I won't mince words; Tales of Symphonia guttered out pretty quickly. It's clearly not a bad game, in fact I can tell Symphonia is a pretty good game overall. But I just couldn't keep playing; I wound up forcing myself just to play a few hours into the second world, and things flat out fizzled.
Maybe it's because I've been oversaturated with Tales-style story subversion and anti-nihilism (four Tales games in a year). Maybe real life events just got me too bummed out to play something in this pretty-but-grimdark style for a while. I know that this game has something of a victory in store for the heroes (hello Dawn of The New World) but somehow I'm tired of a pretty game populated by jackasses of one stripe or another.
After some traditional dithering, I pulled out something that I've put off for far too long: Final Fantasy XII. I've had a copy (Special Edition, no less) sitting in my stack for half of forever, and damn if putting this one off was a mistake. I fired this sucker up and realized that here is what I've been looking for. The opening cutscene can be pretty much summed up as Star Wars with airships and baroque mooks. I've been given to understand that the dev team for FFXII have disavowed any inspiration by/from Star Wars; the devs are full of crap.
Anyway. This sucker is actually pretty fun. This game follows Final Fantasy's trend of desperately avoiding traditional huge cash drops from monsters, and replaced it with the Loot/Bazaar system. You go out and wreck monsters for goods and materials, then sell them at various shops for you much needed cash. The other side of this is an indirect crafting system; after you sell certain amounts of certain loot items, the Bazaar produces items and equipment for you to buy (often at less than straight shop prices). This must be the system Tales of The Abyss took and horribly mangled.
The story is pretty interesting thus far, as well. I would expect nothing less from Ivalice Alliance and Matsuno himself. It takes the usual "empire shows up and wrecks faces for the evulz" and "plucky heroes take up arms for great justice" concepts and gives them gritty realpolitik overtones. While there are references to older Square games aplenty to go with them, and this is still very much Final Fantasy, there are also subtle hints and allusions to the game that made Ivalice Alliance in the first place: Ogre Battle. The biggest one I've pulled out so far is the main character Basch.
Basch is a heroic, high-ranking retainer that has been found guilty of assassinating his liege-lord and allowing the evil Archadians to take over the place, and executed for his crimes. But wait, not is he not a regicidal fanatic, he is alive and is being held by the baddos! Let me tell you about an early, named character in Ogre Battle. He was a heroic, high-ranking retainer found guilty of assassinating his liege-lord and letting the evil Zeteginians (I probably misspelled that) to take over the place, and executed for his crimes. But wait, he's not a regicidal fanatic, he's being kept captive by the baddos! This guy's name: Ash. Think about that for a bit. Then go play Ogre Battle. That game is plan fun. And so is this one.
Now I must go, and Unleash the Harvest upon Ivalice. Give me your shinies!
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