Crystal reminded me that I had a blog that wasn’t LJ, and that perhaps maybe I should use it. And as a completely unrelated sidenote, I finally converted most of my categories to tags. It certainly keeps things nice and clean :D But here, have a mini-review/rant.
S gave me a DS for Christmas, along with FFCC:RoF. I haven’t finished it yet, but upon internet inspection, I have discovered that I’m only 5 areas away from the end of the game. When I discovered this, I wasn’t even 15 hours into the game. I’m now a bit over 17, and I haven’t even bothered going on to the next part. I’ve just been going around all the areas I went to before getting more money and stuff. The next boss is easycakes (I had gone on and beaten him and gotten nearly to the next guy, but there was no save point and at some point while my DS was in my pocket I accidentally pushed the game cartridge out >>).
Anyway, cue me being utterly “buh?”. How can I be that close to the end fifteen hours in? And only be at level 36? It doesn’t make sense. FF games are supposed to be long and take forever to beat with all of the sidequests and whatnot. I have a game of FFVII with over 200 hours of game play on it.
I’ll admit I’m a bit of a ho. I like having the best weapons. I like having lots of cash, maxing out my items, and maxing out all of my stats. But here I am, level 36, with a little over 300 HP. W-what.
{ . . . }
So, five hours of gameplay later, I’m at level 38, and only one character has over 400 HP. What.
. . . There was going to be a point to this. Right. Gameplay stuff.
1} Your party. You can switch between your party members at will. But you can’t control your other party members, so they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off and basically just get in the way. No gambits a la FFXII, no nothing. The closest thing you get to this (thus far) is that one of your characters can gain the ability to automatically use magicites, which isn’t always handy. Fail all around. I do, however, like that any time you change your weapon/armor/etc, you can see it while you’re running around.
2} Special abilities. Hitting R will put you in “special ability” mode, which . . . generally fails. Your character can’t move in this mode, all you can do is turn around on the spot. Yes, they can be handy, but most of them require you to be able to use the D pad, A/B/X/Y, and your stylus all at the same time. Maybe I’m just not up on the magical ways of the DS Lite, but I’ve yet to master the coordination required for this. The most useful one I’ve found thus far is Meeth’s (a flower-child looking character) – she has the ability to use alchemy and create new magicites.
3} Leveling up. Leveling up is goddamn near impossible to do. Unlike just about every other FF game in existence, you can’t just wander around the world map and fight enemies. You have to go back to the places you’ve been before, which is a long, tedious process (shown by the fact it took me 5 hours to gain 2 levels). But in the same vein, lower levels also pack a bit more of a punch – with the right character you can do over your own HP’s worth of damage in one hit.
4} Magic/Items. As with any other RPG in existence, you can only carry so much of one thing at a time. The difference is that you start out with a certain amount, and then you buy (from the moogles) “pouches” and “pockets” to hold your magicites/potions/ethers. (And speaking of ethers, I’m pretty sure I’ve only used one in the entire game.That is how little I use the special abilities below. But I digress.) Each “pocket” allows you to carry one more of whatever you bought – all for the price of 150gil (for magicite pockets) or 100/200gil (for potion/ether pouches). You can also buy stat boosters that will beef up your stats…by two points. HP boosts are 200gil, SP boosts are 250, ATK/DEF/MAG boosts are 500. Lamesauce, since you kind of have to rely on these.
5} Weapons/Armor. This is actually kind of nifty – you can buy your run of the mill normal weapons or armor, or you can go to another person and use the scrolls and materials you pick up from chests/barrels/enemies to create new ones, usually with stat boosters built into them, depending on whether or not you add any extras (in the form of gems) onto them when you’re creating them. It’s nice, because you can make things you can’t buy. You just have to make sure you’re controlling the character you want something new for.
6} The story. The story itself isn’t all that great, thus far. It’s not boring enough to keep me from playing it, but it’s not exciting enough to make me go YEAAAAH. It’s mediocre at best, but it’s something to play when you’re bored.
. . . This is kind of rambling and doesn’t really explain anything, but at the very least it lets me get my mini-rants off my chest. XD