I dunno about you guys, but I had a pretty fantastic holiday break. I opened presents, hung out with family, held babies and watched a copious amount of Mystery Science Theater with my younger brother. Well, 2015 is happening. Time to get back to school and start hating myself again. That’s how that works, right? Oh, you want me to talk about the video games I played over said break? You don’t? Oh, well too bad. I’m going to tell you about them anyways.
Here are some things I played that don’t deserve their own multi-paragraph thing
I finished all the post-game content for “2014’s 2013 Game of the Year” Etrian Odyssey IV. If the part where I was willing to do the stuff that you could do after the credits rolled is any indication, I like that game a lot. You’ve heard my spiel about how if it isn’t the best game in the series (I think it is, at least thus far) it’s the best place to jump in for normal people, so I won’t repeat it. If EO III was the game that made me a fan of the series (despite the part where it’s sadistically brutal at times!), IV has cemented my loyalty and I will probably buy that Etrian Odyssey II remake the second it comes to the states despite the part where I still need to get through that remake of the first Etrian Odyssey. And Persona Q. And while we’re talking about similar games, Shin Megami Tensei IV.
In terms of games I played with friends and such, the Jackbox Party Pack was one of them! Like a lot of dumb party style party games, it’s not so much a contest of skill as it is a way to manufacture laughter from a decently sized group of people who don’t need to be proficient in anything but lying. The part where you can play it with smart phones and the part where it’s on PS3 means I will likely pick it up for my own party hijinks at some point… right after I earn the capital necessary to purchase Puyo Puyo Tetris because holy crap I need to own that game. Other than that and the requisite spread of fighting games I play with one friend whenever we’re in town together, the Hoard game that was free on PSN a couple of months ago is a surprisingly great Age of Booty-esque strategy type game for 4 players on one console, so if you downloaded it, thinking nothing of it before, I suggest giving it another looksie with friends. There was also a requisite amount of Smash Bros (that game is great), a dash of Bayonetta 2, me watching my buddy play Far Cry 4 and just a hint of Divinity Original Sin co-op.
But of course, I was on break for something like two weeks. So after we had exhausted all the fun stuff, we moved onto the “fun” stuff. Boy guys, Playstation All-Stars sure is a shitty Smash Bros ripoff that fails to understand what makes Smash Bros good, am I right? So of course we played a lot of it. It’s not the part where the roster is sorta bad, or the part where only supers count for kills, or the cheap looking menus or the seeming desire to mix the concept of “chaotic party thing” with “serious fighting game” (not very well, I might add), it’s the all of those together put into soulless package dictated by the marketing department. If we were going to play terrible party games, we should’ve just played a game of Dokapon Kingdom, because that game is both terrible and amazing and we had like 2 weeks to do it. Don’t worry though, we played some Mario Party afterwards to wash the taste out of our mouths.
Final Fantasy Thirteen Two.
If I had to use one word to describe Final Fantasy XIII-2 it would be reactionary. If Final Fantasy XIII was a game that obliviously did its own thing, seemingly to its own detriment, then its direct sequel is a game seemingly aimed at addressing all the complaints leveled at its predecessor…. while also sorta being a sequel to Final Fantasy XIII. I’m not entirely sure what Lightning Returns is yet, but I can assure you that it is its own brand of crazy and not unlike Majora’s Mask.
What do I mean by it “sorta” being a sequel? I’m going to be honest, FF XIII wrapped itself up pretty well and given the direction the story of this game takes you could’ve set it in an entirely different world and used entirely different characters and the plot would have more or less remained intact. In fact, aside from Hope it’s not even like the principal cast of FF XIII shows up for longer than “cameo” status (whatever man, Serah was in that game for like 5 minutes). I’m not going to bag on Square too much about this, it’s just weird to me that the direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII doesn’t actually have a ton of connection to the underlying plot of Final Fantasy XIII. I get it. Asset generation is expensive. People (not necessarily me but maybe not not necessarily me) didn’t much care for the story and characters of FF XIII. You can have your cake and eat it too, I guess.
But to get into the story itself, I don’t think I’ve seen a more flagrant abuse of “Because Time Travel” as a plot device in quite some time. Don’t take that as an insult; the lack of internal time travel logic contributes to what is a delightfully bonkers tale about Laura Bailey and Sora from Kingdom Hearts solving paradoxes and defending the past (and future) “Because Time Travel”. I think FF XIII’s ensemble worked through sheer force of attrition, but I don’t think Serah and Noel are quite as compelling leads by comparison. At least Caius is an alright villain even if his plan falls apart if you think too hard about it and hot young man bishonen Hope isn’t a whiny brat. The time travel conceit also allows for some excellent fake-out paradox endings, the best of which involves Snow showing up and proving that Troy Baker will always be the hero in everything. I’ve included it below for your pleasure.
As for the way it plays, Final Fantasy XIII-2 has the same surprisingly compelling macromanagement-focused combat system that made me sorta like the last one. Only without 20 hours of stuff before having access to all the gameplay systems. It also has pokemon-esque creature capturing mechanics, is decidedly far less linear (the wide open areas occasionally causing problems with the frame rate) and is also way easier to cheese. Say what you will about the linearity of Final Fantasy XIII, the upside to that was that your party was usually appropriately leveled for most of the encounters in that game. This game? Well, let’s just say that most non-boss encounters were solved through the deft use of COM/RAV/RAV and pressing the A button over and over. Don’t get me wrong, some boss encounters were challenging and part of that success came from me already knowing what to do from 40 hours of the last game, but aside from the final boss I don’t think any one encounter was particularly tough. Similarly, the monster stuff is neat but didn’t really demand much from me through my management of that. Maybe if I did more of the post-game stuff, maybe a couple of those DLC bosses I’d change my tune, but after the 22ish hours that I spent on the game I was good for the time being.
Still, in general I’d say I liked XIII-2 a lot more than the first game. Maybe not enough for me to recommend it without caveats, but hey, I’d still recommend it. It’s proof if nothing else that Square can learn from their mistakes and then go on to make new, different mistakes. Like perhaps this game where I can play dress up with Lightning and give her sexy librarian glasses on all of her outfits because of course I would do that. You can expect my thoughts on that soon enough, but for now I’m distracted by what should’ve been everyone’s 2014 Game of the Year: Bound by Flame. Sure, I’m long overdue to play more Dragon Age, but what’s the fun in that?
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