Post by angelzeromatt on Jun 28, 2008 23:16:09 GMT -5
Welcome to the Real World - Pilot Edition
So no one's been doing game reviews here? Well, I think I can do my fair share of reviews. Make note, some of these choices will be for games that might be old and require a look into the times they were made rather than comparing them to games in the here and now. I am also not one to hold back with games that are supremely popular because I believe that my liking of a game or not does not affect how I review it, so neither will a game's popularity (though honestly, I rather do just a big review instead of have to number-rate various parts. I hate number ratings for this kind of stuff).
So, with that out of the way, I'm going to start with a review that rips and tears through a fabled greatest-game-ever candidate: Final Fantasy VII.
Name: Final Fantasy VII
Console: Playstation
So, what can I explain about this game that no one else knows? ... Forget that. Pretty much, it's about you being a so-called silent protagonist, who actually complains all the time and is never truly silent, working alongside Mr. T and Fanservice-zilla and chasing this guy who is compensating for his lack of... Confidence with a sword that is WAY too long. Oh yeah, you know he's the big bad guy since the beginning and why he's doing it, too. Is that good enough summary of the basic story? Don't think so? I do.
Story: 5/10
So, has anyone ever played Tales of Phantasia? If you had before playing VII, you are Japanese. It never came to America until after the Tales games became American-friendly. The story for VII is pretty much a rip-and-edit job of Tales of Phantasia's story, only with less wholesome story-ness.
Okay, so the villain is revealed, along with his motives, way too early in the game. You know he's the real villain and that never changes, and his motives are always the same in-the-open reasons he says aloud to everyone. I smell a basic not-so-good story being ripped from the hands of Tales of Phantasia except the villain has really bad intentions this time while the poor "bad guy" of ToP just wants to save his home planet. While I'm at it, both villains are voiced by the same Japanese actor. I digress.
The main character is such a kaleidoscope of personality that he's very human, believable, and the best protagonist ever made; end sarcasm. Where is this guy's real personality? He's everywhere on the action map, acting cute with a girl one moment and then being a total ass the next. For our so-called silent protagonist, he sure can't stick to his guns character-wise. Add to that the confusing mistranslation of dialogue in the English version where his identity is changed so much you'd think they were changing it continually through making it and couldn't be buggered to go back and edit what wasn't coherent to the final verdict of who the heck Cloud really was. In the end, he's nothing but a wimp who didn't get enough love as a kid and failed at life, long story short. Also, how can he use such a big, heavy sword with those scrawny arms? At least, in the anime thing, they showed Zack, the original user, with very muscular arms and body which meant he could do what could be done with that weapon.
As far as the rest of the cast, don't even get me started. They're all too easily seen through and they are never quite properly explored, not to mention plenty of them were copied from other places (Who can't look at Barret and see Mr. T? I dare you...). In other words, character development was flopped in exchange for the idea of being 'revolutionary' with gaming. All in all, the only parts I enjoyed story-wise were when Red XIII saw what really happened to his father and how Cloud is finally revealed as being nothing but a wimpy little kid who couldn't cut it without help from Jenova cells that made him a 'clone' without him really being a clone. I still don't get that whole thing anyways, which is probably just a really bad translation.
Gameplay: 8/10
Ah, the good old days: "stand in a line with front/back row and speed bars" RPG style, but three members in battle instead of four. What is this? And there are some long-range weapons and even a long-range Materia. Okay, that makes that one person cheap.
The Materia system was very unique and interesting, but the drawbacks for using them were a bit too much. After all, players will automatically just load characters up with Materia anyways, which works just as well as actually taking the time to figure out which works best for a character. VIII fell for this same trap as well, allowing you to customize and give specific roles of healer, fighter, and mage to any character. A double-edged sword, since that meant everyone could be put into the same area and you have just as good a team.
Sidequests could be fun if there were more of them that revealed more about the characters instead of just giving you items that make the last level and boss fights easier. Chocobo races were quite fun to go into, and the Golden Saucer place had other mini-games that were pretty enjoyable. However, that's as far as the goodness goes. The other sidequests are so tedious that you're better off bringing in a Gameshark or roughing the last battle. There's also the discrepancy of being unable to get Aeris' final limit break item before she dies. The mysteries continue...
Music/Sound: 7/10
The music was okay, good for its time, but plenty of songs were overused and repeated too much. Sounds in and out of battle sounded like they were recorded on a computer microphone instead of professional recording material. Nevertheless, the Highwind and Cid themes are pretty cool and several of the boss themes were okay. However, the Victory theme completely failed with its off-key notes in the fanfare and that has always bugged me, to this day. Anytime I hear that thing, I have to make sure and mute it before my ears bleed. Aside from that, the music was pretty good, as expected from Uematsu before he could make awesome orchestrated music.
Presentation: 5/10
This took a big hit for this reason: what's with only looking humanoid in battle while you're SD (super-deformed, a.k.a. Chibi) everywhere else? Honestly, they couldn't spend a little more time making that aspect a bit better by giving the sprites more than just five shades on their highly-polygonal bodies? There are even cutscenes with the SDs, and they look so gaudy with their 8-color shades against realistic settings and lack of good special effects in some cases, even for that time. The cutscenes would have done better if they were in anime form...
Or maybe that was the problem. The style tried to be too anime-ish and it lost some grasp of realism that it was in severe need of. Whatever it was, the game's overall look has 8-bit sprites on amazingly realistic backgrounds. That's like giving somebody a nice big chocolate cake and then telling them it's made out of your own... I think I've said too much already. They would have done better to make the backgrounds as cartoon-y as the sprites, like in Yoshi's Story. That, at least, would have made things feel better. Or better yet, make the sprites look more realistic to match the backgrounds.
Nevertheless, being the game to first introduce cutscenes, (as far as I know) it started a chain of events that would lead to some really awesome games with fantastic cutscenes. It gets a point for that at least. The only problem is that it only started the trend, one that could have easily been started by anyone else. It didn't make anything too good. Also, there was no blood when Aeris got stabbed, yet there was blood all over Sephiroth's face in that scene where the bloody tart finally died. So real Cetra have no blood while fakes are still human with blood, huh?
Overall: 6/10
So, in the end, Final Fantasy VII isn't a bad game, it just lacks all the things that could make it a good RPG. It would have been better as something like Devil May Cry goes for. Nevertheless, that must be why it's so popular in America, since it's all about 'revolutionary' over here and 'it's all thanks to VII that all this stuff happened'. Well, you know, someone would have come up with the idea soon enough.
All in all, if you're a die-hard fanboy/fangirl, you'll like it no matter how many of its flaws I point out and proceed to yell and flame me for saying these things. Either that, or if you're infected by the nonsense that it's the greatest game in the world simply because it was revolutionary. That's the only argument I get out of people when I ask why it's so good. Revolutionary does not mean good.
Nothing I say will change, however, that it's way too popular, and that Square's going to keep milking it for more than it's worth. Meanwhile, I'll continue telling how it really isn't that great in the first place and the only reason some of the things have more depth now is because they realized where they messed up and tried to make up for it all too late. That and rabid fanboys/fangirls try to create depth by looking way too hard into everything.
A good lesson to learn: never sacrifice story for gameplay or revolutionary-ness. You'll only hurt yourself in the end... Or end up rich in the case it turns out like this game and somehow so popular. Either way, this review is way too long and I need time to get ready for the storm of fans screaming at me for my bluntness.
So no one's been doing game reviews here? Well, I think I can do my fair share of reviews. Make note, some of these choices will be for games that might be old and require a look into the times they were made rather than comparing them to games in the here and now. I am also not one to hold back with games that are supremely popular because I believe that my liking of a game or not does not affect how I review it, so neither will a game's popularity (though honestly, I rather do just a big review instead of have to number-rate various parts. I hate number ratings for this kind of stuff).
So, with that out of the way, I'm going to start with a review that rips and tears through a fabled greatest-game-ever candidate: Final Fantasy VII.
Name: Final Fantasy VII
Console: Playstation
So, what can I explain about this game that no one else knows? ... Forget that. Pretty much, it's about you being a so-called silent protagonist, who actually complains all the time and is never truly silent, working alongside Mr. T and Fanservice-zilla and chasing this guy who is compensating for his lack of... Confidence with a sword that is WAY too long. Oh yeah, you know he's the big bad guy since the beginning and why he's doing it, too. Is that good enough summary of the basic story? Don't think so? I do.
Story: 5/10
So, has anyone ever played Tales of Phantasia? If you had before playing VII, you are Japanese. It never came to America until after the Tales games became American-friendly. The story for VII is pretty much a rip-and-edit job of Tales of Phantasia's story, only with less wholesome story-ness.
Okay, so the villain is revealed, along with his motives, way too early in the game. You know he's the real villain and that never changes, and his motives are always the same in-the-open reasons he says aloud to everyone. I smell a basic not-so-good story being ripped from the hands of Tales of Phantasia except the villain has really bad intentions this time while the poor "bad guy" of ToP just wants to save his home planet. While I'm at it, both villains are voiced by the same Japanese actor. I digress.
The main character is such a kaleidoscope of personality that he's very human, believable, and the best protagonist ever made; end sarcasm. Where is this guy's real personality? He's everywhere on the action map, acting cute with a girl one moment and then being a total ass the next. For our so-called silent protagonist, he sure can't stick to his guns character-wise. Add to that the confusing mistranslation of dialogue in the English version where his identity is changed so much you'd think they were changing it continually through making it and couldn't be buggered to go back and edit what wasn't coherent to the final verdict of who the heck Cloud really was. In the end, he's nothing but a wimp who didn't get enough love as a kid and failed at life, long story short. Also, how can he use such a big, heavy sword with those scrawny arms? At least, in the anime thing, they showed Zack, the original user, with very muscular arms and body which meant he could do what could be done with that weapon.
As far as the rest of the cast, don't even get me started. They're all too easily seen through and they are never quite properly explored, not to mention plenty of them were copied from other places (Who can't look at Barret and see Mr. T? I dare you...). In other words, character development was flopped in exchange for the idea of being 'revolutionary' with gaming. All in all, the only parts I enjoyed story-wise were when Red XIII saw what really happened to his father and how Cloud is finally revealed as being nothing but a wimpy little kid who couldn't cut it without help from Jenova cells that made him a 'clone' without him really being a clone. I still don't get that whole thing anyways, which is probably just a really bad translation.
Gameplay: 8/10
Ah, the good old days: "stand in a line with front/back row and speed bars" RPG style, but three members in battle instead of four. What is this? And there are some long-range weapons and even a long-range Materia. Okay, that makes that one person cheap.
The Materia system was very unique and interesting, but the drawbacks for using them were a bit too much. After all, players will automatically just load characters up with Materia anyways, which works just as well as actually taking the time to figure out which works best for a character. VIII fell for this same trap as well, allowing you to customize and give specific roles of healer, fighter, and mage to any character. A double-edged sword, since that meant everyone could be put into the same area and you have just as good a team.
Sidequests could be fun if there were more of them that revealed more about the characters instead of just giving you items that make the last level and boss fights easier. Chocobo races were quite fun to go into, and the Golden Saucer place had other mini-games that were pretty enjoyable. However, that's as far as the goodness goes. The other sidequests are so tedious that you're better off bringing in a Gameshark or roughing the last battle. There's also the discrepancy of being unable to get Aeris' final limit break item before she dies. The mysteries continue...
Music/Sound: 7/10
The music was okay, good for its time, but plenty of songs were overused and repeated too much. Sounds in and out of battle sounded like they were recorded on a computer microphone instead of professional recording material. Nevertheless, the Highwind and Cid themes are pretty cool and several of the boss themes were okay. However, the Victory theme completely failed with its off-key notes in the fanfare and that has always bugged me, to this day. Anytime I hear that thing, I have to make sure and mute it before my ears bleed. Aside from that, the music was pretty good, as expected from Uematsu before he could make awesome orchestrated music.
Presentation: 5/10
This took a big hit for this reason: what's with only looking humanoid in battle while you're SD (super-deformed, a.k.a. Chibi) everywhere else? Honestly, they couldn't spend a little more time making that aspect a bit better by giving the sprites more than just five shades on their highly-polygonal bodies? There are even cutscenes with the SDs, and they look so gaudy with their 8-color shades against realistic settings and lack of good special effects in some cases, even for that time. The cutscenes would have done better if they were in anime form...
Or maybe that was the problem. The style tried to be too anime-ish and it lost some grasp of realism that it was in severe need of. Whatever it was, the game's overall look has 8-bit sprites on amazingly realistic backgrounds. That's like giving somebody a nice big chocolate cake and then telling them it's made out of your own... I think I've said too much already. They would have done better to make the backgrounds as cartoon-y as the sprites, like in Yoshi's Story. That, at least, would have made things feel better. Or better yet, make the sprites look more realistic to match the backgrounds.
Nevertheless, being the game to first introduce cutscenes, (as far as I know) it started a chain of events that would lead to some really awesome games with fantastic cutscenes. It gets a point for that at least. The only problem is that it only started the trend, one that could have easily been started by anyone else. It didn't make anything too good. Also, there was no blood when Aeris got stabbed, yet there was blood all over Sephiroth's face in that scene where the bloody tart finally died. So real Cetra have no blood while fakes are still human with blood, huh?
Overall: 6/10
So, in the end, Final Fantasy VII isn't a bad game, it just lacks all the things that could make it a good RPG. It would have been better as something like Devil May Cry goes for. Nevertheless, that must be why it's so popular in America, since it's all about 'revolutionary' over here and 'it's all thanks to VII that all this stuff happened'. Well, you know, someone would have come up with the idea soon enough.
All in all, if you're a die-hard fanboy/fangirl, you'll like it no matter how many of its flaws I point out and proceed to yell and flame me for saying these things. Either that, or if you're infected by the nonsense that it's the greatest game in the world simply because it was revolutionary. That's the only argument I get out of people when I ask why it's so good. Revolutionary does not mean good.
Nothing I say will change, however, that it's way too popular, and that Square's going to keep milking it for more than it's worth. Meanwhile, I'll continue telling how it really isn't that great in the first place and the only reason some of the things have more depth now is because they realized where they messed up and tried to make up for it all too late. That and rabid fanboys/fangirls try to create depth by looking way too hard into everything.
A good lesson to learn: never sacrifice story for gameplay or revolutionary-ness. You'll only hurt yourself in the end... Or end up rich in the case it turns out like this game and somehow so popular. Either way, this review is way too long and I need time to get ready for the storm of fans screaming at me for my bluntness.
