Game Time - 7/15/2012

I played a whole bunch more Final Fantasy VIII and I like it far more now. I can now safely say that it doesn't deserve all the shit it got back in the day. I fully stand by my observation that people were still high off of Final Fantasy VII, so they didn't like it very much. While it may be a whole lot different than previous entries in the series it was trying to do some interesting things. They don't all work, but they're certainly interesting.

Other than that this week was a bit light on the gaming. The Steam summer sale is now underway, but sadly my laptop isn't good enough to play a lot of the games I'd like to get. Despite that fact I was finally able to pick up Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes. The unique puzzle gameplay always looked interesting to me. I had been waiting for it to go on sale on PSN, but it never ended up happening. So now I have the PC version and I think it's pretty rad.

I'm thinking about starting Final Fantasy VI, but I'm thinking I should finish VIII first. I don't know what I'm doing with my gaming time anymore. It's getting out of hand. I have to start finishing the games I buy. 

Anyways, it's game time!

Final Fantasy VIII

Last week I finished off my Final Fantasy VIII talk with how I didn't really like the story or the characters. Now that I'm about 40 hours into the game my feelings have changed. The story is now fairly good, while I still don't like any of the characters. They were all unappealing to me before, but now I at least understand why they act the way they do and that's a pretty huge thing. The character development has actually allowed me to understand the characters. 

The only character who's really "changed" at all is Squall. He started off as a total asshole and now he's uncomfortably emotional. I am now truly able to understand why people say he's the most emo Final Fantasy character. I have not personally experienced all of the characters in every game, but I think it's safe to say Squall takes the cake.

EMO!

I still find the battle system and mechanics as interesting as I did before, but now I have a much deeper understanding of them. With that being said, the system is really easy to break. You can farm 100 of a spell very easily, which will make most stats go up a whole bunch. It gets even more crazy if you equip the correct spells to each stat. Correctly junctioning spells makes the characters crazy strong, so when you use that in conjunction with the GF summoning it's almost impossible to lose. At 40 hours in I'm nearing the end of the 3rd disc and I'm unbelivably strong. I've been taking out most bosses in a few turns, which seems a little too easy. 

On the other end of the spectrum I can see how this game could be very hard. The junction system isn't exactly the most easy thing to understand, so if you're not doing what you're supposed to things could go south fast. Luckily I checked out a bunch of stuff on the internet before getting too deep, or I could have been in that same boat.

What does ST-A/D mean? I couldn't tell you.

Now that I've had some more time to think about it I really like Final Fantasy VIII. Despite that fact, I don't think I'm going to be finishing it for a while. I have a problem when it comes to Final Fantasy games that often carries over to other games (*cough* XENOBLADE *cough*). What happens is I'll get to the end, or very close to the end and just stop playing the game. I have no idea why. I can already feel myself nearing that point with VIII. I'm trying as hard as I can to push myself forward, but now I really want to play VI.

It's not even that I get stuck. In IX I did almost every sidequest. I could probably crush the final boss into oblivion. I just choose not to. It's a serious issue that I hope I can fix in the future.

Clash of Heroes

Clash of Heroes is not really like any other Might and Magic game. Instead of being a first person game, a strategy RPG it's a puzzle game. I don't exactly know why Ubisoft decided to produce it, but they did and it's actually pretty cool. It was originally on the DS, but it was later ported to PC and consoles with some DLC. I managed to purchase the PC version and it's DLC for just under $5.

So what's the deal with this puzzle game you ask? Well, it's all about battling. So far I've played through some of the campaign, which sets you up with a Hero who controls a select group of forces that they bring into battle. When a battle starts both sides spawn units on an 8x6 grid. There are three types of units, basic, elite, and champion. At first you only start off with basic units who will be one of three colors. The way you make them attack is by matching 3 like units of the same color (Just like Bejeweled!). Depending on the unit they'll have to charge for a few turns and then run straight to the other side of the screen for a set amount of damage.

Battles in Clash of Heroes generally look like this.

Elite units act a bit differently. Once again they'll be one of three colors, however in order to activate them you'll have to put two basic units of the same color behind them. They do more damage and take up more space than basic units, but you can only have up to ten of them in your party. Once they die, they die permanently, so it's a good idea to use caution when it comes to elites. It's possible to buy at monuments on the map, but they can be a bit pricey.

Champion units are basically the same as Elites, but it takes four basic units of the same color to make them attack. This isn't exactly the easiest thing to pull off, so they do crazy amounts of damage. I personally don't like to use Champion units, because as I said they take forever to charge. I usually end up getting worked before they charge up. Each hero has a certain amount of HP, which is lowered when units reach the back of the field.

This is what the game looks like outside of battle.

The part that makes this more like a puzzle game than a turn based battle system is that you have so many moves per turn. You can either move a unit from one place to another, or get rid of a unit. Calling for more units will also use a move. You can just go crazy and moves things around, but you can end up getting a lot more done. If you delete units in order to create matches then you'll get a move back so you can do a bit more.

What I don't like is that the battles are a bit random. Depending on how your units come into the battle you'll either be in a good situation or a bad one. There's never a set way the battle is going to go. I lost more than a few battles due to poor unit placement, which is kind of annoying. It would have been cool if each battle was set up in a certain away, because then each individual battle could have been a puzzle. This is why i like the puzzle challenged you can find around the map. They give you certain units and you have to figure out how to win in a single turn.

If you create multiple groups of the same color they form links.

Hearing me describe this puzzle game probably isn't the best way to figure out the intricacies of the game, but I did the best I could. I like what it's done so far and I'm interested to see where it's going.

PFFFFFT

I feel like I haven't played a brand new game in forever, which isn't true because I played Theatrhythm last week. Sadly this coming week isn't going to have any new games in store for me. The next release I'm looking forward to is Kingdom Hearts 3DS on the 31st. I would have been pumped about The Last Story, but they decided to delay it again. It's been out in Europe for a while, so I have no idea what's up with that.

I guess this is my way of saying that next week is going to be pretty lame. I'm going to be gone for a few days so I don't know if I'll get much gaming in.

See you next time!

     -Manny

Game Time - 7/8/2012

There haven't been a ton of interesting games released on the 3DS so far. I've bought almost all the first party games, but I've been looking for some interesting third party games. When I saw that Square was going to be releasing a Final Fantasy rhythm game I got kind of excited.

Final Fantasy Theatrythm was released this past Tuesday and I wasn't really expecting much from it. It's a rhythm game with Final Fantasy songs. I originally thought it was only going to be good for nostalgia, but it ended up being a whole lot more fun than I expected. I never thought I'd have racked up more than twenty hours on a handheld rhythm game (especially in such a short time span).

I've at least tried to play most of the Final Fantasy games. I even played a two week trial of XI. Somehow I ended up skipping over VIII though. I remember there being a whole lot of hate for it on the internet. Looking around now though I think that the hatred may have misplaced. VII was so loved that I think VIII could only have been a disappointment to fans of the series.

Playing the Final Final Fantasy VIII songs in Theatrhythm made me curious about what it had to offer. My curiosity got the better of me, so I ended up purchasing Final Fantasy VIII on the PlayStation Network. I've only played a few hours of it so far and I don't really know what to think. The battle system diverges greatly from the previous entries in the series while trying to keep the same overall feel. There are a lot of things going on and they're not all apparent at the start.

Somehow I ended up having a very Final Fantasy filled week without even intending to. Unexpected gaming can sometimes be the best kind though.

Final Fantasy Theatrhythm

As I mentioned previously I wasn't expecting much from Theathrhythm. Watching the trailers it looked like a standard rhythm game, and to top it off it looked super easy. If you're judging it from watching gameplay I'd highly recommend you try it out for yourself. The gameplay is a lot more entertaining than it looks and it gets viciously hard on the higher difficulties.

 What's interesting about Theatrhythm is that it tries to combine RPG elements with rhythm gameplay. You make a party of four Final Fantasy characters before you start playing any music. As you play the game they will level up and get stronger. Their stats and abilities won't change the gameplay very much, but they do make small differences. On top of that you can equip items for additional bonuses.

I wasn't expecting the RPG element of Theatrhythm.

At first glance it seems almost as if the RPG elements do absolutely nothing, but that's not exactly true. Sure, on the lower difficulties they don't really matter, but they do when you're trying your hand at harder songs and difficulties. When you mess up in a song you'll lose HP, so the more you have the more time you'll have before completely failing a song. Higher strength will allow you to defeat more enemies in battle, which will net you better and more frequent drops.

Yes, you heard me right. There are battles in this game and that's one of the cool things about it. There are three different game types that vary slightly in order to mix up the gameplay. They all revolve around the same basic concept. There will be one circle, or multiple circles on screen. Colored circles will fly at your circle and you have to tap, hold, or slide the stylus on the screen in time with the music. Red circles are for tapping, green for holding, and yellow for sliding. It's a simple enough concept, but once the notes start flying it can get pretty intense. Hitting notes perfectly will net you criticals, which give you the highest score.

Battles get a whole lot more difficult than this. 

The three game types are battle, field and event. In battle there are four circles (one for each party member) and the notes fly at each character. Each time you hit a note it will damage an enemy on the opposite side of the screen. As you may have guessed getting criticals does more damage. In field type your party leader is traveling across the world and you just have to tap along with the music. Event type is basically the same, except the notes all appear on a pre-made track while scenes from a Final Fantasy game appear in the background.

Theatrhythm is clearly trying to capitalize off of its immense nostalgia, which it does quite well. Where it truly got to me was that it had more depth than your average rhythm game. Despite the fact that it doesn't have a story and its cutesy art style makes me want to vomit I still keep coming back to it for more. There's just a lot to do. I want to unlock all of the characters and songs. For some reason I find it to be extremely fun. It's just an added bonus that I'm pretty good at it. I don't know how much longevity the game will have once I've played all of the songs a million times, but it's hitting the spot for me right now.

If you've been skeptical of this game I really think it's worth trying out. If you don't like Final Fantasy or it's music then this certainly isn't for you.

Final Fantasy VIII

Man, Squall is a serious douche. Before deciding to try out FFVIII I had only experienced him in Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia. Apparently neither of those games colored his character in a proper manner. He's just an outright asshole and on top of that he's super emo. He wants to be left alone and he doesn't want to hear what anyone has to say so far. He actually told someone to go talk to a wall instead of him. What a douche.

Aside from really disliking Squall (or Leon as every other game has tried to tell us) the game is up in the air for me. The battle system is a great departure from all of the previous games. While it's still turn based and has the same options a lot has changed that makes it feel very foreign. For starters it has a was bigger focus on summons. In previous games summons were just attacks used to do some heavy damage, but in VIII they do a whole lot more. They're called GF's and apart from being summoned in battle they make up most of a characters strength.

Not only do your party members level up, but your GF's do as well. They gain power and grant characters abilities. What's interesting is that by equipping magic to the GF's your character will gain stat increases and elemental damage. The fact that you can equip magic to a GF is another part of why VIII is so different. There is no MP, so you can potentially use spells unlimitedly. The catch is that you have to have them first.

There's a whole lot going on here.

When a character has a GF equipped they can use the ability called draw. At certain points in the overworld, or in battle characters can draw spells. This will give characters access to spells. When using draw you'll gain a set number of spell uses, so they're essentially like consumable items. This adds a whole different dynamic to battle, because you need to go in prepared. Spells are also the primary way characters gain strength. While leveling still increases their stats it's not very significant, or at least it isn't a few hours into the game. Equipping magic to the GF's does grant large stat buffs though.

On top of that there aren't very many weapons available. Each character only has a handful they can get throughout the game. Instead of acquiring them you have to upgrade a single weapon with materials acquired through battle or from shops. This makes the GFs even more important, because they're the main way to develop your party.

It's a whole lot different, but it seems like a cool concept. Square was trying to do something different and I can respect that. Learning to do everything is needlessly complicated, but it seems like there will be a ton of customization once I slog through all of the games lingo.

Maybe Squall gets better as the game goes on. At least I hope so...

As far as the story goes I have no idea what to think so far. Not a whole lot has happened. Squall goes to a school for soldiers known as SeeDs. Well, they seem more like mercenaries than soldiers. There is a war going on though and they're sent out on missions. That type of scenario seems ripe for cool characters, but everyone seems iffy so far. Hopefully everything picks up as the game goes on. It seems cool so far, so I'm going to keep on going with it.

EVO 2012

GET HYPE!

I took a break from watching this year's EVO in order to write this. The Super Street Fighter IV finals are on right now and I'm anxious to get back to watching. There's something awesome about the hype that surrounds fighting games. I almost lost my mind during the Marvel 3 finals. I really wanted Yipes to win, but sadly he was eliminated yesterday.


In fact, everyone I want to win gets eliminated during tournaments. Combofiend was doing fairly well, but he ended up losing to F Champ. I feel okay with F Champ taking the whole thing though, because at least it wasn't Chris G and his super lame Morrigan style.


It just occurred to me right now that most people will have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. For those that don't know EVO is the worlds largest annual fighting game tournament. It's intense, so if you haven't every seen it you should take a look.

My brother is super into fighting games so I've watched my fair share of tournaments with him. That's how I got to know about a lot of the people in the community. It's hard to explain, but it makes all of the matches way more exciting when you know who's playing.

Anyways, this has been another week in gaming. I have no idea what's coming up in the week ahead, but that's part of the fun.

See you next time.

     -Manny