms with her past as a secret assassin and looks forward to her future as a dancer (!), Ronfar deals with his guilt and becomes less of a randy goat and Leo changes from an adversary to a friend. Even Ghaleon is redeemed at the end of the game.

The plot wasn’t as strong as the characters however. It basically boiled down to “save the world from the evil being” and often involved a lot of annoying side quests and filler. I think the long initial journey to Pentagulia and the later quest for the four dragons could have been shortened without losing much and it would have resulted in a more focused story.

But the fun of a game like Lunar 2 isn’t in the grand, sweeping plot but more in the small, individual moments. And Lunar 2 was filled with a lot of these. Yes some of the dialog is cheesy and that does detract from the story. While Working Designs did a great overall job bringing the game to us, I really could have done without some of the jarring humor and references to 1990’s current events.

The other exceptional thing about Lunar 2 is the way it follows its prequel and maintains some of the same settings and characters. This really is a game that is good by itself but becomes great when you are aware of the many connections between the two games. I especially enjoyed seeing what happened to Luna, meeting Ramus’ descendants and finding Nall again. It was also fun to travel to many of the same locations and see how they’d changed over the years. I wish more RPGs found a way to continue the story from earlier games in the series.

Overall, Lunar 2’s story was great. I give it an 8 out of 10.

Presentation

One of the first things I noticed about Lunar 2 are the animated cutscenes that are sprinkled throughout the game. They really are well done and serve to flesh out the characters and important story points. As I moved through the game and would approach an important plot point, I knew there was going to be an anime cutscene and I found myself looking forward to them. I actually wouldn’t mind watching an anime series with expanded animation from Lunar 2. It’s really top-notch and adds a lot to the game.

The other thing that I noticed about the game are the 2D graphics and sprites. The visuals are warm and bright with lots of vibrant color. The character sprites are well-modeled and animated. I always knew which character I was looking at from a quick glance at the screen. Other aspects of the graphics were equally well-done. Towns were busy and filled with people who all had something to say. Dungeons were intricate and appropriately creepy and the overworld was filled with lots of interesting things that made me want to investigate more. I do wish the game gave you an option of a large overview map with town names as it could be difficult to find a particular place you needed to visit.

Music, as always, was exceptional. Noriyuki Iwadare has again created a soundtrack that I wanted to listen to and the fact that it was available on CD as part of the game was outstanding. At no point did any of the music become irritating, though I never mind a change of battle music halfway through the game. Any song become irritating after you’ve heard it a hundred or more times. Many of the songs were catchy and I’d find myself humming them at times during the day. Lunar 1 did include a “music video” during the game with Luna singing on the ship about her life and her future. I found myself waiting for something similar in the sequel but its absence is far from a deal-breaker.

Voice acting remains questionable. While many of the actors did a fine job during important scenes, the constant “I’ll take care of this” or “You need a spanking” during battles got old really quickly. I wish there was a way to turn them off or at least make them happen only occasionally as they did become quite irritating after awhile.

Game Arts and Working Designs have again created a game that is beautiful to look at and listen to. I give Lunar 2’s presentation 9 out of 10.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Lunar 2 is a mixed bag. There are some elements that are a lot of fun and others that could be improved. In general, I liked the combat in Lunar 2. The ability to see enemies before you battle them is always welcome and means that there are no random battles. This is one area where Lunar was ahead of its time as the developers could balance the game, knowing you’d be at or near a certain level for some of the major fights. Well most of the time anyway. The combat system is good and I liked the ability to position your characters and how they and the enemies moved around the battlefield. This is the precursor to the combat system in Grandia which was refined to near-perfection.

Lunar 2 is not an easy game. Many of the dungeons are quite difficult and some of the bosses are brutal. I did find I had to spend a play session or two just grinding to make sure I could handle some of the tough fights. I do think the difficulty was more consistent than in the first game which would often surprise me with an out-of-the-blue nasty fight I was completely unprepared for. I would have liked the ability to customize my characters more. I did like equipping rings and crests which gave them new abilities but some way to directly influence the characters’ growth would have also been nice.

The game had some problems with pacing. My total playtime was around 33 hours which isn’t bad but there were some parts that seemed to drag, particularly the initial journey to Pentagulia and the quest to find the four dragons. I would have appreciated a shorter, better-paced game. Minigames were almost entirely absent which was fine with me and would have felt like padding. I think Lunar 1 was better-paced though I suppose some complained that it was too short.

I like the fact that there is an Epilogue to play after the game is finished and I looked forward to resolving the story but I really had my fill of Lunar 2’s gameplay by that point. I might return to it sometime but I didn’t feel compelled to spend more time grinding.

Overall I give Lunar 2’s gameplay a slightly above-average 6 out of 10.

Conclusion

I’m happy that I played the Lunar games. While I liked the first Lunar better than the second in some ways, Lunar 2 seemed to refine and improve many of the first game’s weaknesses. They are both extremely well-done games that are lovely to look at, listen to and a lot of fun to play. They also create very memorable characters that you want to spend time with.

Final score: 7.7 out of 10

I’m finally finished with Final Fantasy VII, just in time for the 10th anniversary of its North American release. It’s an important and well-loved game and this was my second time through the entire game. In my review below I’ve tried to be as objective and fair as possible about this classic game. So how does it hold up for its 10th birthday?

Story

FFVII has a huge and sometimes confusing story. It sprawls across three discs and is filled with love, sadness, revenge and betrayal. What immediately stands out about the game are its characters. With the transition to the Playstation, Square kept the emphasis on a large cast of interesting characters that had worked so well for them in Final Fantasy VI. Cloud, Aeris and Sephiroth are almost iconic in RPG history. Every character had hints of greater depth and an interesting backstory. Some of this was force-fed to you but other character secrets, and even entire characters, were hidden and left for you to find by exploring.

I generally liked the characters and found them intriguing. I wanted to know more about them and the game was set up to reveal information about them bit by bit as it progressed. Cloud was mysterious but clearly grew during the game as did Barret, Tifa and the others. I thought killing Aeris early in the game was a masterstroke. They had set her up as such an innocent and likable person and to take her out of the game so unexpectedly served to crystallize the remainder of the game. I really think the game was at it’s best after Aeris’ death. And I remember the first time through thinking that if she’d died then I really couldn’t be sure other characters would make it through to the end. It added to the tension and focused my hate for Sephiroth.

And what a great set of villains FF7 had. At the start of the game you thought you were just going to be fighting Shinra and its minions the entire time. As you followed the trail of blood in the Shinra headquarters, you began to realize that they weren’t nearly as important as Sephiroth. He served as the perfect foil for the game: certainly evil and ruthless but almost sympathetic as you learned about his history and how he came to be. He’s a popular villain and for good reason.

I also loved the setting. While it was a shift away from a pure fantasy setting, I thought the combination of the industrial and magical worked great and continued the same trend that was present in Final Fantasy VI.

My only complaint about the story in FF7 is that it can be almost too complex. There’s a line between mysterious and intriguing on the one side and muddled and confusing on the other. FF7 crossed the line a couple of times. The whole Zack subplot was weird and seemed unnecessary. The relationship of Jenova and Sephiroth was revealed bit by bit but still was confusing to me. There were times I felt I needed to take notes so I could remember who everyone was and how they were related. Dr. Gast was related to Aeris how? Vincent’s lover was Sephiroth’s father? Hojo experimented on Cloud and Zack? Relatively minor characters who were often mentioned for just a couple of lines apparently had major roles to play and little of this was made clear. It was easier to see the big picture during a replay but the first time through I was pretty confused.

Though unnecessarily confusing, Final Fantasy VII had a great cast and a deep, involving plot. I give FF7’s story an 8 out of 10.

Presentation

Final Fantasy VII was a great showcase for the power of disc-based consoles in general, and the Playstation in particular. The game looked so good at the time that it’s hard to fully appreciate now in our era of high-definition graphics. Transitioning to polygonal characters on rendered backgrounds gave the game a distinctive and modern look that was stunning compared to its 2D contemporaries. Square had mastered the ability to animate and make believable characters from its sprite-based games and there was some concern that polygons would be a step backward. I think that was unfounded. The simple but distinctive look of each of the characters, their animations and expressions worked well and set a standard for future Final Fantasy games.

As did the inclusion of full-motion video. This was apparently one of the deal-breakers between Square and Nintendo and it’s hard to imagine a Final Fantasy game now without stunning full-motion visuals. The FMV’s in FF7, especially the opening movie, announced that Square was doing something different with its role-playing games. It clearly took their games in a more cinematic direction. While the FMV’s look a bit rough today and could probably be replicated in real-time by an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, at the time they were gorgeous. I remember playing the game partly to see what the next movie would be. Also notable were the many times the game would seamlessly transition from FMV to rendered background, again perfectly demonstrated by the opening as the train pulls up and Cloud gets out and suddenly you realize he is now playable. It served to further blur the line between movie and game.

Final Fantasy VII has one of my favorite video game scores. Uematsu’s soundtrack is varied, frequently amazing and full of hooks that dig his songs into your brain. I can’t count the number of times the last month or two that I’ve found myself humming Aeris’ theme or the overworld theme. They help to set the mood and punctuate the developments in the story. I really can’t think of any complaints about the music other than the annoying scene in Junon where Cloud is in disguise with the Shinra troops and the music just goes on and on endlessly repeating the same irritating theme. That easily fades into the background though and the rest of the music is perfect.

One valid criticism of FF7 is the translation, which was frankly awful. Some lines (and they tended to be Barret’s) were so clumsy they were cringe-inducing. Square could have done a much better job here as it really did distract from the game and often distanced me from the characters. To their credit, they made good translations a priority for their games after FF7.

Final Fantasy VII is often criticized for emphasizing style over substance. It was and still is a gorgeous game and gets a much-deserved 9 out of 10 for presentation.

Gameplay

Final Fantasy VII was a very fun game to play with just a few exceptions. The game really does restrict you in the beginning: you only have limited areas you can visit, your characters don’t have any really interesting abilities and this doesn’t really change until several hours into the game. Once you get out of Midgar and to the overworld map things open up a bit but the game doesn’t really shine until later.

I liked the materia system. The ability to make any character a tank or a healer or a thief was nice and it let me strategize how I wanted to play the game. Levelling-up materia and gaining new abilities was an important hook that propelled me to keep playing. Once I had Cure 2 I just had to have Regen and I’d keep fighting random battles until I did. Along with the limit break system, the materia system kept things moving forward. I always felt that there was going to be something cool and interesting if I kept playing and that gave the game a very addictive quality.

The mini-games were hit-or-miss for me. If I never again have to figure out the correct sequence of button presses to get Tifa out of the gas chamber I’ll die a happy man. Others were similarly irritating and often I just wanted to move on with the game. There were some cool and optional parts of the game such as the chocobo breeding and racing and the battle arena. Knowing each character had ultimate weapons and limit breaks that were out there somewhere made things intriguing.

So much of the game almost requires a strategy guide in hand while you play. I mostly played through the first time with no help and only on a replay did I realize how much I missed. This is a good and bad thing as it definitely lends the game some replay value but can also be frustrating for those that don’t want to replay a game that takes over 40 hours to finish.

Battles were fun. I felt like I had a lot of options in any battle ranging from regular attacks to spells to limit breaks to summons to stealing things to setting up counter-attack materia and elemental attack combinations. I like having choices available and there were a lot of different ways to defeat both regular enemies as well as the bosses. The random battles seemed to happen frequently enough to keep things interesting but not so often that I was frustrated.

Overall I give Final Fantasy VII’s gameplay an excellent 9 out of 10.

Summary

I really liked Final Fantasy VII. While it has its faults, it managed to continue the same gameplay strengths from its 16-bit days and combine them with a set of outstanding visuals, a great soundtrack and a fun story. It justly deserves its status as a landmark game.

Final score: 8.7 out of 10

Roughly two months later and I’m finished with Wild Arms. How does it stack up compared to the rest of the RPG’s I’ve played?

Story

Frankly, Wild Arms’ story was very weak. I did love the wild-west meets fantasy/sci-fi setting and it sorta reminded me of a cross between Trigun and Firefly. But cool as the setting was, it wasn’t enough to carry the game. The overarching plot was a group of extraterrestrial demons who want to take over the world and the three adventurers who stopped them. Not the most original storyline out there.

It started out strong with lots of unanswered questions and several interesting characters. Gradually, however, the game’s story got lost and there were whole sections in the middle of the game where I really had little idea what was happening and why. It was not unusual to be going into a dungeon to seek the Bright Widget of Importance but not remember why it was Important. Things did come together a bit at the end and the story definitely accelerated but by that point my interest had waned.

The characters weren’t much better. At the beginning I was intrigued by these three people and wanted to know more about them. They all did have interesting stories but again I would have liked to see more more happen with them. There was very little interaction between the trio and there were very few moments where their personalities developed outside of their adventurer role.

It’s sad that the one character I liked the most and wanted to know more about was Jack’s little rodent-friend Hanpan. The one part of the game where you got to play as Hanpan was genuinely fun but too short.

I would have liked to have seen a lot more done with Wild Arms’ characters and story. I give it a mediocre 4 out of 10.

Gameplay

Gameplay is king. If an RPG doesn’t have compelling gameplay then I might as well be watching a movie or reading a book. A game with a mediocre story and presentation can be completely redeemed by great gameplay. Suikoden was a great example of this.

In Wild Arms, gameplay was mostly full of irritations. I did like how each of the characters had different abilities that they could call on to defeat traps, open chests or reveal new areas to explore. Rudy’s bomb and Jack’s grappling hook were always fun to use. It did add some “action” elements to the game but I thought it was a positive addition.

Combat was another matter completely and was definitely the weakest element of Wild Arms for me. My complaints about combat are that it was boring and ultimately pointless, and that there was way too much of it. Combat in Wild Arms serves to give you experience points and money and really nothing more. Compare that to Grandia or one of the Final Fantasy games where you have abilities you can improve the more you use them or skills you can learn during combat. In Wild Arms, combat just served to shovel buckets of XP at your party. And when they levelled up I had no control over what improved or how they developed. It made them stronger but not in any way that I could directly influence. Without that hook there was little reason to seek out battles and lots of reasons to avoid them.

And I really wanted to avoid battles by the end of the game. They always felt sluggish and seemed to take far too long to resolve. I resorted to counting random battles at one point but I gave up doing that because they happened so often. I literally almost stopped playing because I was so frustrated with the battles. I often avoided exploring side areas because I knew I’d be drawn into more random battles. The one spell that let you avoid them also turned your character invisible so it was difficult to navigate and was a drain on your MP reserves to have to keep recasting it.

Wild Arms also suffered from the “What am I supposed to do now?” problem. Many times I’d wander around from town to town talking to people trying to get some clue where I was supposed to go or what to do. I hate that in games and I frequently had to consult a FAQ to get past those points.

It also didn’t help that about halfway through the game you ran out of places to buy improved weapons and armor. I’d occasionally find some in the dungeons but I often didn’t have much to spend my money on other than upgrading Rudy’s ARMs.

Gameplay was the weakest and most frustrating aspect of Wild Arms. I give it a very sad 3 out of 10.

Presentation

Wild Arms is primarily a 2D sprite-based RPG. As such it looked fine compared to most SNES or Genesis-era games with the possible exception of some of the greats like Chrono Trigger. I suppose I should expect more since the Playstation was capable of more than those 16-bit systems but I tend to like 2D games and I thought it held up well. Characters were detailed enough and everything was bright and clear. When you’d walk through a puddle of water in a town you’d leave footprints. Little touches like that were nice.

What didn’t work so well were the 3D battle scenes. It was a different effect but ultimately failed to impress me. I wish they’d kept to a 2D battle field or else put forth the effort to make the 3D system look nicer.

I appreciated that there was no voice acting in Wild Arms as it tends to be poorly done and easy to criticize. There was an opening full-motion video that looked great and I watched it a couple of times but there were no intermediate or ending cinematics.

Music was generally great. Many of the tunes were catchy and all seemed to have a Spaghetti Western flavor to them. I would rate the music as excellent overall but the battle theme spoiled it. From the heavy metal screech that led into the battle to the repetitive nature of the song I came to hate the battle theme. I wish they would have changed it halfway through the game as some games have done.

Wild Arms gets a 5 out of 10 for presentation.

Summary

Overall I’m glad I played Wild Arms. It has an important place in the RPG Hall of Fame but it’s not without its faults. While the game started off strong, by the end I was glad to be done with it as its weak points became clearer and clearer. I really can’t see playing any of the sequels.

Final score: 4 out of 10

It’s time to review Suikoden, the first entry in a series that has spawned four sequels. Now that I’m finished with it, how does Suikoden’s story, gameplay and presentation hold up under close examination?

Story

Suikoden has a very basic story. That’s not unusual as most console RPG’s fall into certain basic cliches and often tell the same basic story. This time around there’s an evil empire that must be overthrown and so most of the game your main character (I named him Bob) heads the Liberation Army and gradually chips away at the Empire’s territories until there’s a final, climactic confrontation.

That’s fine but Suikoden doesn’t really spend much time developing its story. Part of it is the fact that there are possibly 108 characters you can recruit. I didn’t even attempt to get them all and I ended up with maybe 60 or 70 characters total. Some are mere placeholders (insert Item Appraiser here, insert Weapon Upgrader there) while others are central to the narrative. My issue is that with all the characters available I never really felt like I got to know or enjoy any of them. Even the main character who had to face his Imperial General father in battle never really stood out in any meaningful way. He was betrayed by friends and other friends died and I didn’t even blink.

I don’t require a game to be a whiny emo-fest but I do like to have some motivation to continue playing. The story in Suikoden wasn’t much of a motivation for me and also didn’t lend itself much to blogging on the fine points of it’s ever-twisting narrative.

Overall, I give Suikoden’s story a 4.

Gameplay

Suikoden was a fun game to play. While the story never wow’ed me, I kept playing it because I was almost always having a great time.

One of the nice things about Suikoden was the wide variety of things to do. There were standard dungeons to explore, bosses to fight, one-on-one duels, massive army battles with thousands of soldiers, characters to recruit, opportunities to gamble and a home base to expand and improve. I never felt bored in Suikoden as it seemed there were always new gameplay elements being introduced. And then the game was over in under 22 hours so it never overstayed its welcome.

I really liked the combat in Suikoden. If I wanted to I could choose Free Will during combat and my characters auto-attacked with their physical attacks. I could cast spells as well and these were typically very useful. Combat, including boss battles, was never too difficult. I always felt I was moving forward in Suikoden and not stopped dead in my tracks by a too-hard boss fight.

Character recruitment was a mixed bag. Most of it smelled of busy work for me so I spent little time focusing on it. I can see why some people feel they’ve “gotta catch ‘em all” but I’m not that sort of person. I did find the ever-developing base intriguing at first but ultimately became annoying. There were four floors, a roof, a basement and a sub-basement. On top of that there were numerous side passages with bedrooms and other separate areas. By the end of the game navigating my base to accomplish a particular task became a huge pain.

Also a pain was the inventory system. I hated the fact that the game would occasionally force you to use a particular character. When that happened I would have to go to the vault, unequip my equipment from my frequently-used character, then equip them on the new character and then repeat this process when that new character left or was no longer required. Fortunately the game accelerated the gaining of levels for underdeveloped characters so it was pretty easy to keep the needed people near each other in levels.

There were some occasional irritants but overall I give Suikoden’s gameplay a solid 7.

Presentation

Suikoden was one of the first Playstation RPG’s and it shows. The graphics were 2D sprite-based which I have no particular issue with as long as they are well-done. Unfortunately in Suikoden the visuals were only average. The only time I can remember thinking “Wow. That looks nice.” was the first time the battle shifted to a pseudo-3D field that zoomed in and out. Otherwise the visuals in Suikoden were merely serviceable. Fortunately there were no full-motion movies other than the intro, which was (again) average in quality and only made me want to watch it once.

I generally liked the music in Suikoden but I doubt I’ll be humming any of the tunes next week. They seemed to fade into the background during gameplay with the exception of the song that played while you were walking around in your home base. Given that I spent a lot of time in my base I got so irritated with this song that I actually turned the volume down when I got to my base - something I never do with video games. They did change the tune a bit later in the game but even that variation got annoying after awhile.

Suikoden’s presentation was very average and, as such, it gets an average score of 5.

Summary

Suikoden was a good game and I had fun playing it. There were some weaknesses but it remained engaging for me throughout the entire game. Gameplay definitely carried the day for Suikoden. I think I would have liked it less if it were a longer game but for me it hit that sweet spot of game lengths: between 20-30 hours. From what I understand, Suikoden II is regarded as a much better game in all ways so I definitely look forward to checking it out.

Final score: 5.3 out of 10

Lunar is done and it’s time to wrap up my thoughts and move on to the next game. Here’s my final take on Lunar: Silver Star Story

Story

The story is definitely the strength of Lunar. Game Arts was able to take the typical “young man discovers his true destiny and saves the world” plotline and imbue it with an emotional connection to great characters and a sense of warmth and playfulness. It says a lot about Lunar that I can remember even minor characters very well, even a couple of days after finishing the game. Ultimately Lunar is a story about love and friendship and the importance of connection to others.

Being able to finish Lunar in 25 hours worked to its advantage. It kept things from feeling padded and superfluous. The story was able to develop and move along at a nice clip. I never like being kept in the dark and at times the lack of really gripping developments early on can make it hard to keep playing. But once the story does kick in the developers maintained a sense of tension and built on it until the end of the game.

Overall I give Lunar’s story an 8.

Gameplay

While Lunar’s story is its strength, gameplay is definitely its weakness. My complaints fall into three areas.

First is Lunar’s uneven difficulty level. There were times when Lunar was just brutal, particularly earlier on. I dreaded the boss battles with a passion until I figured out the secret (more on that later). Lunar maintained an average to above average difficulty level but there were always the occasional monsters or areas that would just frustrate me to no end.

Second is character development. Or lack of development. Lunar provides you with no way to customize or have control over improving your characters. Jessica will always be a white magic user, Kyle a tank. Nash was always a mediocre magic-user and there was no substantial way to make any character stronger apart from just grinding them to level up. I wanted to have a better sense of involvement in building the characters but instead felt like I was pushing them along rails to a predetermined outcome.

Last are the odd things. All my magic-users had spells that were worthless and that I never used. Boss battle strategies all boiled down to buff Kyle and Alex and let them unleash their 1E (or one-enemy) attack while the others healed or provided spell support. Every boss battle required this approach. The interface was clunky and I hated managing inventory and trying on different weapons and armor. Just a lot of little annoyances.

Overall I give Lunar’s gameplay a 5.

Presentation

When discussing Lunar’s presentation we immediately have to deal with the graphics. Lunar was essentially a Sega CD game so we’re talking Genesis-era bitmaps and sprites. That’s not a problem for me but I understand it might be for some. I think the graphics are great - colorful and detailed and contribute to a sense of atmosphere in the game. If that were all then I’d still score Lunar’s graphics high but Working Designs has also included a lot of animated full-motion videos. Those really helped to flesh out the different characters and plot developments.

The music is very good as well which should come as no surprise as Noriyuki Iwadare scored both Lunar games as well as Grandia. The tunes are suitably catchy, light or menacing as the story requires. I don’t think any of the songs will be bouncing around in my head in 3 months but for the game they were well-done. Voice acting was also refreshingly good and I can’t think of any particular voices that grated on my nerves, unlike other games.

My one quibble with Lunar’s presentation would have to be the translation. While it was strong in general and blissfully free of typos, it was also very jarring to frequently run into 90’s pop-culture references and fart jokes. It’s as though Working Designs couldn’t decide if they were aiming this game at adults or grade-schoolers.

Overall I give Lunar’s presentation an 8.

Summary

Lunar: Silver Star Story is a great game. It is widely regarded as a classic and this seems justified. This game was made with love and attention. Obviously the designers worked hard to create a good story and compelling characters and it shows in both the broad strokes and small details. While I found the gameplay mechanics lacking, that was easily balanced by its other strengths. I’m glad I played Lunar and it’s exciting to know that there’s a sequel waiting for me in Lunar 2: Eternal Blue.

Final Score: 7 out of 10

So now that I’m done with Grandia it’s time to sum up my thoughts on the game before I move on to the next one. I decided to mostly borrow the format used by Game Trailers.com and divide my review into three categories: Story, Gameplay and Presentation.

Story

Grandia has a generally good story but the game takes its sweet time dishing it out. Many times early in the game I would wander from set piece to set piece fighting monsters and improving my stats but with no recollection of why I was there. When all was said and done the story of Baal unleashing the evil force known as Gaia in an attempt to rule the world is pretty standard RPG stuff. At the end of the game important events were certainly happening one after another and I was interested to see how it would turn out. But they really dropped the ball in the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the game by dribbling out bits of plot and character development.

I liked the characters in Grandia for the most part. Sue was irritating from the start but she didn’t last. Milda was also irritating but also didn’t last. Same with Guido and Gadwin. In some ways I would have liked to have just 3 or 4 characters and been able to stick with them instead of having these different people dropped into and then taken out of your party.

The thing I did like about Grandia’s story and atmosphere was its relentlessly cheerful nature. I always felt like things were going to work out, people were always smiling and encouraging and everything was generally lighthearted. I do like a good serious RPG like Planescape: Torment but I also think there is a place for a light, happy game.

Overall I give Grandia’s story a 7.

Gameplay

Grandia’s gameplay was superb. I already talked about the game’s system for levelling up just about everything (link) and how that made for a very compelling experience. The thing that took some getting used to was the battle system. I was familiar with the Final Fantasy games where you line up on different sides of the screen and whack monsters when your turn came up. Grandia was different and felt like a breath of fresh air. In Grandia your characters moved around the battle field. They could cancel an enemy’s attack or have their own attacks cancelled. You always knew who was going to attack next so you could plan your moves accordingly. It’s going to be hard moving to another RPG battle system as I think I’ll often be unconsciously comparing them to Grandia.

My one complaint about Grandia’s gameplay was how easy the game was. Many times I would breeze through a battle without much worry at all. Boss battles almost always were cake-walks. While I liked the ability to completely recover HP, MP & SP at the save game cones I do think it imbalanced the game. As I said before, I didn’t use a single potion until the last boss battle.

Overall I give Grandia’s gameplay a 9.

Presentation

Grandia was originally developed for the Sega Saturn. I don’t know how the game was improved for the PlayStation but it used a combination of sprite-based characters and 3D environments. This approach generally worked well for me but I was playing using ePSXe and that made an enormous difference. The filters in ePSXe smoothed out the pixellated textures and allowed me to run the game in a higher resolution than the PlayStation offered. And I have to say I liked the graphics in Grandia - not only the technical qualities but the style. Everything was bright and warm and fit the overall mood of the game. I think if I had played it much on the original PlayStation I would have spent 10 minutes thinking how it looks worse compared to Final Fantasy VIII and then forgotten about the differences.

I really liked the ability to rotate my view and the times I could zoom the view out and get a broad perspective on where I was in town or in the dungeon were great. I wish all RPG’s had this feature.

Audio was generally strong as well. The music was above average and several of the tunes got stuck in my head. I won’t put Grandia’s soundtrack on the same shelf as Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI but it was very good. The voice acting… not so much. Mostly I would just cringe when the characters would speak. I really wish they’d abandoned the idea of voice acting in Grandia as the actors they hired for the job mostly were stiff, chidish or grated on my nerves.

Overall I give Grandia’s presentation an 8.

Summary

I really enjoyed playing through Grandia. Having tried to play it once and given up I was skeptical about giving it another shot but I’m glad I did. Once it clicked for me I was hooked pretty thoroughly and didn’t once think about giving up. It has a heart and a soul that seems to be lacking in more modern games.

Final score: 8 out of 10