4811 replies to this topic

[klop422]

So I beat FF6 this morning. Emulated the original US SNES version.

 

I'll just come out and say it: I enjoyed it less than I expected to. Don't get me wrong, I did like it a lot, but idk, I wasn't enamoured by the game. I've just spent my half-hour walk home trying to work out exactly why. Here's what I came up with (and keep in mind this probably makes most sense if you've experienced the game, and will have spoilers):

 

 

So the World of Balance (the first half of the game) is pretty great. We get introduced to an awesome set of characters, pretty much all of whom are likable, most of whom are useful (not a fan of Gau or Cyan, though in the latter case he was kind of bad because I didn't use him a lot). There's a great plot going on too - Empire taking over, our heroes all trying to survive and eventually bring it down - complete with plot twists and dastardly opportunism and all that stuff. Great villains all around here. The famous opera scene is also pretty great (though completely different from what I expected). And the climax of this bit, where you go to the top of the floating continent and [BTW, major spoilers, probably] Kefka betrays Gestahl, pushes together the three statues (plot-important statues!), and basically succeeds in destroying the world is fantastic.

 

The beginning of the World of Ruin is also great. It's very lonely when you wake up, with only one person there with you, and you can't go anywhere. Really effective storytelling here, especially the point just before Celes decides to leave the island.

The story also stays good for a while. You run into some of your earlier characters, start putting together the party again, and it's all great. Then the game really opens up.

 

And that's where, for me, it stops working as well. So far we've had a fairly focused, character-based story, and now everything opens out, and the best we really get are little vignettes for each of the (14 total, though you don't have to meet two of them, and you can just not meet all but three) characters. Some characters' plotlines are decent enough (Terra's works fairly well, for example), but others (Strago, for example) get a lot of emphasis and new plot that doesn't entirely fit imo. And some (Locke, imo) get very little (despite his arc being finished off). And, other than a couple pairings (as far as I can tell, it's pretty much just Relm and Strago, maybe Shadow too, except that I accidentally killed him off :/), all the character interaction seems to have just plain vanished. Which is imo generally the butter of character-driven story (with the bread being how the characters themselves grow and develop - which, as I said above, also feels lacking).

Some of this also means some threads or implied threads of story just never get resolved. For example: Celes' whole thing is how she feels like she doesn't fit in (as far as I understand, anyway), and Locke shows her that some people do care, and the two of them have some great character moments in the first half. Maybe that's a budding romance, maybe not (he's got someone else to think about anyway). In any case, it doesn't matter, because when you find him again nothing is said on the subject. The best you get is her moving next to him on the airship in the epilogue.

Related - Setzer only agrees to let the party use his airship if they let him marry Celes, to which they (kind of) agree. This is never acknowledged again.

idk, little things like that just made me feel the game ran out halfway.

 

I could make comparisons to Chrono Trigger, to be fair: six characters, a fairly heavily-plotted section of the game, up until a big climax, after which you can either do a bunch of sidequests/character vignettes or go straight to the final boss. The difference here is that imo all the characters get their complete character arcs during the plotted section of Chrono Trigger, and all these character vignettes do is kind of fill in non-essential backstory - with the exception of (if you count it) the [again, major spoilers, for Chrono Trigger] revival of Chrono, though you can argue about whether that's a sidequest or just part of the main quest that you can skip. That's all the spoiling Chrono Trigger needs.

Might also be worth comparing to BotW for that matter - do whatever you want most of the game, after you've beaten the first bit, and fight the final boss when you want to. Thing is, in that game, all of the story feels like stuff you uncover, rather than it being presented to you in two kind of opposed ways.

 

The same character complaints work for Kefka, btw. Great characterisation in the first half, does nothing in the second half except sit at the top of a tower, waiting get yelled at and be an underwhelmingly easy boss. He gets some really great lines though, in both halves.

 

 

On the other hand, the music was great. Again, the Opera scene was one of the highlights - that tune is really lovely (although the translated lyrics don't fit to it at all), and any time it reappeared (again, Celes alone on that island) really did get to me - as well as any appearances of Terra's motif, i.e. the first OW theme. Actually, all the OW tunes are great. Kefka's theme is great fun too - starts out kind of silly, gets progressively more threatening. Wonder who that reminds me of...

Battle themes were also good - the main one is perfectly good, the main boss theme is fine (still prefer FFIV's ), Save Them! is fantastic, the other boss theme (the level 2 boss theme? idk, this one) is also great.

Dancing Mad... I might be crucified for this, but I don't... love all of it. It is great, but imo it just stops way too much for it to be intense. Which is sad, because they did some really cool stuff with it - the third tier has one of the few fugal moments in video game music, for those of you who know or care what that means; and I enjoyed that for the first three phases they seamlessly transitioned between the three stages of the theme. And, while the last section has all sorts of fun mixed-metre, it also has a slower section that doesn't really help imo. Maybe my opinion was affected by the fact that (as I said above) I found him underwhelmingly easy.

 

To be clear, I'm unsure whether me finding him easy was my own fault for over-grinding or not. Which is my next point: it's not generally a grindy game - the first half does a good job of switching you between party members and stuff, and if you really like a character, you can generally carry them with other party members until they're ready. Problem for me is the bits where you're supposed to make up multiple parties, you're pretty much forced to use characters you don't like. Which I guess is fine, if the ones you didn't use weren't way underpowered for the most part. To be fair, some of them catch up quite well (I didn't really use Mog until the final dungeon, but he ended up on my team in the final battle cos he was just that good), but others just... don't. Add to that that you gotta beat enemies to learn spells, as well as to make the Cursed Shield any use, and the game still ends up encouraging grinding to get some of the best equipment/abilites.

Alternatively, you can just... not do the sidequests and everything for all the good armour and espers, but that feels like skipping out on some of the game and needlessly hindering yourself.

 

 

Overall, I think my experience is probably best described in the same way my impression of the Opera House sequence is - it was hyped up a lot, for a lot of elements, some of which were there, some of which... didn't seem to be. Maybe it was weird translation (not convinced that's the case), Maybe it's how I played the game - a lot of short sessions, with a few longer ones nearer the end. I don't know. But in any case, I'm a little underwhelmed. Still enjoyed it, of course, but... yeah.

 

 

 

Oh well, started doing FF7 now, about 45 minutes in. See if that one lives up to the hype.

[kurt91]

Out of curiosity, which version of FF7 are you playing? Are you emulating the PSX original, or one of the PC versions on Steam?

[klop422]

Out of curiosity, which version of FF7 are you playing? Are you emulating the PSX original, or one of the PC versions on Steam?

I'm emulating the original PS1 one. I have a copy of it too, but no clue where my PS1 controllers are or where the cables are to hook it up to my TV. Haven't booted the thing up in years - probably going on a decade, if not over.

 

Current impressions: graphics took a little getting used to, but it is a PS1 game (only other thing I can really compare it to is FF9, for which i played the Switch port, which I understand has at least somewhat improved graphics), so I'll let everything but the sometimes really confusing walkability slide . First few hours are also quite fun.

[kurt91]

There's a bunch of mods for the PC version, including a handful of quality-of-life fixes. They'll fix things like an entirely non-functional stat (M.Defense, I think), as well as improve the visuals. One group of people ran every single pre-rendered background through an AI upscaling program that they custom-trained for the job and got some rather surprising results. It even managed to figure out what materials certain things were and somehow add detail that I swear wasn't there in the original. I found a (somewhat old, there may be a more current version) video that shows it off.

 

[Norzan]

The same character complaints work for Kefka, btw. Great characterisation in the first half, does nothing in the second half except sit at the top of a tower, waiting get yelled at and be an underwhelmingly easy boss. He gets some really great lines though, in both halves.

I wouldn't call firing lasers from his tower, destroying entire towns and killing thousands of people as "doing nothing". He has won basically, what else is he gonna do? He has become the God of Magic, basically thinks he's invincible. It's why he doesn't even attempt to stop you while you are collecting party members, he thinks you can't do anything to him because of his god status.

 

I never got this complaint, that Kefka does nothing in the World of Ruin. It's one of the criticisms leveled at the game that make no sense to me and conveniently forgets what happens in the game.

 

About him being easy, you have to remember you have to fight a gauntlet of bosses before him. His boss fight is not just him, the other bosses prior count as part of his boss fight.

Edited by Norzan, 21 February 2020 - 08:02 AM.

[klop422]

I wouldn't call firing lasers from his tower, destroying entire towns and killing thousands of people as "doing nothing". He has won basically, what else is he gonna do? He has become the God of Magic, basically thinks he's invincible. It's why he doesn't even attempt to stop you while you are collecting party members, he thinks you can't do anything to him because of his god status.

 

I never got this complaint, that Kefka does nothing in the World of Ruin. It's one of the criticisms leveled at the game that make no sense to me and conveniently forgets what happens in the game.

 

About him being easy, you have to remember you have to fight a gauntlet of bosses before him. His boss fight is not just him, the other bosses prior count as part of his boss fight.

The last point is definitely fair.

 

I think the issue that I have is not that he did nothing at all, just that, once you gain control of Celes, Kefka's done all of that already. Getting to the WoR is a really great moment, because you get to see the effects of Kefka becoming the God of Magic. Except that he does nothing during the WoR segment, until you get to him. And there shooting the lasers across the world don't feel like anything more than "Dude, stop! You're insane!" (which, tbf seems like exactly the reaction they want) cos we don't see any consequences of it. It wasn't even clear to me until a bit later that that was the 'Light of Judgement' they had mentioned. I'd have loved to see a town get on his bad side during the plot, not between the two sections of the game, so you actually get an immediate sense of what exactly he does.

tl;dr, it doesn't happen in the game, it happens between two portions of the game.

 

I will say, though, after thinking about the game for a while (I'll give it that - it hasn't been out of my mind for a bit) the main issue I have is the fact that what's presented as the main plot in the WoB is just cast aside in the WoR. If there had been a cutscene or two within the Tower of Kefka, or if it had been spelled out more clearly in the epilogue, I'd have been more satisfied. And don't get me wrong, I did really enjoy the subtle character-building and storytelling, it's just that when the set-up is much more outright than the resolution, it's kind of unsatisfying.

Thinking about it a few days after I beat it, I'm more optimistic - it's half of a really good game, as well a fantastic, much more open, section. It's just missing, imo, a satisfying resolution to some parts of what seems to be presented as the main plot.

[Norzan]

Kefka does use Light of Judgment during the main plot when Celes goes to the town Sabin is in. It's what causes the town to start collapsing and Sabin has to hold a house that starts to fall apart, so that Celes can go inside and save a child that is trapped inside.

 

And there's really nothing he can do besides use Light of Judgment. He has already destroyed most of the world and unleashed the strongest monsters. Showing him use Light of Judgment a bunch of times would get repetitive and i assume the devs didn't wanted to slow down the game just to show it a bunch of times.

[klop422]

I suppose so; I may have forgotten exactly how that moment played out. My main issue is the lack of presence he seems to have - maybe making more of the sidequests directly relevant to him might help - the Cult of Kefka/Cultists' Tower is a great example (though Lv.90 Magic and the Boss is frustratingly hard compared to the rest of the dungeon).

As I say, I'm happy enough to replay the game and reconsider (in a bit ), and that's not the only (or main) complaint I have.

[kurt91]

Started playing Danganronpa V3 so that I can watch Lucahjin's LP without spoiling anything. There are quite a few changes that, while I like some of them, I'm not sure I like other ones.

 

For example, this game has the Hidden Monokumas to look for in each Chapter. What I don't like is that one of them is hidden in the Trial section. Trying not to spoil anything, but at one point in the first Trial, you're given a minigame with a rather easy answer. It makes sense that the answer would be easy since you've never played the minigame before and you need to get accustomed to the rules. Even so, you can easily get the solution in under 10 seconds. In order to get the final Hidden Monokuma for the Chapter, you have to wait for around 30 seconds for it to show up disguised as one of the parts of the minigame. The ones in the main part of the Chapter aren't too bad since you can find them through exploring, and they don't seem to be given the same "you'll only find this if you force an obscure camera view in this particular room to make it appear to click on" treatment as the ones in the second game. I just don't like the idea of them being hidden in the Trial itself.

 

The game also introduces something called a "Back Route" in the Trials. Essentially, it's an alternate extra-hidden solution for sections of the Trial that you access by lying your way through a section instead of finding contradictions/points to agree with. (Yeah, this game not only has "Truth Bullets" where you use evidence you found in the Chapter, but now "Lie Bullets" where you lie your ass off to trick everybody to a different topic of conversation.) I'm not sure I like the idea of missing out on content in a character-driven game because you're already under a time limit, lose health on wrong answers, and now need to not only find the correct solution but also places to force the game off-track? Either give a hint when a Back Route is available so I know when to start looking, or remove one of those three conditions when using a "Lie Bullet" so I can search a bit more freely.

 

Also, as a more minor complaint, I am not a fan of the MonoKubs. Monomi was a bit of a stretch, but worked somewhat well enough. These guys are just annoying.

 

From what I've heard, this game is pretty split as far as general opinion goes. I'm enjoying it pretty well so far, so I'm hoping that it doesn't do anything particularly awful. I just finished Chapter 1, liked the big reveal behind it. Somehow I ended up with a slightly-broken version of the game. The controls in the Trial minigames are mixed up, so when it says to hit "S", I really need to hit "A" and vice-versa. Apparently if I update the game, it should be fixed. Still, how the hell does an issue like that get through testing?

 

Also, from what I've heard, some of the voice-actors have revealed that they're working on something Danganronpa-related, so something should be coming up soon. Hopefully it's a new game. Apparently V3 has absolutely nothing to do with the previous games in the series and their story, and I'd really like to see what happens next in the main-series.

[klop422]

Beat FF7 last week at some point.

 

I see why it's so well-loved, to be honest. Certainly not my favourite in the series, but it's a really solid game. No complaints about the gameplay, and most of the story issues I have are stuff I probably just missed cos I wasn't paying attention . And since I can probably not play the remake for a while (don't have a PS4, so I'd have to wait until it gets ported to Switch - there's no way my laptop can run it), this'll let me watch Let's Plays without it being spoiled.

I will say though, that the one moment at the end of Disc 1 (you know the one) would have hit a lot harder if I'd not known about it. I don't know how I could ever have avoided spoilers, but I wish I had. (Not spoiling it here, juuust in case you've never played the game before or heard of what happens there). Same goes for the identity of the antagonist and the final boss music. Even knowing about them, they hit fairly hard (I tried not to get too attached in the first case, but it just happened, you know?) but I feel like it'd have been even better without knowing.

 

Also, moving on, I started on FFX. Uh, skipping 8. For whatever reason. (Ok, Steam had a sale, I thought saving the £30 for the X/X-2 deal on PC (it cost me £9.99) rather than it on Switch (~£42) was better than what I'd save getting FF8 - especially since I can emulate that.) I'd forgotten to check if my computer (a fairly workaday laptop) can even run it, and technically its specs are too low, but I turned all the graphics setting to their lowest and so it works now. ...yay?

In any case, I spent about 4-5 hours this morning playing, and, while the story is presented in a much more... lighthearted? (dumb?) way than almost all of the oher ones I've played, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. It's much more lighthearted than the last few I've played - we'll see if that lasts .

[Magi_Hero]

I am in the same boat, klop. I also don't want to bother to get a PS4, so I'm just waiting for next year. Unfortunately, I don't think it coming to Switch will be a thing. If they do the same treatment as 15, it's probably possible.

 

I think I was trying to actually replay 7 at some point around this time last year, but got sidetracked after maybe disc 2. I ended up replaying 8 and the remaster of 12. I was going to do the remaster of 10 next.

[klop422]

Being honest, this was originally sparked by the fact that ProJared is playing/reviewing them all and I wanted to be ahead of the curve, especially with the two most hyped ones (6 and 7). About halfway through I realised (or rather remembered - it just hadn't really been relevant to me before) that the remake was coming out soon. So, lucky for me I guess .

 

As for a Switch port, we'll see. I know they want to keep it exclusive to PS4 for a year or something, but idk what plans they have after that.

Worst case, I wait til I get a PS4/a proper gaming PC/(maybe whatever the next Nintendo console) in the far future and play it there.

[Anthus]

I've been playing through Skyward Sword again.

 

It's probably no secret how I felt about this game, but for those of you who don't know, I was not a fan. I liked it when it came out, and beat it, but once that new Zelda smell wore off, I could never bring myself to finish it again. Why was that? Mostly cause of the pacing, and high number of mandatory fetch quests. I also didn't like the constant use of motion controls. As I've grown older, and played games more, I learned basically everything is a fetch quest to some degree. It just matters if the window dressing is good enough to make you not care. In SS, it's a mixed bag. I am enjoying the combat much more, and think it does hold up decently well. You just have to be patient, and not flail around like an idiot. Sometimes, yeah, it does feel like it just doesn't do what I wanted, but I do think it is more my fault than the game's, to be honest. The story is nice, and the dungeons are great, but everything else it still such a drag between dungeons.

 

I've pretty much been B-lining for the main quest. I don't do any of the side content unless required. I just want to play the dungeons, which are imo, the best part of this game. I am about to enter the sand ship. This is my least favorite dungeon, and where I quit last time in 2015. We will see if I can make it through. I am remembering the last two revisits being really dumb but I can't remember why other than the Tadtones. I kind of feel like the first 3/5 of the game are the best, then, other than dungeons, it kind of nose dives after that.

 

All in all, my opinion on this game has moved ever so slightly more to the favorable side of things. I'm not as bitter about it since it is no longer a time when I thought this was the future of Zelda. There's actually a few core things that were introduced here that made it into BotW. The stamina bar, the (very light) crafting, the idea of climbing stuff more, and breakable shields to name a few. The art style looks good, the music is amazing, and the over all atmosphere is cozy. I just wish the non-dungeon gameplay was better.

 

It's still my least favorite 3D Zelda, but it's not really a bad game. Just a bit slow and boring at times, but not really bad.

[klop422]

So I, uh, beat FF10. You know, a 40-hour game. In about a week.

 

My procrastination habits aside, it was fantastic. Great battle system, really good story (though the voice acting was often a bit weird, and there are a couple moments/things that could probably be better?), good characters - just really fun.

 

Muh few story issues (spoiler warning, I guess):

- I wish Seymour had been more of a key player at the end. He's sort of set up as the main villain (alongside Sin), but after 'killing all the Ronsos' (despite there being several left over after he says that) he just kind of exists to be beaten up a couple times. I mean, I won't complain too much - his last appearance is one of my favourite bosses in the game - but I feel like his whole plotline could have been integrated better with the main plot.

- Speaking of Seymour, Tidus says in his voiceover as soon as you meet him "I didn't trust this guy from the moment I saw him" (or something like that). I mean, I'd seen that he was a boss fight from looking through soundtracks, but even then, the game outright tells you "this guy's not good".

- While the romance plot is sweet (maybe a little surprisingly, I'm a sucker for a good romance subplot) and has some really good moments, some of the most blatant bits kind of... didn't land for me? Maybe it's cos I'm not into J-pop, or because looking into both their eyes in slightly uncanny 3D makes me uncomfortable, but the big underwater scene (if you've played it, you'll know it) just didn't land for me. Honestly, even the cutscene afterwards worked better for me. Even the really uncomfortable laughing scene did (though to be honest, that one looks like it was uncomfortable on purpose). Similarly, the outright confession at the ending kind of hit me as a little... silly? I dunno. I think maybe I prefer some kind of subtlety in my romance plots (which FF9 did really well).

- Rikku kind of shows up out of nowhere again about halfway through. I like it. But then she's apparently best friends with Yuna already? idk, I understand it with Tidus, since they already met, but it feels a bit sudden there.

- Maester Mika was never sent. Is he, like, actually gone? Also, do dead people age? Apparently. Except Jecht kind of doesn't?

 

In any case, that's mostly nitpicking. I did really enjoy the game's story. Maybe some of my issues are solved in X-2, when I eventually go on to that

On the other hand, two larger issues:

 

In terms of soundtrack... The game's fine? It's not amazing, to be honest. I like most of the music - the battle theme's good, the Calm Lands is lovely, the Hymn of the Faith is really effective, and all the boss themes in the last dungeon are really good (though the Jecht battle theme is a little outside my tastes) - but the regular boss theme is... not great? It's effective, I guess. But honestly it doesn't feel that special to me. And, other than the themes I mentioned (and reappearances of them in other tracks, I guess) overall the music was kind of forgettable imo. I might even go as far as to say, of all the FF games I've played/watched through (1-7, 9, 10), it's got my least favourite soundtrack. Maybe second-least, after II.

 

Also, the big snow mountain is tedious. I loved playing through the game, but that one dungeon is ridiculous. Massive difficulty spike (as far as I could tell), no save/restoration spots for ages, and ridiculously long. Zanarkand as a dungeon is also kind of tedious, but less so. Doesn't help that the two hardest bosses (of the main story, imo) in the game are in this section of the game, and that the second one is behind a 10-minute unskippable cutscene (even on the Steam version, you can't skip the in-game ones, only the prerendered ones), and honestly I was having trouble enjoying this bit.

 

In any case, overall, I did really enjoy the game. Despite my dislike of the soundtrack, it might be my second favourite, after 9? I'm not committing to that - it's fresh on my mind, of course it's gonna be high on the list - but I did like it a lot.

 

Now onto X-2!

Uh, I mean, now onto Quantum Mechanics, cos I've neglected that for a week.

[klop422]

So, despite what I said about Quantum Mechanics, I caved and started on X-2. I'm on the final boss, I guess? I'll get to that.

First things first. It's very... girl power. Which is fine, of course. Not usually my thing, but overall it's fine. Just a stylistic thing, I got over it in an hour. The battle system feels fun: I was hoping for more stuff like FFX - you know, turn-based - but it went back to ATB, which is also fine. A lot faster than almost any other one in the series, iirc.

 

Uh, spoilers from now on, I guess.

 

However, I can't say I think it at all comes close to being as good as FFX. The story's fine, but there's so much... I don't know, nonsense? The whole Vegnagun thing is fine - a superweapon created a thousand years ago to beat Sin (i.e. the problem from the first game) is pretty cool, fair enough. Shuyin, the guy who looks oddly like Tidus (from the first one) who created it and wants to destroy the world (I forget why the last bit, tbh) is also a decent idea.

 

But, some of the other stuff? Like, there's some political struggle happening from fallout from the last game, but it doesn't really feel like it does much more than be a roadblock. All the leaders vanish at some point and the power vacuum makes everyone supposedly go a bit crazy (I might have missed it, but you don't really see any of that), so you decide to do something about it. By putting on a concert. Ok, sure. Wouldn't have been my first choice, but I'll go with it.

So where to have this concert? Obviously the massive plain where there's a constant thunderstorm, bad enough that there was a whole mingame about dodging the lightning strikes in the first one. Where better to put almost the entire world population for a concert? Surely not the plains where the weather is always sunny and mild, right? Where people have already set up all sorts of carnival stands, and so lots of people already are? No, terrible idea.

And if that's not bad enough, there's a good ol' filler dungeon here too. Because, surprise surprise, throwing a concert in a big plain full of monsters is not a good idea. So you gotta beat the big lizard guy in a fairly short dungeon. Like, 20 minutes or something.

Where if you die, you gotta go from the start, because there's nowhere to save and the freaking autosave also only saves at the entrance.

 

It doesn't help that the boss theme is one of the most uninspired pieces of boss music I've heard. Like, I didn't love the boss theme from FFX, but the one is X-2 is... just outright bad, imo. idk, it does nothing to hype me up for a battle. It just kind of shouts around for the 20 minutes that each battle takes. (Ok, maybe the battles should have taken less time, but I was playing this the way I played all the other Final Fantasy games I did, i.e. without grinding. That's, uh, not an option here. The game became much easier when I took an hour out to grind.) Eventually I just muted the music and played FF4's boss theme - which is quality, btw. In any case, Final Fantasy X-2 is probably the most convincing case for the need for good boss battle music. Bad boss music makes easy bosses less fun, whereas good boss music makes hard or generally tedious bosses much better. (My favourite boss battles from FFX were the ones in the last dungeon, which, if you see above, had some of my favourite tracks in the game as boss themes.)

 

And it's not like the music is bad generally. Like, I'm a fan of the kind of funk style that it uses. The regular battle theme is decent. The track in the airship is decent. And... I honestly can't think of any more music in the game. Like, I liked most of it (with one main exception, as I said), but I honestly can't remember how any of it goes. Maybe that's one strength of the boss theme.

 

Getting back to the concert sequence - the concert itself is actually not the worst thing either. The music isn't entirely my thing, but that's not an issue with the game. The visuals do work well, and the whole thing about Lenne's emotions somehow being saved in the dressphere that Yuna uses is actually a kind of interesting plot point. It stretches my willing suspension of disbelief a little that literally everyone who saw the concert was convinced about peace and love and whatever, but it was a magic concert. Fine.

 

In any case, I'm at the final boss right now., 20 hours in (about half the length of the last one), and with the game telling my I'm less than 50% done (I looked it up). Which means that I probably have to replay the game to get everything. And I did skip some sidequests that were tedious (and also didn't get to complete one because I did most of it, accidentally went to the boss, beat him, and then got kicked out of the sidequest and congratulated, with a 'but you didn't get everything' message. And I didn't want to spend the other hour on that boss).

The last boss is Vegnagun, a machine that's gonna destroy the world if you don't stop it. Cool, I dig it. It's in five phases, and the game (at least the remaster) autosaves between each one, with some walking between them. Great! The original game only put a save spot before the first phase, and this means I don't have to do the whole thing again!

I beat the first phase after some tries. Cool. Second phase takes me some time, also cool. Third phase I get in two tries, cos I'm just that good (no, it's cos I grinded before the fight and this one takes less real tactics to beat). The fourth phase also takes me down once, like every boss so far in the entire game. (I ain't amazing at this one, I'll own it. I refuse to take all the blame - I don't think the game is forgiving enough - but I think some of it's probably my fault). Ok, cool, the game has a cutscene where if you lose against the world-ending machine, the world ends. Neat. Chrono Trigger did it, and that was cool. So I go to load the autosave.

Guess where the game autosaved?

Yup, right at the beginning of that cutscene. Now either I have to do the whole boss again, or I can watch the world die because I didn't know the boss's tactics.

 

I don't want to say too much about it, but it's got me seriously annoyed. And, honestly, I've not been having nearly as much fun with this game as I wanted to. Like, I really wanted to like it, and I'd heard good things (though less good things about the story), but overall it's just... not amazing. It's fine, bits of it are fun, but overall it might be my least favourite Final Fantasy. So far at least . I'm still gonna beat it, but I'm not going for all the endings, certainly. Youtube can do that for me.

(And, while I might hate myself for it, I'm also probably gonna do Last Mission afterwards too.)

 

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In other news, I've also been playing Rayman Legends. After so many RPGs, a platformer's kind of nice. It's good fun. Very forgiving - maybe too forgiving - but it's a good time. Probably not a game I would have bought myself (I got it with my Switch - which was used, came with three games. I think I mentioned at the start of the previous page in this thread), but it's a game that's really fun and I'm kind of glad that I have. Would recommend if you're looking for a platformer to play. Nowhere near done, though .

 

(and I have been doing work between all of this. Not much, but some)