Blue Rice -
June 22, 2001 - Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot.
And while I'm thinking of kickass college newspaper comics, here's a shout-out to Irritability as well.
Don't say we didn't warn you.
PSOv2 may not be coming out at all, which sucks. On the other hand, even in their weakened state, Sega needs to find some gumption: gamers are an incredibly whiny bunch (and I say this as one of the biggest whiners around) but the only thing that's really certain is that you don't know how something will sell until you sell it. I see an incredible amount of bitching about Final Fantasy, and yet it's amazing how well the series continues to sell.
Ah well, at least I have my Lulu wallpaper to console me.
Onward.
| Correction |
| Chris,
"All I can say is that it'd be a terrible injustice for Enix to get to return
to Nintendo, but not Square."
For Enix to *get to return* to Nintendo? Sorry, but Enix has *been* with
Nintendo. Sure, they moved their major product lines to the Playstation
(Dragon Quest, Star Ocean, Bust-A-Move, etc.), but they gave the N64 the old
college try back in the day (Wonder Project J2, Mischief Makers). Most
importantly, they've produced no less than five Dragon Quest titles for the
Game Boy Color, all of which have been huge sellers in Japan.
I've said this a million times before, but why do you think it is that even
though *every* major third party moved their franchises to the Playstation,
only Square managed to piss Nintendo off in the process? Hell, even Capcom
published a grand total of two N64 games that were garbage compared to their
PS and Saturn lineups, and yet they're in so good with Nintendo that they got
to work on the Zelda franchise.
Why? Because they didn't burn their bridges. Neither did Enix, for that
matter, and now they're ready to publish for whatever system they want.
Chris Kohler
|
Ok, I admit, I screwed up. Enix did publish Mischief Makers and Wonder Project J2 in the in Japan, although Nintendo published MM over here, and WP was never released in the States.
Still, the gist of my earlier statement stands. Square was the first to jump off of the N64, but they were hardly the only ones to do so... although abandoning the Game Boy along with the N64 might not have been the brightest move. From any rational business perspective, it feels like Square's being unfairly punished, especially when there's profit to be had for both sides.
Still, complaining about Yamauchi's mad whims is pretty pointless, and it's not like I won't be able to play both systems anyway.
| Correction 2, kinda |
| Chris,
"Position seems to mean everything in this system - the farther out you go, the more powerful in a certain area you get. Move as far to the left as you can and you may be the best black magic user possible, but 45 degrees up and you're the best summoner, and 180 degrees from you is the position of the best fighter."
Huh? Did you get to read more of the V-jump magazine, or am I just way off in interpreting the GIA's preview of the Sphere Board system? It seems to me that there aren't any set directions which you go down, getting more powerful as a black mage or whatever - rather, the sphere tiles seem to be distributed pretty randomly.
Just look at the screenshot - linked tiles are completely different colours with different symbols on. You don't move from, say, a black magic tile to a higher level black magic tile - you move to something completely different, from which you now learn speed skills or command abilities instead of magic. The skill in using the system then comes, I would think, in saving up enough sphere levels to hop over a few in-between boards which might have abilities which you don't particularly want to learn, onto something which you do want.
Then the actual spheres you collect (or buy?) in the game itself are what gives the characters their own skills - obviously you have to be on the right type of tile, and as they say certain spheres give different abilities depending where you use them (I imagine this would equate to something like a 'quad damage' sphere making your character learn 4x-cut if he's on a command tile, or quadra magic if he's on a magic tile).
Maybe I'm completely wrong, but it really sounds to me as if you and some of the readers have got completely the wrong idea. If I am wrong then please feel free to correct me; I don't really care either way as long as I actually get some idea what's happening. And in any case, I prefer the way my system sounds - it lets you customise your characters completely, which is what I like best ^_^
Paulo
|
Actually, it's hard to say which is more important, position or spheres or both. The linked tiles in the screenshot could be the path you've chosen so far, or they could be the only path possible on that particular board. I still think it'd make more sense for the effect of the sphere to be based on position (unlike Materia, which depended much more on type). Put a magic sphere here and you get Fira, put the same sphere somewhere else and you get Haste. The game comes from tradeoffs - there might be multiple places where you can get Haste, but you wouldn't necessarily be able to get all the spells and decent defense too.
But no, I've seen as much as you have on the game (if there was any Sphere management stuff at the E3 demos, I must have missed it), so it's all conjecture at this point. More information will be posted as we get it, but for now, you might as well enjoy imagining the system as it could be, rather than as it is. Ignorance is bliss, etc.
| Yes. Yes you are. |
| Am I the only person who thinks all of Nomura's lead males look like street
pimps?
-Eightball, who spent all of FF8 expecting Squall to backhand Quistis and say
"Keep yo' foo' mouth shut, bee-yatch!"
|
I always thought they had the blandly attractive looks of 90210/Dawson's Creek/insert-flavor-of-the-month-here, but since I'm kinda fuzzy on the actual content of said teen dramas, I suppose they could be both.
| Boldly taking a stand against... whatever... |
| I was wasting away more of my life in front of my PS2 the other day when I
had an epiphany. It was inspired by the latest
push-X-a-lot-and-have-a-cookie product to hit the market: SCE's Dark Cloud.
At first glance, the game seemed to have everything: decent characters, an
involved world, and a customizeable gameplay system. Sounds like an RPGer's
dream, right? Wrong. Quite frankly, Dark Cloud sucks. I suppose it's only
fair to note that I utterly detest dungeon hacks--the only one I've ever
managed to finish is the original Diablo, and even that got tedious--and
Dark Cloud isn't much worse than the rest of them. I'm sure that you and
your readers have heard this rant before. My main concern, however, is that
Dark Cloud's factory-worker plot is indicative of a much larger problem
throughout the entire genre.I can't help but remember the controversy a few years ago when it was
observed simultaneously by everyone and his brother that games were becoming
far more plot-oriented. While some embraced the change, others proclaimed
it the end of gaming and the beginning of the apocalypse. It became obvious
after the release of titles such as Metal Gear Solid that plot-oriented
gaming was generally a good thing. Think about it. Would the game have
been as much fun if Snake simply traipsed through hall after hall of
unidentified baddies, capping in a Pac Man-like fashion them for some
unknown cause?
Final Fantasy had always been excellent in this respect: the games are
incredibly immersive. Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger got it right.
Xenogears got it right. Vagrant Story got it right. Star Ocean 2, Grandia
and Grandia II got it right. Even The Bouncer got it right--its gameplay
blew, but the story aspect was fine. But for every stellar game, there are
two horrid ones. Valkyrie Profile bored me to tears. Dark Cloud kept my
interest for about an hour or two. The Evolution series couldn't keep me
for that long. Breath of Fire III's ambiguity made it dreadfully boring at
points. Ditto for Summoner. Even the otherwise great Ogre Battle 64 failed
in this respect. They say that good RPG's tend to come later in a system's
life. I certainly hope that's true, because PS2's childhood has been
utterly bereft of playable games in this genre.
It just seems that there have been fewer quality titles amid the dungeon
hack garbage recently. Am I the only one who's noticed this?
Michael Baker
|
So you're saying... what, exactly? Stories are important? Dungeon hacks are bad? Dark Cloud gives you lice?
I dunno, even taking into account that RPGs are somewhat subjective, some of your lists don't make much sense. Valkyrie Profile (home of cute psychopomps, numerous bloody deaths, and some serious divinity-envy) had a bad story, while The Bouncer (home of chirpy blonde girls and more cinema sequences per hour than the Surgeon General recommends) had a good one? If that's your starting point, it's hard to recommend nearly anything that could relieve your pain.
Maybe it's because I get all sorts of opinions about what is and isn't good at the moment, but, except for the general dearth of all console games right now, I don't think there's any real shortage of quality storytelling titles. Of course, even if you do think so, stick around a bit - MGS2 will probably change your mind.
| Desperately seeking dragon |
| Howdy Chris,
I was looking at the story for the final fantasy soundtrack and I noticed a track called "Winged Serpent". Now, this could mean a great many things, it could be referring to one of the aliens, and there are a great many winged serpents in the final fantasy mythos, but there is one in particular that sticks out in my mind, and his name starts with a capital B. Perhaps this is just hope against hope by and old fan that square might humor us old RPG geeks by putting in at least some strand of similarity to the games, or maybe Im putting my hope in the wrong place...
but gee golly, wouldn't it be neat!
-punkguy
P.S. Am I the only one who is crossing my fingers that the FF movie will have some relation to the games, or at least blow enough stuff up that I wont mind when it doesn't?
|
Er, yeah. Very important to have certain key summons back, I guess. Anyway, from what I've seen, the FF Movie doesn't immediately bring any of the specific games to mind, but there's enough destruction to make the Mongol hordes feel at home, so worry not.
| Gripping |
| I love the GBA, but playing it for very long made my wrists numb (pre-existing RSI). The only accessory I could find that seemed it would be at all helpful was MadCatz's Battery Grip, which definitely staves off the numbness, though it effectively disallows me from using the shoulder buttons with my fingertips. Of course, it's also a rechargeable battery pack, and as a random extra, the charger doubles as an AC adaptor for a Neo Geo Pocket. Wacky, huh?
The Battery Grip isn't perfect; I'd like longer "handles" and the funny bumps on the back don't seem to serve any purpose other that to make the GBA look more like a Playstation controller (and force me to space my index and middle fingers unnaturally far apart). Anyone else found any grips they like?
-Anson
|
I strongly considered getting the Mad Catz grip, but for the moment I've got plenty of spare batteries anyway... and besides, my hands are actually becoming used to they system. If there were one thing I'd really like to see on the GBA, it wouldn't be grips, but rather some way of changing the slight downward tilt of the screen inside the system, depending on what angle the light's coming in. I don't mind holding the GBA, but I like to hold it in front of me, rather than in my lap, and the angle makes that difficult.
On the other hand, between the size and brightness of the screen, the ergonomics of the unit, and the episodic natures of most Game Boy games, it's not like I play for longer than an hour or so at a time anyway, so no big deal.
Closing Comments:
Short column, but I've got some programming to do anyway, so it works out.
As for emailing Nich tomorrow, let's hear some insight on the Sega PSOv2 thing. How much should companies be listening to consumers, and how much should they be striking out on their own? Too much feedback and they'll never do anything original, too little and nobody will be interested in what they're selling... or maybe not. Send email regardless. See you Monday.
-Chris Jones, wondering why there haven't been any redheads in Final Fantasy for a while
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