Final Fight Guy
(The answer is not some ultra-hate-fueled attack on the fighting game genre.) No, the right answer would be both of these games. As you will soon see, both of these have some weird tie to fighting games. Let's start with the most obvious one: Final Fight Guy, or as pretty much everybody knows it, Final Fight. (Fun fact: Final Fight 2 was actually one of the first games I blogged about here. Three cheers for nostalgia!) Here's the thing: when the original Final Fight was released, people were pissed that Guy was not playable at all. Capcom, being the old-timey-villains that they are, decided to release the game again at the same price, but with Guy playable (and Cody not). Then they let out an evil "nyahaha" and twiddled their mustache.
Anyway, given that it is the same game, FFG has the exact same plot as the original Final Fight (and all subsequent games in the series). The mob has captured the mayor's daughter in the hope that they can get more guns or something. However, what makes it weird is that they never bothered to figure out who the mayor is: a muscle-bound badass who can punch bullets out of the air. Keep in mind that this was a New York before people like Jesse Ventura or Arnold Schwarzenegger, making Haggar the most badass thing of the time.
However, I decided against playing as Haggar in favor of Guy. Why? Look at the damn title. If I'm playing Final Fight Guy, I might as well play as the titular character, even though it really makes no difference. Both characters play exactly the same; there are no extra moves or abilities or strength or anything. If that sounds bad...well, it is, but the game itself is actually sorta decent. I found myself enjoying the exeperience of easily snapping the bones of my opponents, sometimes alternating between a few of them. The game controls well and there are a variety of moves you can pull off at any given time. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, wait, a few things. This is a very early entry in the beat em up genre, and it shows through several of its poorly aged aspects. The most noticeable is the repetitive nature of combat (a running theme I could not fit into the title). Around halfway through the game, I realized that holding down a turbo button was about as effective as deciding what move I wanted to use. Sure, there was still that amazing feeling of successfully juggling nine enemies at once, but most of the battles became a game of "what nearby object weighs the most." Another problem common to the genre (and therefore this game) is enemy rape. If you get caught in an enemy's punch, you're pretty much stuck there until they finish their combo. Good luck if you're betwixt two enemies.
However, the game is still fun, even if it hasn't aged well. Once you get past the "eh" graphics and the repetitive gameplay, you'll probably find the car demolition bonus game. Imagine Street Fighter II (these games share quite a bit), but at the end of it, you discover somebody owns that car. In other words, their sorrow makes this bonus game 10x more awesome. Hell, it earns the Kefka Palazzo Award for Schadenfreude.
Review Synopsis
- Basically just Final Fight. Again.
- Fun to beat the crap out of people, but repetitive.
- A kickass car-beating mini-game.
Look, I have no comment for this video, OK? If I were to say anything, I'd probably get insulted by somebody.
Legend of Legaia
(Tell me: what game ideas did you guys have as kids?) Come on, we've all had these ideas at one point or another. There's no shame in admitting it. Watch, I'll share
Now then: why the hell did I just tell you guys all of this? Well, recently, I played a game called Legend of Legaia that was remarkably similar to what I just described. It scared me away fom the idea permanently. Imagine something like Tekken: The RPG or Lunar 3D (WHERE IS IT!? GYAGHGHYAGHAYGAYH), but much, much worse. As I've just hinted, the main thing about Legaia is the battle system. Once in battle, you have four options: attack, defend, magic, and item (obviously). Rather than attack being a simple "make damage" button, you have to input your commands fighting game style. Theoretically, you can build up all types of combos and chain certain moves together for the winning advantage.
But that's a very big "theoretically." The reality of the situation is far grimmer. Most of my non-boss battles were spent just holding down X and letting the RNG decide my moves for me. Hell, it seemed just as effective as any special move or spell I could punch in myself. Actually, I'd say that holding X was more effective than most of the spells I ever got, especially since getting spells is a tedious and unrewarding process. All your spells are acquired from enemies, but you have to be extremely lucky to get any of them. I've heard several theories on how to get them (don't use magic, make sure you kill them with Down, etc.) but none of it ever seemed to work; it's just whether or not the game hates you.
And when you get the spells, you find out that there's a levelling system. I have nothing wrong with that, but what I do find wrong is that there's not much to it. Spells don''t get much more powerful, they only get certain effects that don't change gameplay that much. Besides, there's always another, clearly more powerful spell for the one you're levelling up, so it just seems like the people at Legaia Land mixed two spell systems by mistake. The only time in the game when I didn't use just healing spells was during late-game boss battles, which, by the way, all follow the same damn strategy. One character heals, one attacks, one uses items, and you all defend when the boss unleashes a big attack.
Speaking of characters, you only get three, even though there are quite a few characters who could easily join your party, but don't want to. First, you have Vahn, the silent protagonist who is often forced into speaking (but won't). The only thing I have left to say about him is that he has meaningless dialogue choices, so I'll move onto Gala. He's a monk guy who ends up looking like Sir Spiderman by the end of the game, so again, let's talk about the final character: Noa.
Oh God, Noa. She has to be the worst female character I've seen in a JRPG, and I'm not exaggerating. Almost every line she squeals out is drenched in idiocy. One moment she's calling somebody a bad person after just having learned the concept of morality, the next she's saying something we all figured out five years ago. She doesn't even have the blind optimism of the Shikis and Rinoas; she's just stupid. Hell, even the game agrees with me at times, as several characters will call her a dumbass and she usually has the lowest intelligence of the entire group. Fortunately, though, she'll usually wave her arms about before doing saying something stupid, almost like she came equipped with an Idiot Alarm. However, there are other things about her that anger me, like how her battle figure looks like somebody wrapped bacon around a Pez dispenser, or how she's important to the plot. Spoiler alert: it turns out that she's actually the long lost princess of a far off kingdom. Fortunately, the kingdom's gone to Hell, probably because they realized she would rule them someday.
Wait a minute, it seems kinda weird that I haven't mentioned the story yet. Anyway, here it is: long ago, God created humans. Very thick headed humans. They were so weak and pathetic, he had to create Seru just so they wouldn't go extinct. But humans are a very ingenious species, and will cleverly find some way to completely fuck things up. In enters the Mist, a mysterious fog that makes Seru evil and turns people wearing them into zombies. Now a few heroes wearing Ra-Seru (the good ones) must save the world from the Mist, Sim-Seru (the bad ones), and about a billion different villains. The only villain who has any story importance is Songi, but he's more of a dickish rival than a full blown villain.
Yet near the end, the game shoves in the closest thing to a full villain: Cort, or as I like to call him, Sephiroth. Yes, this game rips off a few other games at a few instances, like (not counting the previous) a dumbed down version of Kefka's Tower, or Paladin's Quest's "were you paying attention or were you mashing your way through this scene" quizzes. OK, to be fair, Legaia also does some things of its own and some things right. For example, the music is OK, and the graphics...well, they suck, but at leas things get kinda better near the end. Plus the game, for all its flaws, is at least competent; never once did I encounter a bug or a (ridiculously) cheap gameplay tactic.
So what have I learned from this experience? Well, first off, I learned never to play a game that even the developers couldn't take seriously, but also that 3D isn't necessarily better. Allow me to explain: I only played this game because I finally grew tired of 2D. Yea, I played lots of 3D games before, but they were mostly on the side; this was to be my break-in into the extra dimension. However, all that came of it was a generic JRPG during a time and on a system flooded with much better games. Go ahead and take your pick from the various Final Fantasy's, Dragon Quests, Suikodens, Wild Armses, and other games. Meanwhile, this game will get stuck with the Worst Female Character Ever Award.
Review Synopsis
- Yea, a fighting RPG sounds good, but only if it isn't repetitive as hell.
- The story needs quite a bit of work.
- HATE NOA! HATE HATE HATE!!!
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