Final Fantasy VIII (FFVIII) was the first RPG that I finished, so it will always hold a special place in my heart. After finishing FFVIII, I played several other RPGs, such as The Legend of Dragoon, Chrono Cross, and Final Fantasy IX (FFIX). When I first played FFIX, I was disappointed that it wasn't more like FFVIII. I wanted the characters to look more realistic and the world to be less quirky. I still enjoyed the game; I just wanted it to be more of a sequel.

One of my best friends absolutely loves FFIX. After hearing him praise it over and over again, I decided to give it another try. It was possible that I had been blinded by my love for FFVIII and didn't judge FFIX fairly.

FFIX is full of charm. There is plenty of humor, from the silly lines to the unique characters. There is a sense of playfulness in the art style. The main character has an as-yet-unexplained monkey tail, and the characters have tastefully exaggerated proportions. The art portrays a lovely fantasy world with towering castles, quaint towns, and a variety of painstakingly-detailed natural areas. The environments are full of rounded edges and each area feels very distinctive. As characters run through the 2D levels, there is a sense of scale, and the people seem to fit right in among the colorful backgrounds. The world may be a strange place filled with hippo people, humans, and a variety of other creatures, but the art really sells it. Even the game design supports the style, filling the world with children running through town squares and little vignettes that flesh out my companions.

The game design is very forgiving and fun. The gameplay constantly supports the story, allowing the player fun opportunities from the beginning, such as finding a lost cat, sneaking over rooftops to watch a play, and digging for treasure. I get a real sense of adventure from exploring the areas, and I am constantly rewarded with hidden items and opportunities. The opening sequence was very exciting and organic, combining still-impressive FMVs with in-game cutscenes and gameplay. The combat is a traditional turn-based system common to Final Fantasy games of the time. Characters have special abilities to use during combat, such as magic, summons and powerful attacks. All these special attacks, as well as passive skills, are called "Abilities" and can be learned from armor and equipable items. This is by far one of the game's greatest strengths, as it is a very simple system that is easy to customize. Players can choose which abilities to equip and learn based on their priorities and play style. For example, players can learn "Level Up" and "Ability Up", which help characters level up faster and learn abilities faster. While these abilities are relatively expensive to equip, they can greatly reduce the time spent grinding. Players can also choose to counterattack, guard against almost any status effect, or automatically cast a potion when damaged. These abilities make the game much more fun, as they allow the player to work around issues that could otherwise become frustrating.

Aside from the ability system, the game is very forgiving. If a player misses a hidden item in a certain area, it is never lost forever. Players can often purchase that item in the next town or village; finding it in a level simply allows a player to have it earlier. Also, there are many features scattered throughout the world to help players, including chocobos (for faster travel without random battles) and fairies (who can help players learn abilities much faster).

FFIX feels like a very authentic Final Fantasy experience. The developers clearly focused on the story and authenticity of the world. There was a sense of strong leadership as well; the game has a unified vision despite its length and many unique areas. The Final Fantasy series seemed to go downhill after FFIX, with FFX being little more than a display of 3D tech with bland characters and limited originality. Although I didn't play FFXI, I found that FFXII was very unforgiving and I quit partway through. FFIX represents a peak in Japanese RPGs for the PlayStation, and its character, charm, and friendly mechanics are very rewarding for those who are willing to invest a little time. I hope that modern developers will be able to apply similar mechanics to new games. After all, graphics and fancy new features don't make a great game; it's the imagination that counts.  

I’m not a huge fan of RTS games, but I had heard good things about Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. “It’s not exactly an RTS,” my friend said. “It’s fun and I think you’d like it.” After that, it was hard to say no.

I really enjoyed the first few hours of Revenant Wings. I had grown frustrated with its PS2 RPG predecessor but this DS spinoff was something quite different. It was basically a scaled-down RTS with an FFXII theme. The short mission structure was well suited to my sporadic play sessions on the DS. Since it wasn’t a traditional RPG, the characters didn’t have to be as deep and I could overlook my previous disappointments in the character development. They were cute in their small, retro style and managed to look good despite the limited capabilities for in-game graphics. The entire game was simpler, making it more accessible for a portable game. The brief text and simplified menus kept me focused on the solid missions.

The missions were straightforward and fairly simple to complete. I had no trouble getting past most of them on the first or second try, until one ridiculous side mission. I had been doing all the side missions to level up my characters to prepare for the main story missions. The side mission I got stuck on should have been straightforward. Your team is supposed to capture spawn points. Those areas then become spawn points for your team so you can mobilize forces closer to the other team’s base. Then you can then attack the other team’s hero spawn crystal and kill their heroes once and for all.

I had completed missions like this before with minimal trouble. For some odd reason, I kept getting stuck on this one. I would always be able to get up to the other team’s base, but their two spawn points and hero spawn crystal were a tough combination. One of their heroes would fall. One of my heroes would fall. My team would capture a spawn point. While I was attacking another of their heroes, they’d take the spawn point back. It turned into a stalemate where their heroes would respawn and my heroes would respawn. It seemed as if my team was stronger, but the time it took for my fallen heroes to respawn and return to battle was balancing our sides.

I fought and fought, hoping that I could gain an advantage with gutsy moves. This only led to retreats for my side and I made no progress. However, I wasn’t losing much ground so I continued to play. I played one particular battle while I was on the plane, then while waiting in the baggage claim and on the shuttle ride home. I was so engrossed in the same battle that I almost missed my stop. When I got inside my house, I played for a little while longer and then quit. My stubbornness had kept me in a fruitless battle that was impossible to win.

These types of stalemates are one of the reasons why I avoid RTS games. While Revenant Wings may disguise the troops as cute espers, it’s still an RTS at heart. This does not mean that I will give up. I have enjoyed the rest of the game and it deserves another shot. After all, that mission was just a side mission. The main missions can’t be harder than this.  

When I discovered that I was sick this weekend, it was not necessarily the end of the world. After all, “taking it easy” meant that I could game for hours on end. That sounds great, right? Unfortunately, the games I’ve been playing recently (with the exception of Elite Beat Agents and Ouendan) haven’t been able to grab me. I’m still searching for the next Okami, Final Fantasy VIII or original Kingdom Hearts. I want a game I can really sink my teeth into for 50+ hours and make it my own. While I really love the DS, I haven’t found a game yet that can provide that type of immersive experience.

I like to think I'm a forgiving person when it comes to games, and I really wanted to give Final Fantasy XII another shot. I had similarly hated the constant movies in Final Fantasy X, but after playing past the ten-hour mark, it got better. It may have just been that I was finally used to the characters and had enough invested in the game at that point that I grew to like it. However, I hope that wasn’t the case and ended up playing FFXII for several hours, hoping it, too, would get better.

I was at a point in the game where I could run around and fight for several hours. I fought monster after monster, getting battle chains of 36 enemies or more so I thought I would get some great items. I then went to sell my items at a shop (since that’s how you make a large portion of your money, as enemies don’t drop much money). I was so excited because I had fought for nearly two hours straight and had leveled up my characters to the point where they finally surpassed the level of my guest character. I was so happy because I finally had enough money to upgrade my weapons.

I was able to afford new weapons for most characters…except one. I then discovered that, not only did I not have enough to upgrade everyone’s weapons, but I also had forgotten about armor upgrades and regular items. Even when I sold my old weapons I barely had enough and then there were still some vital spells I had to buy. Once again, I was back where I started. I needed money but there was no fast way to get it. Even fighting didn’t help that much, because you spend so much time fighting that your stats seem to increase before you could buy a weapon that would do the same thing. I wouldn’t be so upset if I wasn’t so frugal with my money. I hardly ever use items if I can help it, to the point where I consistenyl endanger my party due to low MP. Yet I still never seem to have enough money.

To make it worse, I’m not too happy with the license board character improvement system. I wasn’t fond of Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid, but at least characters would be on certain tracks that would turn them into more of a healer or a warrior or a black mage. With this game, I have to spend a ridiculous amount of time peering at tiny print in my strategy guide's license board, trying to figure out who should learn what. I think this is a case when there are just too many choices. Every character can learn everything and I really don’t think that should be the case. When you have six characters, it makes sense that they should specialize. So why aren’t there more licenses in the magic section that increase MP or evasion? Why is it that you can have everyone as a melee fighter and a ranged fighter? This method is very expensive, as you have to keep so many types of weapons on hand. It just takes way too much effort to try to outfit everyone so they are balanced fighters and mages. I really get frustrated with this system, as I feel I have too little direction.

Finally, I was aggravated to unlock new “quickenings” (like limit breaks in previous final fantasies) and discover no help at all in how to use them. I skimmed through the section in my strategy guide before the boss fight and it seems like something terribly complicated with buttons and timing. All the game needs is a mini interactive tutorial on quickenings. It would take two minutes of our time and yet the game just leaves you hanging.

I think it’s time to take another break from FFXII. Between the stupid movies (where they say phrases such as “manufacted nethicite” in every other sentence) and the frustrations in the economy and leveling system, there is little to enjoy. I have a couple of the older final fantasies, and it may be time that I replayed them to rediscover my love of RPGs. I really miss that case of game addiction. I just can’t stand the thought of playing FFXII again, only to discover more and more issues that make it feel like I’m wasting my time for nothing.  

“It’s a Final Fantasy, so why do I feel like I’m forcing myself to play it?” I asked myself this question because I’ve been avoiding my PS2 like the plague lately. I claim that I’m really busy, but playing games is something I usually want to do for fun. In all fairness, I similarly avoided playing FFX during the first ten hours, but at least I knew I could get a great gaming experience out of it in less than 100 hours. I keep hearing horror stories about FFXII:

“My friend has been playing it for 200 hours and she’s still not done…her boyfriend goes to bed each night and she stays up, playing for hours…”

“I spent four hours wandering around Rabanastre, just trying to figure out where to go…”

These are not the kinds of comments that make me want to play a game. While I love the immersive environments of RPGs, I am simply having a hard time getting into FFXII. I really want to like this game. It has good graphics and an engaging new battle system…but is it really that engaging? I decided to take a look at my last play experience and see if it would provide any clues as to my lack of motivation.

I sat down on a quiet weekend night to play FFXII, prepared to play for several hours. I usually can play a game like this for about three or four hours without a break. Sometimes I’ll return to a game for another session. However, I mostly play for an hour or two at a time due to time restrictions. That night I had no time restrictions, but I only played for two hours. Why? It was simply too repetitive.

I began in a dungeon prison and had to go through a quick scripted fight sequence to get out. Then there was a ridiculously long cutscene involving politics, the military, and a bounty hunter. I can’t remember much more than that because there were a bunch of characters talking in different dialects and some were monsters, making it very difficult to understand some of the antiquated terms. If I had to sum it up in a few words, I would simply say that it was too long! Even if I’m playing a game for 70 hours, I don’t want all the details about politics. It’s just plain boring.

After the cutscene, the repetitive pattern was set into motion. It went something like this: run, fight, run, fight, watch a cutscene, repeat. I was running around in dungeons fighting monsters for at least an hour even though I had a guide to streamline my treasure hunting. I think the repetition becomes even duller because of the fighting system.

FFXII’s fighting system has been teased online since before it came out. The most common criticism is that the game “could play itself.” While I once thought that it required at least a semi-conscious player to program in the most advantageous automated commands, I was soon proved incorrect. I witnessed first-hand how the game can take care of itself. I got a cell phone call while I was stuck in a dungeon and my players were in the middle of a fight. As that monster was dying, one character ran ahead to the next monster and began attacking it. The rest of my party followed suit and soon that monster was defeated. They kept going, fighting all monsters in their path until the area was clear. From that point on, I was convinced I could get up and make a sandwich and my characters would still be there, hacking away at the next monster.

Even more shocking was the boss fight in this dungeon. It was a gigantic spider creature. I had been fighting more than my fair share of monsters in my quest for treasure and figured this would be an easy kill. Unfortunately, low MP recharge rates and a couple heavy-hitting attacks from the boss took out multiple party members. I soon got a “game over.” I sat there in disbelief for a couple of minutes – I had a strong party – and then gathered my wits and got back into the fight. I realized that a big factor in my downfall was the fact that one of my characters was set to automatically steal every turn from the boss. While this is very advantageous in short battles, boss fight strategy requires more characters as healers and attackers, not thieves. With this simple change, I beat the boss in no time.

I wish I felt more motivated to play FFXII. It seems like a well-crafted system and has so many beautiful details. However, I can’t get past the repetition and the way I left out of my own fights. These characters don’t need me. Perhaps that’s why I feel I don’t need FFXII.  

Since I have a Wii, I though it would be a good idea to rent a lot of different games to see what works and what doesn’t. I want to play the new Zelda, but FFXII and now FFVIII are going to fulfill my RPG quota for the next month or two. In the meantime, I decided to check out some more casual games like Rayman Raving Rabbids (discussed earlier) and, more recently, Super Monkey Ball.

I began playing this game with my sister’s boyfriend, who has more of a natural knack for games than I did. For this reason, I didn’t expect to win any of the short mini-games against him, but I really did value his feedback.

The first game we played was a shooter game where the monkeys were in space shuttles and had to shoot aliens. The arena was circular with a bunch of geyser-type structures scattered around that would spit out aliens. The game seemed simple enough, but I had an awful time trying to steer my ship with the Wii motes. Then I had a lot of trouble aiming. I thought maybe it was just me, but my sister’s boyfriend didn’t seem to be doing much better. His score was higher, but he was also complaining about the controls. I wondered if some types of games just don’t translate as well onto the Wii. However, I do not think shooters and the Wii are incompatible – the Raving Rabbids Western-style shooters are very well-designed. I just think this one was put together in a short amount of time and it shows.

One of the advantages to Super Monkey Ball is the fact that there are so many games. So, it was easy to move onto something else after that disappointment. Like Rabbids, each mini-game would provide very limited instructions. This is an effective way to get people into the game quickly, but, if you’ve never even seen the game before, sometimes it can leave players like me a little baffled. One of the games we then played was a game with the goal of collecting as many bugs on a stick as possible without the bugs falling over. The controls were okay, but any temporary lag in the Wii-mote sensor tracking could spell disaster.

We continued playing other mini-games, but were not impressed. There were a few games, such as shooting hoops or catching fruit, that just weren’t that fun. The goals were cute and the ideas all fit well into a theme, but the game felt sloppy. The tuning that comes with repeated playtesting was lacking. I would have appreciated a style more like Rabbids with multiple games of the same type and increasing difficulty to refine the mechanics of the game.

However, Super Monkey Ball is not altogether awful. I think it would be a fun game for a party, as long as no one was playing the game for too long. For casual players, such as my girl friends, I think this game could be fun. It’s very cute and happy. A game like Rabbids would also be fun at a party, but it requires a little more skill. Rabbids is also more crude – some games are based around drilling a rabbid’s teeth when you see a worm and shutting rabbids in outhouses. I would choose this game for a crowd of people who have played games more and come to expect more from them. While I have not personally taken a great interest in Rabbids, I often watched my sister play it with her boyfriend and I thought it was a lot more fun to watch, making it a good choice for parties.  

My first experience playing the PS3 was not with the acclaimed Resistance: Fall of Man. I had watched that intense game out of the corner of my eye while I was playing the more serene Okami. I had no real interest in playing Resistance, as I knew I would die in no fewer than two seconds and not really get to appreciate that game at all.

However, when I had the opportunity to play the PS3, I did not want to pass it up. I decided to play another game, Genji. It looked like something I might actually be able to play (an action game, not an FPS) and the boxed advertised a game about ancient Japan. It sounded interesting at least, so I began a game.

While I had expected a cutscene at the beginning of the game, I was unprepared for the horrible voice acting. The characters’ mouths moved and were poorly dubbed. As if the dubbing weren’t bad enough, the voice actors had accents from Australian to American to pseudo-Irish. I found it incredibly distracting from what would otherwise be a mediocre cutscene.

I do not hate cutscenes; in fact, I really enjoy them when used in moderation, which is the way I see them in many newer Final Fantasy games. One of the best aspects of the Final Fantasy cutscenes is that they rarely try to do voice acting with mouth movements. (This has changed in FFXII, but I have yet to form a real critical analysis due to the short amount of time I’ve played the game thus far.) Looking back to games such as FFVIII and FFX, the full-motion video (FMV) cutscenes were used mainly as showy pieces of drama – they did not burden them with dialogue. I really do not see the point in animating a FMV cutscene for one language only to have it poorly dubbed into another.

The cutscenes in Genji were poor not only because of dubbing but also because of their content and quality. As I implied before, a large amount of time was spent on a scene where two characters talked in what amounted to a poor substitute for a film scene.

Then there was the issue of the graphics. The whole game had a very red tone – much of the set, especially in the beginning with a fire, was very red. It was hard to look at it for any length of time. The graphic quality of the game was very high, but the characters and backgrounds didn’t blend well together. It looked like someone had done a poor job in Photoshop and forgotten to soften the outlines of the characters to look more natural. It seemed as if the quality of the PS3 detracted from the game rather than complimented it – the high quality console revealed all the flaws.

Aside from the tone and graphics, I really wanted to like this game. I had hoped to find a game I wanted to play on the PS3 that I could return to – something that rose to the challenge of developing for a new console. I understand that practically every game developer is having a terrible time working with the PS3, but this game just seemed to get worse the more I played.

I played first as a character who was a sword fighter. He moved with decent speed, but I found the controls to be somewhat counter-intuitive. I had a hard time going where I wanted to in the environment and understanding the fighting system. Later, I got to play another character, but he moved ridiculously sluggishly and swung around what amounted to a glorified stone column. While he was powerful, the stereotyped fighters – big = sluggish and smaller guy = more agile – has been done so many times it’s not even fun anymore.

I had held out hope for this game. I played it for nearly an hour, hoping that it would get better. Instead, I found graphics temporarily freezing up, cutscenes that revealed a plot I didn’t care about, and many of the same mistakes I’d seen in other games set in ancient Japan like Onimusha 4. I really hope the PS3 gets better soon and developers will make games I want to play.  

In my impatience to begin FFXII, I dove right in without following my usual routine. This pre-RPG ritual involves reading the game’s manual (cover to cover) and the overview in the strategy guide that comes before the walkthrough. This system has worked well for me in several RPGs, such as Chrono Cross, FFVIII, FFIX, FFX, and Kingdom Hearts.

After playing FFXII without the benefit of the additional reading, I had the constant feeling that I was missing something. I was afraid I would screw something up in the licensing (leveling) system and ruin the rest of my lengthy experience. I was purposely avoiding playing FFXII for about two weeks because of my constant dilemma: when I wanted to game, I didn’t want to read, but when I was able to sit down and read, I had to do so for class.

At the encouragement of my sister, I was finally shaken out of my paralysis and sat down to read FFXII material on an otherwise empty Friday night. Two hours later, I regained the confidence I so sorely lacked. I now had an intellectual understanding of the leveling process, key mechanics, and new Espers. I could now play, knowing that I would make informed choices.

By the time I finished reading, I had only a few hours to play. I was able to go through a couple missions: one for a sunstone and another through a castle underground.

The sunstone quest was structured traditionally, but with one key difference: I was by myself for the first half of the mission. While the “go here, talk to a certain person, go there, get an item” pattern was the basis of the quest, I couldn’t even get more information until I had battled several creatures of the desert by myself. Most of the monsters weren’t too difficult, but I was running low on potions by the time I got to the village. I had been following the maps in my guide to try and collect scattered items in treasure chests, but some chests appeared to have mysteriously vanished. (I found this issue earlier as well – are randomly spawning chests a new feature?)

Once in the village, I found a friend who would fight with me and make my life easier. I was rather confused when read in my guide that she had the Cure ability, but I couldn’t figure out how to make her use it. I don’t know if I stopped paying attention during an earlier tutorial, but I soon discovered that spells had to be purchased. I find this system to be rather redundant, since you earn points in battle that have to be spent to earn an ability such as Cure. Essentially, you have to buy the spell twice (once to get the license and again to get the spell itself). Although the magic regeneration is fairly rapid, I find the spell acquisition process to be cumbersome. I wish the game had made the acquisition of vital spells such as Cure more clear.

My second mission involved running around a castle’s underground waterways. I got to fight alongside some neat characters – a sky pirate and his partner in crime, a striking female warrior of another race. I had been getting used to the fighting system at this point, but there were still some issues for me to iron out. I was shocked after I set my main character to constantly heal everyone and then my female warrior got knocked out. I soon realized that my MP (“Mist Points” like magic points) had grown too low and I could no longer cast cure.

FFXII has been the butt of many jokes for being a game that could "practically play itself." However, from my reading and experiences with the automation system, I can see that that is quite an exaggeration of the truth. It still takes a great human mind to harness the A.I. behind the battle system and use it to its full advantage.  

My classes finally ended and I had a chance to sit down and start the supposedly epic Final Fantasy XII. With every other Final Fantasy, I would wait hours before even touching the game, reading over the manual and much of the general information in the strategy guide. This time, I was too tired to wade through all the text. Besides, I didn’t even have the manual, as I had rented the game. I decided just to dive in.

The opening movie was spectacular, as always. It was beautiful and slightly chaotic – everything you’d expect from a game about a war. I can’t really complain about the CG movies, but it was the in-game graphics that seemed a little odd.

When you gain control of the characters, you begin to see how some graphics can be really good and others just don’t seem as great. For example, anyone with wrinkles appears exceedingly realistic, almost to the point where the younger people look like they need don’t belong in the same game. The graphics do seem to have improved since the PS2’s Final Fantasy predecessor, FFX, but not by a whole lot.

On the other hand, great graphics can sometimes become a distraction. During the CG sequence for Vayne’s speech, I was so captivated by the realistic movements of his long, wavy black hair that I can hardly remember what he said. (Although I admit that I had a soft spot for the similar hair of Final Fantasy VIII’s Laguna Liore.)

Hair aside, CG scenes are only really effective if they mean something. While great care was taken to show Ashe’s wedding, I hardly cared when her new husband was killed. I barely knew him, and she didn’t look terribly heartbroken (just solemn).

Another really distracting element was the dubbing. Why couldn’t the game have been subtitled? It seems like the animators went to great effort to animate the mouths of the characters for the Japanese words, but it just doesn’t look right when the English dubbing hardly fits. I hope it gets better soon.

When actually playing the game, I found that it feels fairly intuitive. I am still having trouble getting the hang of the battle system, but I’ve played for fewer than five hours. I didn’t like the choice to play a minor character in the beginning of the game either – it didn’t seem to matter what I did. I can see where this would be an advantage for newbies, but I like making progress from the beginning.

I have yet to make up my mind regarding many of the new changes to the previous Final Fantasy gameplay elements. I think I will have to keep playing to really make up my mind, but I feel that the game only offers an average Final Fantasy start.