This is politics, so yeah.
What else is there to talk about? I hear the new one is awful. I don’t think I’ve played a decent JRPG since Persona IV, what happened to them? FF has been meh since XII, the Xeno and Chrono series are dead, it’s sad one of my favorite genres has faded away.
Me, I’m still waiting for sequels to Theme Hospital and SimTower. Theme Hospital got a terrible spiritual “remake” called Hospital Tycoon and SimTower got an even worse spiritual “remake” called Hotel Giant. Other than that, hotel and hospital simulators are a missed genre.
This mid-year will be great for the Wii. Sin & Punishment, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Metroid: Other M.
If you haven’t played Super Mario Galaxy, you are missing one of the most beautiful and classy act of game history.
Speaking of sims that are a complete let down, how the hell do you go from Simcity 4 to simcity societies? WTF man!
Oh yes. Untl Cities XL gets proper mass transit options and can decide on whether it’s online or offline, I’m sticking to SimCity 4 for city building fun. Societies could have been semi-amusing if it wasn’t billed under the SimCity franchise (which it takes titantium bearings to do after the masterpiece that was 4), but the bugs completely ruined any fun putting together cyberpunk-hippie-fascist utopias could have had for me.
There are few thing I hate more than 3D sequels to good 2D simulations that dumb it down and remove the humour and charm of the original and water it down into a sideshow carnival. Seriously, why exactly does designing an indoor facility require a 3D perspective? It’s just disorientating and confusing, since with 2D your options are limited and you know from what angle to approach gameplay, so to speak. Some games try to rectify it with default camera keys, but I find a lot of the time that you have to go through awkward rotation to plan the other sides of big buildings.
I have friends who still play red alert 2, and refuse to even look at any of the later sequels, for this very reason.
Well, Red Alert is a RTS, not a simulation, but I can see similar points applying, if not more so, when you consider the rapid decision making required in such games. Company of Heroes was a good 3D RTS, though you needed a killer computer to run it smoothly.
When a series goes from 2D to 3D or turn based to real time, it is usually an indicator that I will no longer like the game.
(Continuing off-top tangent, although I’m pretty sure I made on-topic posts in this thread before)
You’re completely ignoring two RPG landmarks for the Wii: Xenoblade (which is from MonolithSoft, who were behind Xenosaga; this game was developed under the working title of Monado: TheBeginning of the world & Sakaguhi’s (yes, Final Fantasy’s Sakaguchi) The Last Story (Cleverly not hiding the Final Fantasy similarity in the title’s phrase).
Anyone who knows about Xenogears, & the semi-failure of the Xenosaga series, doesn’t need to be reminded how great it would be for the same guys to try a re-imagining of both of those series with Nintendo backing them up. While it hasn’t come out yet, the teaser site makes it obvious that there is at very least a stylistic connection.
And of course, even when Square was sinking, Sakaguchi managed to pull out FF9 for those of us who clinged to their PS1’s for the wealth of RPG goodness.
Frankly, I’m ecstatic. Star Ocean 4 for the PS3 is also helping fill the void until both of those come out, whatever NIS America is up to next will probably be excellent.
I guess if people like superficial cliched CGI movies, they could go for FF13. Versus is supposed to be an actual game, but this is from the same idiots who made X-2, so I wouldn’t hold my breathe.
On a depressing note, I probably won’t have time to play any of these for the next year or so, per the economy, but it’s hard not to get tempted by entertainment regardless.
I was unaware of Xenoblade until you just pointed it out. After looking it up it looks like it could be the best thing the JRPG genre has put out in some time. It has turn based battles too, which I am a fan of. This is exciting news.
I think Xenosaga shot itself in the foot. X-I was awesome and almost as good as 'gears. X-II is where they changed personel, skimped on the story, skimped on the “extras”, and had a baffling system. That killed the series for most, I think. X-III was damn good though.
Star Ocean IV could be good (III was decent). I thought the story was by the dude who did FF tactics (same dude who did Vagrent Story), which was the best FF story, I think. So if FF XIII has anything worthwhile to it, I would expect it to be the story. Not that that would makes up for a linear FPS action game that I hear it is.
I actually finally finished X-II a month or two ago after 2 or 3 failed attempts at finishing it. The battle system & leveling grind in that game is masochistic, quite honestly, even if you kill all party members & skill point grind all on one character at a time. I’ll probably start X-III whenever I get more free time.
I don’t really understand why anyone liked Star Ocean 3. The english dubbing made the game really unbearable, and I sat through FF10 all the way. I didn’t really care for the battle system (although S04 build something better out of it), & hated fighting nothing but the same damn enemy for the first 3 hours (Lizards, no thanks) & overally felt like story didn’t go anywhere (that I can’t remember anything from the story says a lot, even after refreshing myself with wikipedia, I don’t remember really playing this game other than the time put in).
I had heard the story got better in the sense there was some sort of a twist later on (and that it was related to the GBA sequel to the 2nd story, Blue Sphere, somehow, which is also a shame, since that was the sequel I wanted localized & to play, not some nonsense 400 hundred years in the future with a terribly name main character), but unless I can play it with japanese dub, I most likely will not ever bother.
FPS action game is also being generous. Ironically, Square has been pursuing suicide since they bankrupted themselves by making an overt expensive CGI movie that wasn’t very good (Spirits Within) by… increasingly making each successive RPG more & more cinemative & CGI-movie like. The X-Files PS1 point & click game probably has less linearity, & that’s probably by partially not pretending to be an RPG when it isn’t.
Am I the only one who despises non linearity in games?
To me, all non linear games come in two varieties, 1) games that give you the illusion of meaningful choice (Mass Effect) or 2) games that are insufferably boring and repetitive because of their non linearity (GTA).
I’m excited for the prospect of a more linear FF game.
Why haven’t I heard of this? Sakaguchi is a god among men, and I hope it was only Square’s corporate bloat that was keeping him down (in my opinion, since the move to PlayStation - nothing beats the SNES FFs).
There’s a necessary inverse relationship between linearity and story, although the trade-off is exacerbated by CG and 3D in general. With the only 2D in-game sequences they could account for all possible previous choices relatively easily (you didn’t save Shadow, so he won’t appear in the ending, etc.).
Overall the Dragonquest series does a pretty nice job of being non-linear while still having a pretty good story, but it does that by making the story more skeletal. I don’t think you could make an FF game as non-linear as a DQ game without harming the story, especially with all the CG cut scenes which it seems they will never give up on.
This man speaks the truth! But the likelihood of the console lovers(who tend to coincide with RPG gamers) having tried it is quite small, which explains the bias here.
I started it then was put off by all the elements I read about that I was scared of and thought I wouldn’t like. I will give it a proper try some time in the future but it may take a while; i was put off Oblivion by the levelling system for 9 months after I bought it.
I have actually only played seven or eight JRPGs to conclusion, but I make up for that in general knowledge due to geeky review-reading and downloading etc. I’ve got about 50 to play. I started writing out a conclusive list but there are so many that I have downloaded (SNES rom, PSX rom or Genesis rom) or are currently playing. I’ll just say that I loved FFX, and didn’t even dislike the voice acting. I am currently playing FFXIII and not liking how many little gasps everyone utters all the time, otherwise the game is OK, except as ever I am put off by massive changes to those things I love. In any case I’m trying to maintain an open mind, I have nothing against linearity in the FFX sense (I loved that game), and although you gotta love towns, if it works without them I’d be stupid to automatically reject XIII on that basis.
I’m not pessimistic for the future, but even if I were there are such a wealth of good JRPGs from the past (or more correctly, ones that have been highly rated by reviewers, gamers etc. and I expect I will enjoy) that I have got many thousands of hours before I run out, and during that time I’ll definitely want to replay the best ones lots of times. And I love WRPGs too!
About to finish Super Mario Wii. The 7 stage of world 9 where there is ice and fire piranha plants is hell!! HELL!!!