Okay. Here is my rant on the "remakes."
They’re shit.
Maybe I’ve just become a curmudgeon in my old age, but the mobile remake of FF6 was a piece of shit that made all the characters and places we knew look absolutely awful – and needlessly, as well, since FF6 is one of the rare few games from the cartridge era whose graphics have really aged well. I’ll admit that I was a fan of the GBA remakes of classic Final Fantasies, but at this point I think Squeenix has just gone too far.
The Secret of Mana remake is no exception. I remember when I saw the announcement, the first thing that struck me was that the game was not going to have online multiplayer.
Um. What is the fucking point of a current-gen remake of a classic game DEFINED by its multiplayer component if you’re not going to take advantage of one of the key features of current-gen consoles!?
Back in the day, on the SNES, Secret of Mana was revolutionary because it had THREE PERSON MULTIPLAYER. WHAT. This was unheard of back then. Everybody knows game consoles only have TWO controller ports. Two-player multiplayer, that’s a thing. THREE PLAYER MULTIPLAYER WAS UNTHINKABLE BEFORE THIS GAME!
It’s sort of emblematic of the entire phenomenon of JRPG remakes: these games, in their day, broke new ground all the time. They did new things. They pushed envelopes. Secret of Mana made me go out and buy a multi-tap just so I could experience the heretofore unknown thrill of playing a game with THREE, rather than TWO, people. But this rash of re-releasing of old games… it’s not innovating. It’s nothing new. It’s repackaging something old and then capitalizing off our nostalgia, perhaps by way of covering for the fact that Squeenix is no longer interested in telling any new stories.
I mean did any of you people actually PLAY FF15? Now, I’ve long since stopped keeping up with new FFs, because I didn’t play FFXI, FF12 was absolute garbage and I was so turned off by the reviews I was seeing about FF13 that I severely lost interest. And I made my peace with the fact that FF was a thing that was no longer really happening anymore, and I got so many good hours and fun adventures from it, but the Square of my youth was effectively dead and that was fine. FFX was decent, and it was my last run, and it was a good one. Fair enough that we end my Final Fantasy there. And then my brother gets me FF15, and I pop it in entirely sight-unseen, having read none of the previews or reviews or anything, and I swear to Christ I nearly put my fist through the TV when I realized that this nonsense piece of shit game was an Open World venture. Open World!? Are you fucking kidding me!? –
Okay, this rant has gone on a little too long and is way far afield from where I started. But point being: I, personally, am sorta done with Squeenix until they right the ship and start actually making well-crafted RPGs again. The market is there, I’m sure: they just need to find their groove again, recapture their spirit of innovation, and STOP MAKING FUCKING OPEN WORLD GAMES.
Matt, I don’t disagree with you, but I wanna ask:
Did you play Bravely Default? It’s been called the real Final Fantasy we’ve been wanting by some. I’m curious if you agree.
I’ve heard about it, and I’ve likely heard the same good things about it that you have. But I’ll reserve judgement until I actually play it (and replace my TV, because somehow a fist accidentally went through it)
[quote=Tex post_id=1353 time=1515865642 user_id=50]
Matt, I don’t disagree with you, but I wanna ask:
Did you play Bravely Default? It’s been called the real Final Fantasy we’ve been wanting by some. I’m curious if you agree.
[/quote]
haha, I had the same thought about Bravely Default. I haven’t yet played the sequel (Bravely Second) yet. I really liked it – it had interesting job-based character building that reminded me favorably of FFV/FFT, and it add turn-based combat with enough wrinkles to keep it fresh and engaging. And it had really good music. Like, I have the boss theme in my head just reading this.
The only thing the game did kind of wrong was that the back part of it turned into a sort of JRPG groundhog day, forcing you to replay certain sections of the game again and again in order to get the “best” ending. Also, once you’ve got the “right” class combos leveled, the game becomes kind of easy. (Protip: You want Merchant with Low Leverage.)
…I also am looking forward to Radiant Historia’s re-release. It’s often billed as a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger, but I don’t feel like that’s quite true, as CT and RH use time travel in very different ways to explore the story. CT uses time travel to hop across all of world history, whereas RH uses it to explore your characters different personal choices. So, for example, early in the game the main character, Socke, gets a choice to either join the super-special sketchy intelligence group (which pisses off his best friend, because they’re sketchy) or stick with his friend and join his unit (which ultimately results in said friends death). I played it when it first came out but didn’t finish it partly because the combat mechanics didn’t do much for me, but I’ll give it another chance.
I’ve heard lots of good things about the Trails series, but haven’t had the time to check them out.
I played it and liked it; it wasn’t maybe the WORLD CHANGING experience because of… reasons with the second half of the game. It was a ton of fun. I should pick up Bravely Second too.
And ditto, Trav. I wanna get the RH re-release/remake.
Trails is fucking fantastic. All y’all should go play it.
three years after the civ:be discussion, dustin and I finally played our first game of it like last week
it was weird going back to such a civ-5-ey game after playing so much civ6
civ6 is fun I’m a fan
I’ve been stealing time away to play Dragon Quest Builders. Its a polished version of Minecraft set in the Dragon Quest 1 world. My new favorite game!!