I'm in the rare Dan Ryckert camp of not really liking Trunks at all. He looks cool and has a sword but oh boy I'm not into his personality!
Meanwhile, I think Bulma bounces back and forth between being fun and not great because she really has nothing to do in any combat scenario to get screen time except for interject with her distress. It's too bad, because she's definitely among my favourite characters when she's got room to shine without the plot forcing her into a helpless escort quest character role.
Yep, the faces are messed up in the HD version. The original looks far better, IMO.
And yep, as much as people make fun of other characters voices more, I agree that Yuna's lines are the most stilted and wooden.
I know a lot of people feel that X is the best final fantasy, and while I'm definitely not one of those people, the first few hours of the game are super strong in spite of the issues. All of the characters make strong first impressions when you see what the core ideas behind their personalities are. Personally I don't feel like they really go... anywhere. With anyone. Especially Kimahri.
I'm excited to see you're playing this beautiful garbage pile of a game. Playing it when it first came out and the hype was real and the spectacle was intense was a real experience. Playing it again much more recently was an experience for totally different reasons.
I admittedly love the sphere grid. It gives each character some well defined personality in mechanics while still allowing me to spend as much game time crunching numbers as possible. That said the basic sphere grid is a bit simplistic once you wrap your mind around it. I really like some of the shenanigans you can pull off with the expert one.
Honestly I'm not a fan of many characters in this game. I appreciate what they try to do with a lot of them, but they all end up falling flat for me, personally. I'll be interested to see your take on them.
At first I was hoping you'd try VI next, but the more I think about it, the more it feels like it would just be cruel if the potential salvation of the FF series as not an entirely mind-boggling mess was followed up by something like X!
I think Eiko kind of highlights the beauty and problems that IX have in one compact package. There are some great ideas there. Mixtures of classic tropes and twists upon them. Characters designed to play off of each other and elicit emotion. Things that sound so good in theory, and in the rare moments of greatness shine through like few narrative games really can...
And yet, it's all mired and bogged down in so much. Odd decisions for the sake of whimsy that sabotage the tone. Pointless scenes stacked atop each other in places they don't belong. And the pacing - most of the characters in IX develop well, but it's so plodding and slow paced and sometimes even slips back from where it is.
In her best moments Eiko, and the cast and IX as a whole, is great and hilarious and somber when needed. But dang it, the first five awkward attempts at hitting on Zidane got across that particular character trait, I don't need that particular gag played out for another two hours of gameplay to 'get' it.
Perhaps the game is just too long for its own good.
Personally I was interested in some parts of the setting and combat system, but I quit after what felt like hours being stuck with two separate parties of 2 members walking down single corridors full of monsters with no story. I don't know if it gets better after that but the main complaint I hear lines up with my experience, which is that every single event is spaced out by very significant story-devoid travelling.
@thatpinguino I think you're misconstruing some important information there.
"Other planet" and "Alien" aren't really accurate. You're right that skipping worlds happens, but the bigger part is that the two worlds were originally one and were split into two some time ago, and a big part of the plot is reunifying them into one planet. That sounds kinda crazy but in practice it's closer to two continents coming back into contact after a lengthy blackout than literal alien planets. The big bad being an evil tree filled with demons that can take a human form is a bit weird, I'll grant you that, but that's typical fantasy stuff as far as I'm concerned. Altogether a lot less of a left-turn, IMO, than say, going to the moon.
@zombiepie "YO! I thought y'all said to avoid X-2 like the plague? The prospect of playing a "franchise within a franchise" next year is... not exactly something that excites me."
I agree that avoiding X-2 is a fantastic idea. I just saw you mentioning that playing X/X-2 was something you were considering. When I say it might be interesting to write about it, I mean that in the sense of it having a lot of Bad to talk about. I don't think you'd enjoy it. But it could make for some entertainingly nauseated prose.
On the other discussion you were having about the voices in FFX, my two pence is that the real problem with the voices is a lack of direction combined with an attempt to make the English lines match up with the Japanese lip movements, leading to a lot of very oddly paced or phrased conversations. I have a lot of criticisms I would level at X overall, voices one of the smaller, but I think that's the core reason it gets so much flack.
@zombiepie"I... I don't know. Has there every been a Final Fantasy game that just had a story. You know, here's a bunch of people on a quest to stop an unimaginable horror from ruining all life as we know it, and that's it. Is that ever going to happen? Like will I at some point play a game that just has a solid story that doesn't decide to change the genre of the game halfway into the game?"
I'd say that V didn't have any sort of immense whiplash in the story category - but V is a lot more heavily focused on boss battles and game mechanics than a deep story, so it's a bit of an exception. I also don't think VI does this to the extent that a lot of other FF games do. It's certainly goes places that might not be expected, but not to the same extent of pulling a sharp 90 degree turn and veering off into insanity and/or science fiction.
But yeah. Final Fantasy as a series is generally characterised by a deep dive into the unexpected at about the 2/3rds point.
I don't have much to add beyond saying I still very much enjoy these. I played through a bunch of the FF games again recently and I agree that IX leaves a lot to be desired while also blowing me out of the water from time to time. I've also been playing XV - it probably wouldn't be as interesting to write about as it has far less in the way of story density.
Seeing you mention X/X-2 and other games, I'd say that X and X-2 are probably going to be interesting to write about (but perhaps arduous to play), while VI stands up as the title I think you're most likely to enjoy the most.
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