Punching people in the face: better in fighters or strategy RPGs?
By Video_Game_King 12 Comments
Final Fantasy Tactics
( The last time I reviewed a strategy RPG, it was Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor.) That game was absolute crap, and a lot of people disagreed with me on it. They pointed out that since I'm the ONLY person who noticed an untranslated line, random freezing, and a random number generator that fucking hates the player, then I must be wrong and the game must be awesome. They're horribly wrong, but that brought up an interesting question: why am I the only person who doesn't like this game? Well, I finally have my answer: I was the only person not thinking of Final Fantasy Tactics, a much, much better game.However, that was definitely not my first impression: there's the obvious link to Devil Survivor, but Tactics is also related to FF12, a game so egotistical and confusing that I spent more time with a dictionary in my hands than an actual controller. Throw in a shitty CGI intro and you'd think that my score would be a 4.2, right? The game was much better than I expected, even if it did continue in a shitty direction; you start the game in a chapel when some random bandits capture the princess. You, playing as an idealistic royal-youth named Ramza, must rescue her. It sounds cliche and nondescript, but it sounds much more like something else: Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu. This is the first reason why the game is awesome. And like Seisen no Keifu, it eventually builds up to a quest to stop two extremely corrupt factions from destroying all the land with their political pissing contest. This then evolves into a journey to stop the church from doing the exact same thing.
And that stretches to the gameplay, too. For example, a lot of the problems I had with that game stemmed from the battle system: it was like Bahamut Lagoon, only you had a small amount of turns, things could turn against you quickly, and it could all be for naught. Not (no pun intended) in Final Fantasy Tactics; no, instead of cutting away to spikey circles zooming onto a drawing of a Satanic frog, your characters just beat the shit out of each other on the field. This means that you now have area of effect attacks/spells, adding an entire layer of strategy missing from Devil Survivor. Another improvement: no more can enemies attack you and then heal up their wounds in the same turn. You only get one action per turn this time, something the game seems very stubborn about. When you move, you have to show more commitment than if you were marrying an extremely volatile woman. (OK, not a good joke.) You're also limited to having 2-3 action commands at a time, but given the extremely wide range of abilities at your disposal, I'm willing to forgive the game for it.
Why does Tactics give you so many abilities? A job system, you clueless dolt! No, your characters don't take up part time jobs at McDonald's or Home Depot (although that is a cool distraction you can force on characters you never use), they go straight for the kickass jobs, like ninjas and thieves (WHY DO GAME DEVELOPERS CONSIDER THIS A JOB!?)! Actually, they have to build their way up to those kickass jobs through crap like knights and geomancers, but unlike real life, I actually like how that works for several reasons. First, unlike real life, there's more of a visible connection between jobs; instead of starting at Papa Johns and ending up as an ethics professor at community college, you'll start as a knight/chemist and end as something that relates to that, like a samurai or a black mage. Second, (again unlike real life) you gain important skills from even the most menial jobs, usually something specific to that class.
If it's something really kickass you want (like the Ninja Jesus ability), no problem! You can use it even when you're not out chemistrying up the world. Oh, don't have the skill? Whatever. You'll have to grind a little to get it, but it usually lasts for only a few battles. Besides, it means you get to play the actual game part I alluded to two paragraphs ago. Let me go into more detail: you're wandering around the world map when suddenly the screen zooms out. You're then taken to a nondescript void where you choose where to place your army. You can't see the battlefield or where other enemies are located, so it's incredibly hard to come up with any sort of strategy without having already played the level (and only less hard if you have). Sometimes you have to set up two squads, but I rarely found it to be of any use. So you position your units however the hell you like and are then taken to the battlefield. Units move a la Shining Force (they politely wait for their turn to move), but unlike Shining Force (the Devil Survivor comparisons have ended, haven't they?), units have a defined order rather than just going when they feel like.
It's menu heavy and hard at times, but for some reason I can't grasp, there's the addictive quality to it. Sure, the camera is unintuitively tight (like my pants :P) and the guest characters can sometimes fuck up your strategies, but I found that these gripes were petty in comparison to all the cool stuff it does. Sure, I've mentioned the job system, but what good is it if you find yourself using the same characters for every battle? Worry not, for not only can you create an army ranging from two dudes with nothing better to do to one of your old high school classes, but it's super easy to cycle all of them in and out of battles; even late in the game, I found myself using random units I'd had since day 1. (Of course, I never used them for the important battles, but the point is that I could use them.) This is probably because the game focuses more on which abilities you have and how you use them rather than just how high your level is.
What I like are all the random quirks in this game (although ninjas throwing kitchen sinks ( like this) are conspicuously absent). Your first mega-boss battle is against Oogie Boogie; you can make all your female units attack with purses if you're sexist; and of course, the mediator class. What do I need to say? This class is possibly the best class in any RPG! The whole concept behind him is that he can talk to his enemies, leading to some really funny stuff. How funny? How about convincing the enemy that there is no God, killing people with their words, tell a yo mama joke that sends the enemy into a blind fury, and, if none of that crap works, FUCKING SHOOTING THEM IN THEIR FACE!? Does semen usually leak out your nose, or did I just blow your mind? And if none of that convinced you why I like the game, two things: this boss battle (in concept and presentation, at least), and that it's a complex game that's highly addictive, distinct, and just plain fun. That's a lot like Fire Emblem 4, so I'll give it the Seisen no Keifu Award for Being a Lot Like the Greatest Game Ever.
Review Synopsis
- The story has all the intricacies of Final Fantasy XII without all the up-its-own-ass hijacking of the game.
- The wide variety of jobs/abilities and relative ease in getting them all makes this a perfectly challenging, addicting game.
- You can kill your enemies with dances, witty phrases, and select passages from Arguing with Idiots. Enough said.
This is why Link never speaks: because he's an asshole pervert.I present to you the pilot episode for Captain Douche: The Ass Master.
Street Fighter Alpha 2
( Long ago, a Japanese ogre warned me against reviewing another fighting game.) It had to be a plot concocted by Satan Claus. I don't know why, or what he has to gain from it (if anything at all), or even if he has access to Japanese mythological creatures, but damn it, what other explanation is there! So, of course, I decided to play Street Fighter Alpha 2, liked it, and decided to type this, spiting both the demon and Satan Claus. Let me end this paragraph with another "fuck you" to the forces of evil.And let me begin this paragraph with an introduction to the story. You're not gonna let me? Screw you, I'm doing it anyway. Each character has their own story, so it's kinda hard for me to refer to it as one story. Sagat spends his story trying not to sound like a white guy doing a bad impression of a Mexican accent; Dhalsim travels the world to give people yoga noogies; and just about everybody else tries to destroy Shadaloo for not being the kickass band I've always wanted it to be. The stories are clichéd and mostly limited to the end, but you don't play fighting games because they have pretty stories. No, you want to see a wide array of characters from around the world punching each others' dicks. Admittedly, that could tie in strongly to the story, but my point is that the focus of fighting games is a well-balanced cast of different characters.
This is something Street Fighter has always done well, and Alpha 2 isn't an exception. There are about 18 fighters (this time, more
And this was only with regular moves. Imagine what it would be like if I used the super-cool alpha moves. Actually, it would be kinda shit, since you can only use them one to three times before you need to recharge. Whoops, forgot to explain what the hell I'm talking about. Throughout the fight, this little meter at the bottom fills up. It's also supposed to change level, allowing for more powerful moves, but I never figured out how the hell to get that working, despite the enemies using it just fine. Anyway, when that meter fills up, you get to use a super-move that's so awesome, it spawns about 12 blue copies of you just so they can applaud how awesome you are. They're usually just doubled versions of regular moves, but given that those moves are super-easy to use, I'm willing to overlook that. This was all in the original Alpha, so what exactly has changed? I don't remember, but the first thing I noticed was that you can work alpha moves into your combos, something that will no doubt lose you a lot of friends. If that doesn't do it, then the mere fact that your alpha charges carry over between battles will. You'll have to explain to your friend that this is actually a clever way to balance matches, since getting beaten up results in your meter filling, but they've probably already walked out the door. And you've lost yet another friend, you lonely, miserable bastard.
Since you have no friends because you drive them away so easily, you might as well compete for the high score, preparing to high-five the people who aren't there for the high score you didn't get before you cry into a dirty pillow again. On that note, the game actually does some unique things with its scoring system. I don't know everything about it, like how to alpha counter or why my victory was denoted with cheese, but the stuff I did notice that I could figure out was pretty cool. You get different icos/scores based on how you achieved victory (as I said before), whoever strikes first gets some bonus points, and you get a bonus based on how much life/time you had left. However, if you set the time to infinity to avoid being a cheap asshole, then your bonus gets knocked down to zero, presumably because you weren't such a cheap asshole. That's why I give this game the Crotch Kickathon Award for Rewarding the Art of Being Incredibly Cheap.
Review Synopsis
- A wide variety of characters with easy-to-use attacks and stories I don't really care about.
- Cool alpha moves can now be worked into your combos.
- The AI is easily exploited, but who the hell cares, this is a fighting game!