What Square-Enix game should I try/buy next?

[Shamdeo]

I noticed that from time to time there are a few threads asking about which Square-Enix games people are interesting in playing and often need help on a purchasing decision. So I think it's time we had a thread like the other one as a reference point for people who want to see others' preferences. So, it's going to have a similar set of rules. Here, you will be posting intelligent and thoughtful reviews that will not include some shitty number rating system you made up to make yourself look produde. Real impressions are made with words and not numbers.

REMEMBER: These a reviews of games you are suggesting to people, not games that you want to write some "oh i thought this gaem was okay not enogh trriangle buton". Just like the other thread, your post is your personal soapbox. The better you write your post, the more clout you're gonna swing in this section.

Your review must include:
+ Where you got the game and how much (if) you paid for it. (If you can't remember a guess is fine, and if you got it online a link would be nice.) No ROM linking.
+ Your initial impression aka your first playthrough.
+ Your lasting impression aka what you think now looking back at it or your overall impression.
+ A description of the game itself that doesn't include spoilers.
+ FOUR PARAGRAPHS MINIMUM, no fucking lazy shit on my watch. Your post will be deleted otherwise. However, if you want to be awesome make it longer than that. No limit.

Your review can include:
+ Pictures of gameplay, character art, and YouTube embeds.
+ A breakdown of the different features of the game. (Gameplay, Sound, Playability, etc.) No fucking number scores.

Your review will not include:
+ Number/grade ratings.
+ Trolling of other opinions in this thread/section.
+ Links to ROMs. Use Google, gatdam.
+ Excessive grammar and spelling mistakes. Everyone makes a typo, but you should know proper sentence/paragraph structure and how to spell 'Sephiroth' correctly.

FAQ:
Can I write a suggestion review for more than one game?
Yup. But each game has to have a seperate review.

Reviews:
FINAL FANTASY XII : REVENANT WINGS by Ningacom
CHRONO TRIGGER DS by Chevalier Sombre
FINAL FANTASY TACTICS A2 : GRIMOIRE OF THE RIFT by Angel

[afrobutt]

starting the ball rolling

final fantasy xii: revenant wings [for your ds]

this is the sequel for the ps2 game final fantasy xii. i played this game after ordering it from gamefly, though it would likely be at your local gamestop for 40$, 20 used. duhhhh fuck a whole paragraph


story, setting, plot, characters: basically a year after the first game vaan and penelo have found a flying continent, separated from the rest of ivalice for ages, called Lemures which is inhabited by a race of winged people. they must fight against the judge of wings who threatens to destroy the continent.

compared to it's prequel, which focused on a political struggle, revenant wings is much less serious (or interesting). it deals with topics such as the strength of love, the value of an individual, and cultural ignorance.

there's not much to lemures. for the most part it's wilderness, caves, and temples. there's one port city, but honestly your airship is more lively then the entire continent. eventually you gain access to ivalice, but only a small portion. the game is not nearly as diverse as ffxii.

even though the game focuses more on the cast the ffxii, there's not much to them besides a bit of comic relief (though there's plently of vaanxpenelo if you care). the most intresting character is the judge of wings, and how she came to don her suit of armor. kytes, filo (a girl who was a simple npc in the first game), and a winged aegyl named llyud are new parts of the cast, but lol who cares. eventually you end up with a total of 9 main playable characters.


gameplay: to put it simply, the game is final fantasy tactics in real time without a grid. almost everything is directed using the stylus, including movement, commands, and selecting abilities. as an rts rpg, you command a small army of squads led by the game's main characters. these armies are made up of yahri, monsters summoned from a dream world through gates.

the yarhi are basically your usual final fantasy monsters with a different name, and come in three types. melee, ranged, and flying. i don't think i need to explain each type. there's a fire emblem-like, rock paper scissors system in play, but i honestly can't remember what it is. for the most part it doesn't matter, you can play through the game without giving it a second thought. each yarhi does belong to a certain element group (fire, ice, earth, lightning, neutral, and healing), which is much more importent to pay attention to. they also come in three levels, ranging from useless to vital.

the leaders (main characters) are made to last longer then the yahri, and each is given his or her own set of abilities. For examples, vaan is a melee type who has abilites that deal great amounts of damage at close range. kytes uses long ranged attacks and spells based on the 5 element types. and penelo heals units (not much else to say).

there are a few gametypes (i made all of these names up). you have a general deathmatch where you must eliminate every enemy, domination where you need to claim all the gates, assasination in which you must kill all the enemy leaders, and capture the base which has you destroying the enemies crystal (or leader spawn point). there are a few missions which require you to achieve other goals such as protecting guest characters or lasting for a set amount of time, but these are rare.

the difficulty starts somewhat difficult, moves to worth a challenge, and then alternates between possible and trying 14 times before winning. it's very easy to get frustrated with this game, every so often it sticks you in a situation where it is nearly impossible to succeed.


presentation: visually, this game doesn't do too bad. the animations are the same as in ffta2, and excluding main characters so are the sprites. all of the sky pirate sprites are based off the classes from ffta, and you'll recognize monks, fighters, and archers.

all the music is from ffxii, scaled down to ds quality. as far as i'm aware, there are no original compositions. the sound effects are taken from ffta2. nothing else to say.

the most impressive part of this game are the visual backrounds and enviorments. but although they're pretty, most of them look so similar that you stop noticing.


my opinion overall/closing statements/tl;dr: you shouldn't play this game if you don't like rts games. the story is just a reason to play another chapter, it's bascially ffxii except without the political backstory to make it worth anything.

the gameplay would be fine but for a few things. for no apparent reason, units cannot walk through other units. that means the slow, giant units ( the best ones) get stuck between a line of smaller units that you don't even need. which adds to how frustrating this game gets when it puts you up against completely unfair odds. you also can't grind, since the enemies level depends on your own.

music and graphics aren't any better then the first time i heard/saw them

even though i've said nothing but negative things in this part, the game isn't really terrible. it's a nice way to burn daylight, it's just not great. the only reason i kept playing the game after a certain point was that i had nothing else to do.

first impression: better then watching seinfeld all day

lasting impression: the x-2 of ffxii

i recommend you buy the game used or rent it

[Chevalier Sombre]

k

chrono trigger [ds]

this is a port of a game by the same name which was originally released for SNES, and later ported to the PSX as Final Fantasy Chronicles along with a remastered FFIV.

While the original is still fantastic (I have not personally played the PSX version, but I hear it suffers from load times and poor instrumentation of the original music), I'm assuming most people don't have a super nintendo anymore, and between the PSX and DS ports I'd ultimately guess the latter is the superior port (as well as easier to find) and thusly recommend it in particular.

I don't remember where I got the game from, but you can probably get it new from your local GameStop for 40$ or Amazon for 20$.

Story/Characters

It's the day of the Millenial Fair in Guardia, a celebration of the thousandth year since the founding of the kingdom. A young man named Crono decides to go and enjoy himself. While there he bumps into a young woman named Marle, who ends up tagging along with him.

They eventually decide to check out Lucca (a friend of Crono's) newest invention, a teleportation device. Everything seems fine at first, but eventually Marle decides to try out Lucca's contraption and something goes terribly wrong; she ends up disappearing through a vortex.

Crono decides to pass through the portal to see if he can bring her back. As it turns out, the portal ends up sending him 400 years into the past.

What ends up starting as a rescue mission, eventually becomes something much bigger; Chrono ends up travelling to various points of his world's history, on a great adventure.

Throughout his journey he meets people from many eras, including a cavewoman, a robot, and even a frog, who eventually end up joining him in his quest. As my examples may denote, your party members are very diverse, and they each have their own personalities, goals, flaws, backstories, and things that overall make them interesting and likable.

It's a pretty standard "save the world" story, to be fair, but it's executed interestingly enough and I daresay many of the archetypes associated with RPG's nowadays have some of their roots in this game.

Gameplay

If you're familiar with the ATB system from early Final Fantasies (and how RPG's work in general) you should know what to expect, it's a classic character-driven turn-based menu RPG; you fight baddies using menu commands, explore dungeons, explore towns where you can buy equipment and talk to people, and so on and so forth. Yet this game has a few things that separate it from most other RPG's of its breed, and even other games in general.

There are no "random encounters" in the sense most RPG's have them; sometimes enemies will pop out at random (it seems to have something to do with the particular place you step on, the enemy in question, etc), but often you'll see enemies on the battlefield, either still or moving about and be able to avoid them if you're fast enough.

Unlike most RPG's (notably Final Fantasy) you don't gain your magic techniques upon reaching a certain level, but rather through the acquisition of "tech points" which are completely separate from EXP.

Also worth noting is that your characters can learn "double" and "triple" techs with one another; basically when two characters learn certain skills, and are present in your party, a new, more powerful technique can be performed involving the two. As for what these magic spells do it's standard RPG fare; some of them damage your enemies, some of them heal you, some of them buff up your team's stats, the works.

The DS port of the game has the option of either the classic SNES arrangement of having everything on one screen, or a new one mode which utilizes both screens, with the top one being where the main action is and the bottom used for accessing menus and picking commands during battle. You can switch between these modes at any out-of-battle time in the game.

As for the difficulty, I believe it's pretty standard and provides a reasonable challenge. Like just about any RPG if you're having troubles you can just go level up till whenever.

You are limited to having 3 people in your party at any given time, and you can switch your characters around either by going to a time period named "the end of time" (seemingly a deserted alley in the middle of nothing), or through the menu if you don't want to bother going there. It's worth trying to take different characters into different scenarios, as the dialogue you get varies with the party members present.

The "End of Time" era serves as your "hub" of sorts during the game; present there are time portals to the various eras you can visit during the game, a pot which fully heals your party, a mysterious elderly gentleman who serves as a guide of sorts (giving you hints as to where you should go next), a creature named Spekkio (whose appearance changes according to your progress and your party's levels) who will teach you magic and offer to battle you, and a gateway to the game's final boss.

Yes, something very peculiar about the game is that the game's final boss can actually be reached very early into the game, through means of a bucket at the aforementioned "End of Time"; however, on your first playthrough chances are you won't be fit to beat it until you've gone through the game's whole "main story". Like in some games there's a "New Game +" option where you'll start the game at the beggining but keep all your levels, techniques, and items, which in addition to unlocking certain secrets in the game, allow you to confront the game's final boss much earlier.

Due to the way the game is built, you will get different endings depending at what point, what characters, and through which means you reach the final boss. Some of them are similar, some are very different from one another. There are several (up to thriteen I think), and it's worth seeing each one.

As mentioned before, the game has several side-quests, most of which revolve around a certain character (or characters), which in addition to providing character development, net you great weapons and items. Additionally, there are two new dungeons to explore in the DS port of the game.

I'm not really sure how long you'll put into your first playthrough (I don't remember how long it took me to beat the game the first time around, on my second, current playthrough with most of the side-quests finished at endgame I've clocked in around 20 hours, you'll likely take longer on your first time through).

Presentation

The game features character designs by famous japanese artist Akira Toriyama (creator of Dragon Ball, which should be apparent enough), using sprites and a scaled down overhead view like so:



Compared to most other games like this I find the game holds up exceedingly well in this regard; the sprites are colorful, detailed, and very well animated, with a wide variety of sprites for different gestures that you don't really see in many other RPG's. The backgrounds are decent too, with a nice attention to detail.

Scattered throughout the DS and PSX port of the game are anime cutscenes produced by Akira Toriyama's Bird Studio (you have the option of turning them off in the DS port, whereas in the PSX port you will see them whether you like it or not). Personally, I didn't feel as if the cutscenes really added that much to the experience, but whatever.

The game's music is, undoubtedly, one of its greatest strengths. Yasunori Mitsuda (who composed the majority of the score) and Nobuo Uematsu (who provided ten tracks) created an excellent and very memorable soundtrack for the game that has been widely remixed. My personal favorites include:











The game's music has been released in both an acid jazz arrangement collection titled "Chrono Trigger Arranged Version: The Brink of Time", and an orchestral arrangement album titled "Chrono Trigger Orchestra Extra Soundtrack"; admittedly the former is largely a love or hate album, and the latter is sadly a pre-order bonus for the DS version of the game containing only two tracks (although they're both quite excellent), if you end up liking this game's music I would highly reccomend you get your hands on them (as well as the game's actual soundtrack) given the chance; it really is some great music.

Closing Comments/Miscellanea

Chrono Trigger is one of the most beloved and critically acclaimed RPG's of all time, and for good reasons;they say that truly great games survive the test of time and are great no matter how much time passes. Chrono Trigger is, in my belief, one of those games.

The game is nearly 15 years old. I believe my first experience with the game dates back to at most 5 years ago. My first impression was that it was very fun and generally different from most other games I'd played.My current impression of the game has not changed much. Even in this day and age it stands out from the crowd as a very good, very high-quality game.

To be sure, it is not perfect, as no game is. I would argue that the game's biggest flaw is that it can be beaten very quickly, even considering all the side-quests, although as mentioned before, on your first playthrough you'll probably clock in a decent amount.

I wouldn't know if to recommend the DS port to anyone who's played the game before on SNES/PSX, since even with the addition of a new translation (which some might feel lacks some of the charm from the original) and new sidequests, it's still the same game that I think a lot of people might have played already.

If you haven't played it yet however, do so.

[Angel]

ummm okay, i'll be like ningacom and review a tactics game that many view as mediocre

Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift [ds]



(the japanese and euro covers are better than the NA one)

Plot

You start as a somewhat mischievous school boy named Luso Clemens who can't resist the urge to vandalize a library book. In so doing, he is transported into Ivalice, and under threat of death (from a giant chicken), joins Clan Gully, mostly to earn protection from death from the clan's judge. (differing from FFXII's portrayal of judges, they are not actually people, rather golems made to prevent profitless battle and death)

He finds that the book he wrote his name in is the legendary Grimoire of the Rift, and it slowly fills with details about his life. He learns about a crime syndicate named Khamja with ties to Cid, the clan's leader, and a mysterious girl named Adelle.

Many side quest chains involve a foreign war-clan, a zombified paladin, endangered monsters, and a doctor, among other things.

Several characters from other Ivalice titles make cameo appearances, including (but not limited to) Montblanc, Vaan, Penelo, Al Cid Margrace, and Ezel Berbier.

Gameplay

The available characters come preset into one of the following races: Hume, Moogle, Seeq, Bangaa, Viera, Nu Mou, and Gria. (Exceptions and oddities abound: Cid is a Revgaji, but plays like a bangaa, whereas Penelo is a hume, but due to her possessing viera jobs, is treated like one in battle). These jobs include summoner, black mage, white mage, cannoneer, paladin, and more.

Same as FFTA (turn based strategy), although a MAJOR difference is that breaking laws isn't a major setback, although battles are easier if they are followed. You go on up to 300 missions, fighting enemies, running item deliveries, and dispatching clan members to complete tasks. Many job classes and races are available, and the scions from FFXII make a return, in the form of wearable accessories, that when charged, unleash the scion's attack.

Abilities are learned from equipment, which must be traded for on the bazaar, then purchased. AP is earned in battle, and once sufficient AP is gained, the ability is mastered for permanent use.

An addition is clan privileges and titles. Privileges are bonuses that your clan enjoys in battle as long as you follow the law, like a boost in Power or Speed, or even the strengthening of a certain race. Titles give out special bonuses outside of battle, like discounts on buying quests.

Territory can also be bought via auctions, where you enjoy benefits in Pubs and Shops on land you own. Once you own all the territory for a certain area, you are "rulers for life", however, you can still bid for prizes.

In addition, many of the characters that make cameo appearances can be recruited into Clan Gully via special events and quest chains. For example, the legendary blademaster Frimelda Lotice can be recruited into the clan after she regains her human form and makes amends with her lover, however, the chain itself is not over until you defeat a man that wishes to battle her one on one.

Presentation

More polished FFTA sprites, set to a somewhat faithful FFXII soundtrack scaled down for DS. Visual effects for the larger scale attacks, the judges, and the rifts were pretty to look at.

Special skills for different jobs have special effects as well, such as the White Monk ability Air Render creating blades of wind to slice the opponent, or the Black Mage's Blizzaga encasing the enemy in huge pieces of ice before they shatter.

No FMVs to speak of in this game, so those of you looking for Luso's silky smooth mug in DS perfection have to be disappointed.

Closing Comments

Eh, mediocre follow up to a great game. If you're a big Ivalice fan, this should be in your library. It's pretty much a big bundle of IA fanservice. For $20, I was pretty satisfied with what I got.

However, a word of warning: this game DOES in fact, carry the FFT series' curse: The story doesn't pick up until about halfway, so you're stuck participating in boring one shot missions until the main antagonist shows their hand halfway through. Even then, the plot was kinda generic: save the world, blahblahblah.