Well, after a bit of unexpected thrashing around, I decided to go ahead and break out my venerable copy of Final Fantasy VII and finish the playthrough.
It actually took some doing; the place I stopped at is not itself a particular problem, but then I realized why I stopped. I had just started the big sidequest of the game, getting the Golden Chocobo. For the uninitiated, the Golden Chocobo is the ultimate, go-anywhere vehicle in the game. This alone warrants attention, but the real reward is using the Golden Chocobo to collect the ultimate summon, Knights of The Round. This particular summon is far and away the most powerful spell in the game, and can be combined with other Materia (the game's magic and customization options all rolled into shiny orbs of concentrated awesome) for some very broken stuff, up to and including wiping the final boss in one turn.
Anyway, this power has a commensurate price tag. The 'traditional' way to earn a Golden Chocobo is by racing and breeding certain common birds to get special birds (there is a second legit method, but that means fighting a nasty superboss) until you breed the Golden Chocobo. It sounds alright on paper, and is straightforward enough if you have a walkthrough (it can be done blind, but even with in-game hints its not all that intuitive), but in practice you have to drop the storyline and race six separate Chocobos to twelve victories each, stopping along to way to feed them start-boosting greens.
Not impressed? Well chocobo racing tends to come in two flavors: utter snoozefests where you sit at the finish line waiting for terrible AI racers to catch up, or frustrating traffic jams where you wind up stuck in dead last while the few competent AIs become impossible to catch. You can find a happy medium, where the races actually become challenging and tense without feeling grossly unfair, but it tends to be fairly rare. To add to all this confusion, there is a 'boss' racer running around in the higher ranks. Despite general wisdom, he's not impossible to beat, and might actually be one of the more pleasurable elements involved; races involving Teogh (whether that's supposed to be his name or a mangled translation of Joe, the only named jockey you're introduced to in the story) become tense and rewarding duels against a chocobo-riding Dale Earnhardt (the color scheme even fits).
Even then, doing this means you're doing a minimum of 72 races (and odds are very good you'll really need to do 100 or more, especially if you skimp on the greens) , during which you get a choice of two slightly different racetracks, making things even more repetitive. But it's not all bad news; leaving Knights of The Round out of the bargain, chocobo racing is far and way the most effective way to collect GP, the special currency for the Gold Saucer. And that's not all! Victories in the higher ranks can draw some really nifty rewards, including equipment and Materia that can only be gained through racing. Even the common prizes have some value, since forgoing them in how you get that wonderful GP generation.
Now if we could just find a way to do all this without watching a polygonal bird butt front-and-center for hours on end. The Harvest carries a fearsome price.
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Sunday, July 24, 2016
ULTRA COMBO
So. I beat Kingdom Hearts Final Mix last night...
...And beat Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana a little more than 12 hours later. I'mma go take a nap now.
You still here? Okay.
Honestly, I didn't plan on this. I just randomly decided to plug Iris into the PS2 and see what happened. I though I was stuck for good; either I had encountered a nasty glitch or stumbled upon the bonus dungeon by mistake (or both, the extra dungeon is supposed to be inaccessible until you have a cleared game save). I thrashed around for half an hour, then finally gave up and looked it up on GameFAQs. I learned that the solution was both simple and obvious (remember to try all your abilities, kids), and that like most RPGs the FAQs are written by snotty 15 year-olds that can't be bothered to give complete information and pre-emptively complain about questions.
Anyway, the final boss Amalgam was both challenging and kinda fun, and came down to the wire. I barely pulled off a win before it pulped my surviving characters. That'll teach me to not bring lots of items and resources to a final boss in an crafting-centric game where items are a major part of the combat system. I admit that it actually enhanced things somewhat, giving some extra tension and actually making my decisions feel like genuine tactics and gambles instead of "whack for x damage, heal for y when the enemy responds" most turn-based systems devolve into.
The whole thing still feels unreal somehow; I didn't expect it to go as well as it did. A gaming debt is now paid, a near-failed campaign put to rest successfully. But where will the Harvest turn next? Stay tuned. Or not.
...And beat Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana a little more than 12 hours later. I'mma go take a nap now.
You still here? Okay.
Honestly, I didn't plan on this. I just randomly decided to plug Iris into the PS2 and see what happened. I though I was stuck for good; either I had encountered a nasty glitch or stumbled upon the bonus dungeon by mistake (or both, the extra dungeon is supposed to be inaccessible until you have a cleared game save). I thrashed around for half an hour, then finally gave up and looked it up on GameFAQs. I learned that the solution was both simple and obvious (remember to try all your abilities, kids), and that like most RPGs the FAQs are written by snotty 15 year-olds that can't be bothered to give complete information and pre-emptively complain about questions.
Anyway, the final boss Amalgam was both challenging and kinda fun, and came down to the wire. I barely pulled off a win before it pulped my surviving characters. That'll teach me to not bring lots of items and resources to a final boss in an crafting-centric game where items are a major part of the combat system. I admit that it actually enhanced things somewhat, giving some extra tension and actually making my decisions feel like genuine tactics and gambles instead of "whack for x damage, heal for y when the enemy responds" most turn-based systems devolve into.
The whole thing still feels unreal somehow; I didn't expect it to go as well as it did. A gaming debt is now paid, a near-failed campaign put to rest successfully. But where will the Harvest turn next? Stay tuned. Or not.
Let A Little Darkness Into Your Heart
And it'll clog your arteries!
So, another game goes into the list. It took a fair bit of doing, but Kingdom Hearts Final Mix is now a game that I've beaten. Ansem was quite a final boss, and even though I suspect I was over-leveled, it took a few tries and quite some time to put that set of battles away. It was just hard enough to keep me coming back for more.
Overall it was a helluva run. KHFM is just as fun as advertised, and I don't doubt it's old news to say that this game deserves a spot on the RPG enthusiast's shelf. The tone was wonderful, being very optimistic and cheerful without becoming saccharine, having just enough dark moments to remind you how high the stakes can really be. Going on a multidimensional tour of random Disney worlds to smack eldritch legions of stolen and corrupted hearts (with a giant damn key!) sounds friggin' stupid on paper, but it just works out so well. The latter third or so was the best part, full of freaky and memorable locations, challenging battles, and just crazy moments. It's a rare game that takes fairly predictable twists and turns and still actually can pull off some OMGWTFBBQ doing them. Hell an unexpected highlight was stumbling onto a bonus superboss and getting totally wrecked for my trouble; I won't spoil things completely, but I can't say I've gotten some laughs out of getting slaughtered by what amounts to a Square-style Sith Lord before. Welcome to Kingdom Hearts!
It's still not perfect (but perfect doesn't exist anyway). I do have some minor quibbles. The summon system just wasn't all that great; Square games typically used it as a once-per-battle supermove, with plenty of flash and occasionally game-changing effects. KHFM retains the once-per rule, but adds a few other restrictions that just doesn't let be all that fun. It's very telling that the only one really worth it is Tinker Bell which invokes an almost game-breaking health regeneration (almost, you'll want and need it in later boss fights). The coliseum fights are also a bit of a pain, mostly though a combination of no summons and no heath or mana pickups; that's a lot meaner that it sounds. The final gripe is that the designers traded depth for variety. The various worlds you visit have plenty of distinction and fun visuals, but they rarely feel like worlds. Neverland was especially bad, giving you unlimited flight...in an abbreviated series of claustrophobic halls and cabins, finally letting you loose on the deck for a boss fight and later hanging around Big Ben (by the way, you can only move something like 30-50 yards from the big clock before hitting an invisible wall).
Those are about it for the gripes, though, and there is plenty of good things to fanboy about. The battle system is overall simple but deep, and your AI partners will actually meaningfully contribute along the way. Traditional revival items and spells are forgone for a timed comeback mechanic, which both relieves the player from traditional AI babysitting and adds a fair bit of tension to tricky battles. That and listening to Donald Duck wig out and then fling arcane doom is hilarious. The guest star members do run the gamut, but Final Mix seems to have tweaked them to where none are actually useless. Beast is still far and away the best of the lot. Seriously, eh OHKO's Heartless and doesn't afraid of anything. They all seem to have a hidden extra luck mechanic as well; putting a world specific character in the battle lineup seems to make the drop rates skyrocket for some reason. One final thing, the production values are through the roof. This is a very fun game to look at and listen to. I'm running a relic of a CRT television which far from does justice to it, and I've still gotten lots of wow-inducing visuals and wonderful sound. Traverse Town's battle theme is just something special by the way. Oh, and Deep Jungle feels a lot less like a Disney world and more like somebody snuck in some World of Mana flavor with the visuals and especially the soundtrack. Yes I geek out at video game music, why do you ask?
In any case, all good things must come to an end, and it's time to decide what adventure to pop in next. We shall see.
So, another game goes into the list. It took a fair bit of doing, but Kingdom Hearts Final Mix is now a game that I've beaten. Ansem was quite a final boss, and even though I suspect I was over-leveled, it took a few tries and quite some time to put that set of battles away. It was just hard enough to keep me coming back for more.
Overall it was a helluva run. KHFM is just as fun as advertised, and I don't doubt it's old news to say that this game deserves a spot on the RPG enthusiast's shelf. The tone was wonderful, being very optimistic and cheerful without becoming saccharine, having just enough dark moments to remind you how high the stakes can really be. Going on a multidimensional tour of random Disney worlds to smack eldritch legions of stolen and corrupted hearts (with a giant damn key!) sounds friggin' stupid on paper, but it just works out so well. The latter third or so was the best part, full of freaky and memorable locations, challenging battles, and just crazy moments. It's a rare game that takes fairly predictable twists and turns and still actually can pull off some OMGWTFBBQ doing them. Hell an unexpected highlight was stumbling onto a bonus superboss and getting totally wrecked for my trouble; I won't spoil things completely, but I can't say I've gotten some laughs out of getting slaughtered by what amounts to a Square-style Sith Lord before. Welcome to Kingdom Hearts!
It's still not perfect (but perfect doesn't exist anyway). I do have some minor quibbles. The summon system just wasn't all that great; Square games typically used it as a once-per-battle supermove, with plenty of flash and occasionally game-changing effects. KHFM retains the once-per rule, but adds a few other restrictions that just doesn't let be all that fun. It's very telling that the only one really worth it is Tinker Bell which invokes an almost game-breaking health regeneration (almost, you'll want and need it in later boss fights). The coliseum fights are also a bit of a pain, mostly though a combination of no summons and no heath or mana pickups; that's a lot meaner that it sounds. The final gripe is that the designers traded depth for variety. The various worlds you visit have plenty of distinction and fun visuals, but they rarely feel like worlds. Neverland was especially bad, giving you unlimited flight...in an abbreviated series of claustrophobic halls and cabins, finally letting you loose on the deck for a boss fight and later hanging around Big Ben (by the way, you can only move something like 30-50 yards from the big clock before hitting an invisible wall).
Those are about it for the gripes, though, and there is plenty of good things to fanboy about. The battle system is overall simple but deep, and your AI partners will actually meaningfully contribute along the way. Traditional revival items and spells are forgone for a timed comeback mechanic, which both relieves the player from traditional AI babysitting and adds a fair bit of tension to tricky battles. That and listening to Donald Duck wig out and then fling arcane doom is hilarious. The guest star members do run the gamut, but Final Mix seems to have tweaked them to where none are actually useless. Beast is still far and away the best of the lot. Seriously, eh OHKO's Heartless and doesn't afraid of anything. They all seem to have a hidden extra luck mechanic as well; putting a world specific character in the battle lineup seems to make the drop rates skyrocket for some reason. One final thing, the production values are through the roof. This is a very fun game to look at and listen to. I'm running a relic of a CRT television which far from does justice to it, and I've still gotten lots of wow-inducing visuals and wonderful sound. Traverse Town's battle theme is just something special by the way. Oh, and Deep Jungle feels a lot less like a Disney world and more like somebody snuck in some World of Mana flavor with the visuals and especially the soundtrack. Yes I geek out at video game music, why do you ask?
In any case, all good things must come to an end, and it's time to decide what adventure to pop in next. We shall see.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
At The End
Well, here we are finally. I've taken my first steps into the final world of Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, the aptly named End of The World. It's an appropriately dark, unsetting place, full of impossible physics and eldritch creatures. It has the potential to be the best final level I've encountered in an RPG for a good while.
The ones I've played over the last few years have never quite gotten there. The three Tales games I've played were alright (and even downright brilliants in spots). Legendia's final level suffered from both ending fatigue and a much too high OMGWTFBBQ factor. Abyss has the wondrous Luke vs. Asch fight (and managed to trigger a bit of vicarious acrophobia) but was just too damn bright. Vesperia's final dungeon felt out of place, until the very last section, which came across as alien and disturbing somehow, and was evocative enough of Lovecraft to feel built and inhabited by Deep Ones or something; it actually scared me some.
But this one is different somehow. It's something of a pleasant surprise, since RPGs (even good ones) have a bad habit of screwing them up somehow. Most of them have length issues, being too much of a slog compared to the rest of the game (at least to me), or feel anticlimactic somehow. It's good to know that Square still knew what it was doing in the PS2 era.
Anyhow, things are going along pretty well, though some of that can be explained by some incidental grinding. I decided to go ahead and hunt down the last of the 101 Dalamations and get the final Aero upgrade. Things devolved fairly quickly, and the final set of puppies eluded me. I wound up tearing through Hollow Bastion for three hours, stopping and looking it up on GameFAQs, then futilely beating on it another hour. I thought I had managed to find a nasty glitch, and Googled it.
I didn't find a glitch. It had been moved the final set into a semi-secret area I had ignored (the hidden Lift Stop in the Library) thinking I has already thoroughly looted the place. Check Everywhere is the first rule of RPGs, and I forgot it! This was all compounded by the fact that the FAQs I consulted were copied and pasted from the original version to the Remix/Final Mix versions database without any corrections or new data. Frickin'. Lazy.
Anyway, I'm probably over-leveled now, but the monsters are still not pushovers at least. That's good, because we're down to the wire, and where the game needs to bring out the badasses. The Harvest Never Rests!
The ones I've played over the last few years have never quite gotten there. The three Tales games I've played were alright (and even downright brilliants in spots). Legendia's final level suffered from both ending fatigue and a much too high OMGWTFBBQ factor. Abyss has the wondrous Luke vs. Asch fight (and managed to trigger a bit of vicarious acrophobia) but was just too damn bright. Vesperia's final dungeon felt out of place, until the very last section, which came across as alien and disturbing somehow, and was evocative enough of Lovecraft to feel built and inhabited by Deep Ones or something; it actually scared me some.
But this one is different somehow. It's something of a pleasant surprise, since RPGs (even good ones) have a bad habit of screwing them up somehow. Most of them have length issues, being too much of a slog compared to the rest of the game (at least to me), or feel anticlimactic somehow. It's good to know that Square still knew what it was doing in the PS2 era.
Anyhow, things are going along pretty well, though some of that can be explained by some incidental grinding. I decided to go ahead and hunt down the last of the 101 Dalamations and get the final Aero upgrade. Things devolved fairly quickly, and the final set of puppies eluded me. I wound up tearing through Hollow Bastion for three hours, stopping and looking it up on GameFAQs, then futilely beating on it another hour. I thought I had managed to find a nasty glitch, and Googled it.
I didn't find a glitch. It had been moved the final set into a semi-secret area I had ignored (the hidden Lift Stop in the Library) thinking I has already thoroughly looted the place. Check Everywhere is the first rule of RPGs, and I forgot it! This was all compounded by the fact that the FAQs I consulted were copied and pasted from the original version to the Remix/Final Mix versions database without any corrections or new data. Frickin'. Lazy.
Anyway, I'm probably over-leveled now, but the monsters are still not pushovers at least. That's good, because we're down to the wire, and where the game needs to bring out the badasses. The Harvest Never Rests!
Sunday, July 17, 2016
For The World Is Hollow
And I have smote some Heartless.
I've been dealing with even crazier stuff than normal IRL, but I'm managing to get some time into Kingdom Hearts. I'm finally nearing the endgame, and hopefully this one can be put to bed before my next big campaign can go into full swing. I'm still deciding on whether to go ahead and figure out the roadblock I encountered in Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, but as it stands right now I'm not going to waste perfectly good-off time on it.
In any case, KH is still loads of fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing how deep this rabbit hole actually goes. I've finally gotten to some of the more fun/amusing/inexplicably badass monsters and boss fights take place. One of my favorite mooks is the Battleship, a mini-airship fused with a pirate Heartless that tears around and lobs destruction all over the place, Another is the Drake, a little Heartless Bahamut-lookalike. It's not all that challenging (at least for now) but it's fun to fight.
I'm currently in Hollow Bastion, one of the more eldritch locations I've been in my vidya adventures. It's dark and creepy, and somehow the whole weirdness factor is amplified by how light and airy a lot of it can be. It's hard to describe; I fully expected this whole dark, dank, gothic-looking place, with lots of rubble and undead-analogues and baroque scenery everywhere. There's plenty of that to be had, but there's all this outside sky-and-clouds stuff to be had. It's got to be a deliberate design decision, and it's thematically appropriate with the whole juxtaposition of light and darkness that KH espouses.
I'm still kicking myself a little over not giving this series a fair chance back in the day, but at least I'm making up for lost time. The Harvest never rests!
I've been dealing with even crazier stuff than normal IRL, but I'm managing to get some time into Kingdom Hearts. I'm finally nearing the endgame, and hopefully this one can be put to bed before my next big campaign can go into full swing. I'm still deciding on whether to go ahead and figure out the roadblock I encountered in Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, but as it stands right now I'm not going to waste perfectly good-off time on it.
In any case, KH is still loads of fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing how deep this rabbit hole actually goes. I've finally gotten to some of the more fun/amusing/inexplicably badass monsters and boss fights take place. One of my favorite mooks is the Battleship, a mini-airship fused with a pirate Heartless that tears around and lobs destruction all over the place, Another is the Drake, a little Heartless Bahamut-lookalike. It's not all that challenging (at least for now) but it's fun to fight.
I'm currently in Hollow Bastion, one of the more eldritch locations I've been in my vidya adventures. It's dark and creepy, and somehow the whole weirdness factor is amplified by how light and airy a lot of it can be. It's hard to describe; I fully expected this whole dark, dank, gothic-looking place, with lots of rubble and undead-analogues and baroque scenery everywhere. There's plenty of that to be had, but there's all this outside sky-and-clouds stuff to be had. It's got to be a deliberate design decision, and it's thematically appropriate with the whole juxtaposition of light and darkness that KH espouses.
I'm still kicking myself a little over not giving this series a fair chance back in the day, but at least I'm making up for lost time. The Harvest never rests!
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Back To The Abbey
Wandering a bit off the beaten path for this one.
As all two of you know already, I usually natter on about this video game or that video game or some other damned video game. This entry is a bit different.
Today I'm talking about books.
Specifically the old Redwall series by Brian Jacques. You can go on and mock me if you like, call me immature or a furry (or furmature, the hell ever). But there's just something special about these things. I can go out there and follow a video game badass and how he's saving the world, or rampage about and save the universe, or even go out on a quest to preserve existence itself. But inevitably, inexorably, I wind up back with my nose in a book about woodland creatures hanging out and living idyllic lives (or earning a shot at idyllic lives, or reclaiming idyllic lives) in benign, homey places, fighting off various barbarous hordes.
I enjoy these things immensely, even with some of the flaws that the series shows (and in some cases embraces). And as time goes on, even when I start picking at it, I find more reasons to like it. They're strictly formula, with variations on a few literary themes and archetypes, which actually seems to enhance things somehow (time is like a river, and history repeats). The eponymous Redwall Abbey changes so much between books, that it comes across as a benign version of frickin' Castlevania (but instead of mysterious wall chickens, we have fractious roof sparrows--at least early on, dammit Mattimeo), but it works out quite well most of the time. The place started out as frickin' huge relative to the inhabitants; enough so that in the very first book, Redwall, none of the abbey dwellers had been on the main roof, or even the second floor rafters and attic above in living memory, and it's a major undertaking to get up there, akin to actual mountain climbing. What they do when the roof needs fixing is anybody's guess. Later on in the series, Redwall Abbey is much more reasonable in scale and feasible to explore (though still pretty blasted big).
There's plenty of swashbuckling adventure, but it is tempered with a good deal of reality and (for lack of a better term) human tragedy. The good guys typically kick asses and take names, but they bleed, they get shook up and shocked, they get scared and scarred, and they can and do die. The bad guys are usually fairly shallow; they're evil for evil's sake, strongly implied to born that way and beyond redemption (Outcast of Redwall), though as the series went on, they'd get a bit more rounded and a bit of different character traits. There were even sympathetic villains (mostly low-ranking horde minions) and even one or two redeemed villains here and there, to contrast with nominally good characters that are deeply flawed or outright reprehensible (Taggerung having two big examples, with an extreme child abuser that died 'offscreen' and a tribe that practices human sacrifice that fortunately ends with the heroes' arrival).
I find it funny that birds in this series are wild cards. It doesn't even matter if they're a typically predatory species or not; we have typically heroic hawks and falcons, with eagles that have to be impressed by a protagonist somehow before joining the ranks of good, ravens and crows that are pretty much orcs with wings, and owls that are all over the alignment chart.
Hell, I can just go on and on about the characters. I need to stop for now, but I'll probably make this a sub-series within the overall blog. The Harvest Never Rests, and don't ever mess with badgers.
As all two of you know already, I usually natter on about this video game or that video game or some other damned video game. This entry is a bit different.
Today I'm talking about books.
Specifically the old Redwall series by Brian Jacques. You can go on and mock me if you like, call me immature or a furry (or furmature, the hell ever). But there's just something special about these things. I can go out there and follow a video game badass and how he's saving the world, or rampage about and save the universe, or even go out on a quest to preserve existence itself. But inevitably, inexorably, I wind up back with my nose in a book about woodland creatures hanging out and living idyllic lives (or earning a shot at idyllic lives, or reclaiming idyllic lives) in benign, homey places, fighting off various barbarous hordes.
I enjoy these things immensely, even with some of the flaws that the series shows (and in some cases embraces). And as time goes on, even when I start picking at it, I find more reasons to like it. They're strictly formula, with variations on a few literary themes and archetypes, which actually seems to enhance things somehow (time is like a river, and history repeats). The eponymous Redwall Abbey changes so much between books, that it comes across as a benign version of frickin' Castlevania (but instead of mysterious wall chickens, we have fractious roof sparrows--at least early on, dammit Mattimeo), but it works out quite well most of the time. The place started out as frickin' huge relative to the inhabitants; enough so that in the very first book, Redwall, none of the abbey dwellers had been on the main roof, or even the second floor rafters and attic above in living memory, and it's a major undertaking to get up there, akin to actual mountain climbing. What they do when the roof needs fixing is anybody's guess. Later on in the series, Redwall Abbey is much more reasonable in scale and feasible to explore (though still pretty blasted big).
There's plenty of swashbuckling adventure, but it is tempered with a good deal of reality and (for lack of a better term) human tragedy. The good guys typically kick asses and take names, but they bleed, they get shook up and shocked, they get scared and scarred, and they can and do die. The bad guys are usually fairly shallow; they're evil for evil's sake, strongly implied to born that way and beyond redemption (Outcast of Redwall), though as the series went on, they'd get a bit more rounded and a bit of different character traits. There were even sympathetic villains (mostly low-ranking horde minions) and even one or two redeemed villains here and there, to contrast with nominally good characters that are deeply flawed or outright reprehensible (Taggerung having two big examples, with an extreme child abuser that died 'offscreen' and a tribe that practices human sacrifice that fortunately ends with the heroes' arrival).
I find it funny that birds in this series are wild cards. It doesn't even matter if they're a typically predatory species or not; we have typically heroic hawks and falcons, with eagles that have to be impressed by a protagonist somehow before joining the ranks of good, ravens and crows that are pretty much orcs with wings, and owls that are all over the alignment chart.
Hell, I can just go on and on about the characters. I need to stop for now, but I'll probably make this a sub-series within the overall blog. The Harvest Never Rests, and don't ever mess with badgers.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Ducks Make Hilarious Wizards
Seriously, watching Donald Duck wig out and then unleash arcane fury is a necessary gaming experience.
I'm about roughly halfway through Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, and it's been a pretty fun ride thus far. I do have some fairly minor gripes. The most annoying one is traditional 3-D platforming camera screw; it's not the worst but it can be a pain. The other big one is just how small all the worlds you visit are. There's a lot of variety to be had, and we do have is great, with a good deal of little details here and there to help flesh things out. Everything just feels so hemmed in.
But other that all that (and -urgh- Gummi levels) it had been an absolute blast. The combat is fun and pretty fluid. Square was decidedly strutting their stuff here, and it shows. There's little signs here and there that this game has a pedigree including the kickass three-character combat of SNES-era Seiken Densetsu games, along with all the delicious kookiness Final Fantasy has brought us over the years. Toss in all the best parts of Disney's own brand of craziness (and the pedigree of quality Disney licensed games were known for back in the day) and voila, something that should have been a circus car trainwreck in the middle of an extra-baked Pink Floyd concert wound up just...well, special and actually pretty awesome.
I can see why this game elicited such a large and passionate fanbase, and can very much relate; it's a damn shame I skipped this jewel when it got released the first time (didn't have any excuses either, wound up with a copy from a buddy and wound up piffling it away for something or another).
Oh, and you can friggin' summon the Genie from Aladdin. That's the awesomesauce right there.
I'm about roughly halfway through Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, and it's been a pretty fun ride thus far. I do have some fairly minor gripes. The most annoying one is traditional 3-D platforming camera screw; it's not the worst but it can be a pain. The other big one is just how small all the worlds you visit are. There's a lot of variety to be had, and we do have is great, with a good deal of little details here and there to help flesh things out. Everything just feels so hemmed in.
But other that all that (and -urgh- Gummi levels) it had been an absolute blast. The combat is fun and pretty fluid. Square was decidedly strutting their stuff here, and it shows. There's little signs here and there that this game has a pedigree including the kickass three-character combat of SNES-era Seiken Densetsu games, along with all the delicious kookiness Final Fantasy has brought us over the years. Toss in all the best parts of Disney's own brand of craziness (and the pedigree of quality Disney licensed games were known for back in the day) and voila, something that should have been a circus car trainwreck in the middle of an extra-baked Pink Floyd concert wound up just...well, special and actually pretty awesome.
I can see why this game elicited such a large and passionate fanbase, and can very much relate; it's a damn shame I skipped this jewel when it got released the first time (didn't have any excuses either, wound up with a copy from a buddy and wound up piffling it away for something or another).
Oh, and you can friggin' summon the Genie from Aladdin. That's the awesomesauce right there.
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