Arbiter Libera
₪ Genre: Adventure
☑ Release date: July 2015
♬ Soundtrack: The Adventure Begins and A Tough Nut To Crack
I find myself torn with King's Quest here. Why? Before I say anything I'd like to preface this entire ramble by saying it's not a BAD game on its own. My frustrations come from how misguided its priorities are and just how intense the entire game is with references and homages to games of old. Much to its own detriment in my opinion when it could've easily done without them.
So let's hop to it. At its core this new title is a so-called “re-imagining” of a venerable point & click adventure series, but it also happens to be stuck in this weird place where it still feels entirely justified to make callbacks to previous events and exists in some mismatched continuity where certain events, as evident from items and people that get name dropped or seen outright, have obviously unfolded but are relegated to sidelines. Time-skipping nature of the game also works against it in this regard as characters and locations come and go without, for the most part, getting enough screen time to really shine on their own. We'll get to it later on in the piece but this structure King's Quest went with, while helping to give the illusion of passage of time needed for a grand epic tale, doesn't hold up in terms of some semblance of consistency. You could blame that on the fact not all episodes are created equal and there was obviously some front-loading going on here to make a good first impression, even though I'd be far more inclined to point the finger at inconsistent storytelling in general.
Let's get some good news here to clear the air of all the negativity first, though – we assume the role of knight-to-be Graham who, and this isn't much of a spoiler, over the course of some chapters goes from a wannabe to being the king of Daventry. Over the course of this journey which takes many many years, and is narrated by elderly Graham to his granddaughter Gwendolyn as the action cuts from his intricate stories to present day when old king is bedridden, we get to assume control in an adventure game crossed with a platformer. Is this good or bad? Depends on your taste, but considering the latter parts are really in no way challenging and are just a way to make the game more appealing to an audience that might fall asleep if they had a close encounter with a proper P&C adventure I think it works against the game in this particular instance. Fortunately, it is the game's wit and characters that largely work in its favor, backed by a decent soundtrack when it has something to tell and isn't just background ambient noise. Characters will come and go as the years run by and depending on your choices, although this is not a Telltale game and King's Quest even takes a few jabs at those, but puzzles themselves never really ascend beyond very basic “everything you need to solve this is never further than couple of rooms away” and later on... well, let's get to it.
Further on game abandons puzzles traditional to the genre aka using X on Y, combine X and Y, etc. in favor of more logical puzzles where you have to work out a tune, riddle or saying and then apply what you learned to figure out the problem. Is this bad? No, and I welcome puzzle variety, but when your ENTIRE FINALE essentially boils down to glorified minesweeper you've ticked me off. In fact, entire last two chapters are puzzle-heavy which suited my taste just fine, but said puzzles are re-used to a point of exhaustion and clearly showed developers ran out of ideas. How many permutations of “follow the line to unlock the door or you die” do you really need?
But really, my biggest problem with the game and why it's getting what it's getting from me is a singular one – I was not invested in the plot. Don't get me wrong, story itself is decent, but without going into spoiler territory that entire deal with the main bad guy, his motivation and entire train of thought felt like an unwarranted escalation that kinda came out of nowhere. Are there chapters missing? Just how much was left on the cutting room floor? I don't know and probably never will. What they really should've focused was more on Graham's personal story and his family because those were honestly the parts that worked much better for me and actually got me emotional towards the end of the game. There is payoff and you grow attached to characters. Even disregarding a lot of re-told of existing events from the series, I mean. Problem is game is split between chapters one through three which end up being Charming Shenanigans: the Game, and chapters four and five where all the DRAMA kicks in just for the sake of drama. Developers have shown they can hold an emotional thread with the Graham and Gwendolyn's interactions, but this thread is so thin and barely there most of the time. Why? I think they took the “last adventure” concept to an extreme and it backfired, with bulk of chapter five really coming off as a sad half-remembered last hoorah.
So... would I recommend it? My answer depends entirely on whether you A) are familiar with King's Quest at large, B) want to see it brought back and C) expect a Telltale game out of this. I won't dope out the multiple choices answer here, but for my taste I'd go with NO and this opinion was sadly heavily influenced by the decline in the last two chapters. I was on-board with all of it early on even with all the heavy-handed callbacks and questionable creative blocks developers found themselves facing.
Game did not hold out for me, but it might for you if all you're looking for is some humor and genuinely touching moments that can trump everything else.
₪ Genre: JRPG
☑ Release date: October 2014
♬ Soundtrack: The Promise and Fighting Fate
So we get to talk business at last, Final Fantasy 13.
This review has been a LONG time coming so let's give you everything you rightly deserve. I'm honestly having trouble concisely wording just how much I dislike it so I'll put forth my radical opinion plainly before I expand on it in usual [overly] long-winded fashion – I consider it rock bottom as far as core Final Fantasy entries go. There are so many ways this game has disappointed, but possibly the worst is that I could see glimmers of greatness in it. Which really just changed my mind from being angry to regular disappointment, and I can't tell which is worse for someone who considers himself a devotee of Final Fantasy as a series.
As befitting my usual style I'll talk about the characters and story first. Or at least as much as I can in a mess like this one that makes you wonder how it even got approved in an actual development process where, I assume, there was a director of some sort. Our main character is Lightning herself, member of Guardian Corps, and we see her busting out of imprisonment on a moving train with her cohort Sazh in what is a very pretty cinematic. Why would she do this? To rescue her sister Serah who was taken away for being a l'Cie – beings branded by fal'Cie – and things kinda escalate when dear sis ends up being turned into crystal for “completing her focus”. Whatever that means for all you know at this point, but still serves as motivation. I forgot to mention she is joined by couple of characters like already referenced Sazh, a family man out to save his son, and others like REAL HEROES DON'T NEED PLANS Snow and a very insecure youth Hope. Others join the menagerie, but it takes a while for that to occur. I do find myself wishing game didn't waste side characters like Cid and Nabaat as basically throwaways who just pop in the story at some point and then ingloriously disappear, though. You could make an argument the story in the background, about PSICOM, Guardian Corps and others would've made a much more fascinating tale to witness instead of what we got, but that's up to taste and par course for JRPGs. Cool ones always die too young.
Now that we've gotten the exposition out of the way the problem with both the story and characters is that they're very very basic. This is not necessarily a problem on its own, but it makes up for a story that really only works if you turn your brain off and just go along with it. Characters are the same in a sense that they're very archetypal and, with the exception of Sazh who clicked with me pretty much from the start, I was legitimately annoyed by all the others aside from too-cool-for-school Fang later on. Notably Lightning who just feels incredibly, well, bland and forgettable. It's a bad sign when your main character in a story-heavy game is so vanilla she might as well not be there aside from completing group shots cutscene team took great effort to include. Remember what I said earlier about how it COULD have been a good game and there are glimmers of quality there? For the vast majority, like 80% of game time, game never really earns what it's going for. Emotional moments? Those usually fall flat on their face because of over the top voice acting that has to fill all dead air with grunts and sighs. Dramatic scenes? Exaggerated body language and cliché writing make sure your eyebrows rocket high up. Which is sad because you can see where some reworking could've resulted in a much better outcome. Scene where Hope and Lightning have a heart-to-heart talk about his dead mother and revenge against NORA is such a moment where you can tell game nearly had it, but then it takes a detour into drama central and botches it. I have my doubts about Japanese VA improving this as I didn't play with it personally so I can't comment about that, but I could not stand the English VA direction one bit and it actively dragged the game down. Alas.
I have to roundabout here and comment on two vital points a lot of people have, somewhat justifiably for the most part, raised about the game in these years since original console launch; level linearity and combat system.
Former is most definitely true as those initial, well, 20-ish hours are linear as all hell and game drip feeds you tutorials at a pace and exhaustiveness that just comes off as insulting unless FF13 is popping your JRPG cherry. There is not a single goddamn thing that would warrant such extensive explanation while things that could use such a manual, like upgrades for example, get more or less token cliff notes to work with. To get away from that and back to linearity – it's true, but a lot of people have this notion game opens up when you get to a single huge zone later on. There's an insidious trap there, though. Up to that point game essentially has a tight leash on your character progression because you're going through corridor after corridor with usually unavoidable enemies unless you really make the effort to finagle around them, but that changes later on when you're given freedom and that very moment set upon by enemies you'll struggle a bit to get anywhere because you've been conditioned that everything is up to your appropriate challenge level and you SHOULD be killing it from the get-go. This pairs up with game's expectation that you won't skip fights as you progress, even though it becomes much easier to do so now, which can lead to unnatural roadblocks in the form of content you're not supposed to tackle yet like advanced missions or just plain necessary progression you can get stuck at. Which leads me to...
My latter comment from paragraph above, that being combat, is simultaneously more straightforward yet also somewhat divisive. It would be dishonest of me to deny how much I enjoyed boss fights in Final Fantasy 13 precisely because Paradigm switching system it went with suits them oh so fine. You see, characters don't really level up anymore as much as they earn CPs which you then use to progressively unlock nodes in the Crystarium for various roles such as Commando, Medic, Saboteur , etc where each of them fills in group roles you're familiar with like damage dealers, buffers, healers, etc. Familiar ATB system is here where each action takes up a certain number of slots required to execute, but your bread and butter when dealing with enemies lies in staggering them. What do I mean by this? Attacking them sufficiently so you fill their Stagger bar which makes them helluva lot more vulnerable and open to attacks. This ties into what I said about bosses because it's great to topple the bastards and then do them in all violent like. It's a lot LESS fun when you realize it's also what you'll be doing in most fights against regular enemies until you're so drastically overpowered you don't have to anymore. Constantly rotating between Paradigms, group role setups of three such as Ravager-Saboteur-Medic for example, becomes a chore because it quickly devolves the entire combat system into a lethal version of Simon Says as you move to counter enemies. This is really an instance where I don't know what to say that could've rectified this because there is no easy answer. Make regular non-random encounters even simpler so you can just power through? Have less enemies running around so you're not in combat every 20 seconds or so? Admittedly, you can change combat speed to slower if you feel like it, but that's preferences and doesn't really fix the issue.
All the chicken scratch that has lead up to this point makes me think about where else story and mechanics merge for dubious results and that would be game's side content. Or is it side content in all honesty? Because I find it strange game would lock things like Chocobo riding and digging for treasures behind tucked away missions. Speaking of which, missions. I wish there was more effort or at least some character put into them past a short blurb of fluff text. Entire pacing once you get to chapter 11 is off in a sense that you're not meant to rush towards the next step of the story, but are instead meant to develop characters by doing other things. Except you can only really grind or seek out mission stones that don't exactly follow linear or logical sequence of becoming available. Running into a target you're not supposed to tackle for good dozen hours is commonplace and you should get accustomed to it.
Still, there exists that sweet spot after you've put couple of hunts under your belt, unlocked Chocobo riding and you feel like the king of the world as you're finally free to explore the world at personal leisure having your hand held for so long. This was when I genuinely enjoyed Final Fantasy 13 but it didn't last as story advanced and you're back to the same old struggling to keep playing.
Then there's also crafting. Oh, the crafting. Square Enix really gypped you, didn't they? You should've been a star in a game of your own. Not to say crafting is complicated or anything, but game gives you no clear indication which gear is better aside from STR and MAG bonuses. Problem here is that if you bothered whatsoever to upgrade the basic weapons for your chumps no subsequent weapon will really measure up. So you gotta upgrade THOSE as well to see how their stat growth compares. Which translates to spending Gil like a maniac on assorted materials you can get from stores you unlock and can only access at save points because who needs towns anyway, right? Factor into that accessories, because you can only equip a weapon and multiple accessories now for the sake of streamlining, and you have a real upgrade chart potential on your hands. Unless, you know, you value sanity and just look it up online. It is fortunate you don't have to go the extra mile to acquire the ultimate weapons considering game is generally easy when you learn how to use Paradigms properly. Presumably it's the post-game content that requires all those hundreds of thousands of upgrade points spent, re-skinned mission targets vanquished and CP farmed... but you got this far. Do I strike as a guy who feels like doing any of that? More power to you if you do, but I'll pass.
Final Fantasy 13's positives are really self-evident and on display so I'd just be doing the game a disservice if I had an agenda here and wanted to smear it for no [justified] reason. Game looks absolutely gorgeous. Somewhat less when you look at textures artists clearly didn't intend for you to have a gander at up close, but it's still amazing to behold and you can tell tremendous effort went into the project. You can't help but wonder where all this creativity even comes from when you behold just how detailed and elaborate levels are, even if it does come at the expense of entire game except for one huge area on Gran Pulse being comprised of just corridors. Which is kinda impressive on its own – you will go through high-tech, ancient ruins and natural locales, but there are corridors and ramps everywhere regardless. You also wouldn't believe but all the weird biotechnological enemy designs are actually explained with a throwaway line and it suddenly made it work for me on some level because I'm weird that way, particularly when you contrast those with awesome mechanical contraptions you also cross swords with.
I think game's biggest asset is its production value and all that entails. There are magnificent cinematics in the game that I couldn't believe they went through the effort to actually have in such quantity. Some are bit overcrowded and I didn't know where exactly to look at, especially when Eidolon's took front stage, but almost seamless switching from gameplay, cutscenes and cinematics in general kept me immersed like none other. Already mentioned VA is not bad or anything, I just can't stand the direction they went with, but I have to give props to voice actors regardless of preference because from what I could hear no one half-assed it here. Soundtrack is also a significant standout, albeit perhaps not the best in the series and with a somewhat grating combat song. It sounds a lot more suited towards story moments Square Enix wanted to tell over simply setting the mood. It worked for me and there's certainly no lack of quantity here with 85 tracks to boast with.
My keyboard is yelling molestation here so it's probably time to stop. Fact Final Fantasy 13 was on my hard drive for couple of years and in all that time I didn't get past chapter 7 until very recently speaks volumes. I did not enjoy the game overall. There were no technical problems aside from some frame drops here and there, and game's visuals were outstanding as well as sound design, but it faltered in both story and mechanics department. Both felt convoluted and contrived when they didn't need to be to be fun. It would've also worked in game's favor if it wasn't so front-loaded with needless assistance that just gets in the way of playing the damn thing.
The way it is I hope I don't see it any time soon and I wouldn't recommend to many people.
₪ Genre: Science Fiction
☑ Original run: January 1994 – October 1994
⇲ Episodes: 22
Just like I kinda-sorta promised at the end of 2016, I've finally mustered enough willpower and free time to watch Babylon 5 proper. Following chronology and what little common sense I have I started with season one, also subtitled Signs and Portents, so it's time to share some of the opinions. Not sure how summarizing an entire season of a 20+ episodes show is going to work, but let's give it a shot.
Season one picks up not long after the pilot movie I covered in December wraps up and we see things are still settling in the station. Doctor to replace the previous one, who was suddenly recalled back to Earth after having treated a member of the otherwise enigmatic member of the Vorlon race, has yet to arrive. New commercial resident telepath, third parties arbitrating in deals as a layer of security on a neutral station that is Babylon 5, also follows suit and in these moves we are introduced to two newcomers; Dr. Stephen Franklin and Talia Winters, respectively. Familiar cast of character is lastly reinforced by a no-nonsense Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova who replaces Takashima at her command post. She also inherits the legally dubious parcel of coffee plants, and I say legally dubious because all plants grown on the station are to be used for air recycling or food. Still, this little tidbit tells us a lot about Ivanova and shows her as more than a pessimistic Russian.
Story and structure-wise I'm really not sure what to say without going into spoilers for individual episodes which would be a ridiculous undertaking for all 22 episodes, so I'll just say show embraces crisis of the week but you can also clearly see longer and more elaborate [sub]plots are being woven throughout said episodes. Whether this will pan out or not, and it should considering this “arc structure” is Babylon 5's strongest asset from what I've told, I have yet to see. What I can confirm though, is that this approach certainly enriches individual episodes which A plot and B plot setup where both are usually equally strong and engaging. Even if something like, for example, long lost ancient weapon that uses irrational concept of ideological purity as a measure on who to kill isn't THAT engaging on its own, it's the implications that show raises and general hands-off approach that avoids preaching that makes it grab your attention regardless. I just wish there were more episodes like the eponymous Signs and Portents that are clearly laying down the groundwork for things to come and love their foreshadowing, but I doped out season one is a slow burner that takes all the time it wants to establish, and re-establish, dramatis personae as well as escalate events towards the end.
Not sure if going into production values really adds anything to it because CG scenes still aren't really that hot, but I can work around it. Some costume and makeup designs have changed since the pilot movie and I generally consider them superior. Londo's less goofy hair piece stands out as the most significant improvement, but some are straighter changes like Delenn's look to show more of actress' face, I presume? Station itself still looks grimy and very believable which remains a positive.
In the end, I don't think I can say much about the first season except that I really like what I've seen so far and people I've talked to have most definitely not oversold the show to me. If it's only up from here I already see myself having a great time. Fingers crossed.
₪ Genre: Fantasy, Horror
☑ Publication date: January 2005
⇲ Pages: 48+47+48
Being a rarely seen visitor in the realms of comics I find myself impressed by Requiem Vampire Knight even if I can't really find the best words to put down to... well, paper? Reviewing a visual medium where I can't exactly show screenshots is never easy, especially when posting page scans isn't exactly legal, is always a problem but I'm confident nothing is beyond a Google search if you feel so inclined. I hope to make you after sharing my opinions on first three volumes I've read so far.
Resurrection is name of the world at hand and it is a vicious one that could be very well characterized as a sort of mixture between hell and purgatory, but definitely leaning more on the former, where technology and civilization from every corner of time seems to have mashed together. Entire world has been inverted – seas were landmass was, while sea itself is set upon perpetual blaze. One more characteristic is that time flows backwards all the way to infant age. Why is this important? Because the older you were when you ended up on Resurrection the better it is for you as you have more time to spend being evil.
Real kicker is that, as you can tell from the name, this is a world where people get reborn after dying wherever they came and severity of their crimes decide what they'll be reincarnated as. For example; vampires are the elite and comprised of people who were the most cruel in their lives, inquisitors and other religious zealots come back as werewolves, while some like Lemures, who oppose the ruling vampire elite, are simply victims stuck on Resurrection until they can kill their tormentors who's faults it is they got there in the first place aka people who killed them. Needles to say, author took great joy in placing real historical figures where he thought they belong so you have your Atilla the Hun, Rasputin and others as vampires, but figures like Tomas de Torquemada find themselves being zealous werewolves with cybernetic implants under the whims of others. You will certainly recognized name dropping here and there.
Having dispensed with somewhat front-loaded introduction, that comic itself admittedly handles in a similar manner albeit spread out a bit, I guess I should point out we follow one Heinrich Augsburg, Nazi soldier who got killed on the eastern front during WW2 and who seamlessly finds himself transported to this new world where he has to fight off a marauding band of zombie looters. During the efforts he helps out a masked vampire soldier Otto von Todt who points out the obvious – that Heinrich himself has returned as a vampire, as well. There's a bit more here like our protagonist's history with a woman called Rebecca he lived with back on Earth, but this is swept aside as he goes through a, well, two-year military vampire training that aims to instill in him that being evil as much as possible is the way things should be done. And in fact, entire world seems to run on being evil for evil's sake... as befitting when you consider the greater villain you were in your mortal days, better off you are over there. Heinrich, who renames himself to Requiem after becoming a vampire knight, still secretly keeps committing two grave sins; he doesn't want to deny and forget his past and indulges in strange perversions like sparing an innocent woman from being fed upon. He's weird that way.
It's taken me a good long time just to get over the setting and character basics, but you'll be glad to hear bulk of the work is actually over. Story is very simple, with our boy Requiem getting adjusted to his new existence and as there is a [mandatory] coup against the vampire leader, three guesses who he is and first two don't count, in the upper echelons. There's also an on-going campaign against the forces of Lemuria as one side strives for total dominion while other wants to free themselves.
Dialog itself is very gratuitous and no literary genius, but it hardly has to be for this kind of presentation. This is, after all, a visual spectacle more than anything else and, oh boy, am I failing to find words required to really do it justice. Absolutely gorgeous gothic art style with vibrant and rich dark colors befitting the mood artist is trying to evoke. No expense was spared and two-page spreads in particular are breathtaking on their own. Now, as you can probably surmise from what I've scratched so far that no punches are held back here – there's violence, nudity and gore aplenty, but generally done very tastefully as far as I'm concerned. So if you're squeamish or a prude you might want to give this one a pass just in case. It's no Druuna where Serpieri indulges in his mastery over human anatomy or nudity with explicit sexual acts, but there's still plenty of skin to go around. In both departments, to be honest.
Should you? In my opinion Requiem Vampire Knight is most certainly style over substance, but it is a VERY worthwhile style that will have you scanning each page like there's no tomorrow and marvel at just how much effort must've gone into them.
Foreword (Report #001)
Unlike every single month where I scribble this foreword section at the very last second because I’m waiting to finish everything else first, I’m going to make an exception for the sake of opening the new year and give myself some decent leeway by writing it quite a bit earlier.
As per usual I’m constantly fiddling with the template, having added a thumbs up/thumbs down indicator for clear message without forcing the readers to delve into walls of text, and will surely wreak havoc for mobile readers if such exist for which I apologize. One major change is transitioning from steady monthly updates to more non-committal reports to fill-in whenever I have enough material ready without RL killing me softy at every opportunity it gets. I will still keep a list of all past and future updates on my profile page if you feel the need to check them out, though.
Anything is better than that last catastrophic month I had.
Completed Chronicles
I’ve always been afraid of video games - not afraid that I wouldn’t like them, but that I would like them too much, and that after mere seconds in front of any particularly bright and absorbing game, I would abandon all ambition, turn into a mouth-breathing zombie, and develop a wide, sofa-shaped rear end.
I bring you two big ‘uns this time, even if King’s Quest and Final Fantasy 13 respectively are vastly different games on their own, so grab a beverage or two and I hope you have some free time on the side to give them a read. Both sadly ended up being disappointments and in case of the latter I’m glad to finally be rid of it for good. My hard drive also felt relieved to part ways with good ~50GBs of cinematics. Estimated reading time? I believe the phrase is “may God have mercy upon your soul”.
₪ Genre: Adventure
☑ Release date: July 2015
♬ Soundtrack: The Adventure Begins and A Tough Nut To Crack
I find myself torn with King's Quest here. Why? Before I say anything I'd like to preface this entire ramble by saying it's not a BAD game on its own. My frustrations come from how misguided its priorities are and just how intense the entire game is with references and homages to games of old. Much to its own detriment in my opinion when it could've easily done without them.
So let's hop to it. At its core this new title is a so-called “re-imagining” of a venerable point & click adventure series, but it also happens to be stuck in this weird place where it still feels entirely justified to make callbacks to previous events and exists in some mismatched continuity where certain events, as evident from items and people that get name dropped or seen outright, have obviously unfolded but are relegated to sidelines. Time-skipping nature of the game also works against it in this regard as characters and locations come and go without, for the most part, getting enough screen time to really shine on their own. We'll get to it later on in the piece but this structure King's Quest went with, while helping to give the illusion of passage of time needed for a grand epic tale, doesn't hold up in terms of some semblance of consistency. You could blame that on the fact not all episodes are created equal and there was obviously some front-loading going on here to make a good first impression, even though I'd be far more inclined to point the finger at inconsistent storytelling in general.
Let's get some good news here to clear the air of all the negativity first, though – we assume the role of knight-to-be Graham who, and this isn't much of a spoiler, over the course of some chapters goes from a wannabe to being the king of Daventry. Over the course of this journey which takes many many years, and is narrated by elderly Graham to his granddaughter Gwendolyn as the action cuts from his intricate stories to present day when old king is bedridden, we get to assume control in an adventure game crossed with a platformer. Is this good or bad? Depends on your taste, but considering the latter parts are really in no way challenging and are just a way to make the game more appealing to an audience that might fall asleep if they had a close encounter with a proper P&C adventure I think it works against the game in this particular instance. Fortunately, it is the game's wit and characters that largely work in its favor, backed by a decent soundtrack when it has something to tell and isn't just background ambient noise. Characters will come and go as the years run by and depending on your choices, although this is not a Telltale game and King's Quest even takes a few jabs at those, but puzzles themselves never really ascend beyond very basic “everything you need to solve this is never further than couple of rooms away” and later on... well, let's get to it.
Further on game abandons puzzles traditional to the genre aka using X on Y, combine X and Y, etc. in favor of more logical puzzles where you have to work out a tune, riddle or saying and then apply what you learned to figure out the problem. Is this bad? No, and I welcome puzzle variety, but when your ENTIRE FINALE essentially boils down to glorified minesweeper you've ticked me off. In fact, entire last two chapters are puzzle-heavy which suited my taste just fine, but said puzzles are re-used to a point of exhaustion and clearly showed developers ran out of ideas. How many permutations of “follow the line to unlock the door or you die” do you really need?
But really, my biggest problem with the game and why it's getting what it's getting from me is a singular one – I was not invested in the plot. Don't get me wrong, story itself is decent, but without going into spoiler territory that entire deal with the main bad guy, his motivation and entire train of thought felt like an unwarranted escalation that kinda came out of nowhere. Are there chapters missing? Just how much was left on the cutting room floor? I don't know and probably never will. What they really should've focused was more on Graham's personal story and his family because those were honestly the parts that worked much better for me and actually got me emotional towards the end of the game. There is payoff and you grow attached to characters. Even disregarding a lot of re-told of existing events from the series, I mean. Problem is game is split between chapters one through three which end up being Charming Shenanigans: the Game, and chapters four and five where all the DRAMA kicks in just for the sake of drama. Developers have shown they can hold an emotional thread with the Graham and Gwendolyn's interactions, but this thread is so thin and barely there most of the time. Why? I think they took the “last adventure” concept to an extreme and it backfired, with bulk of chapter five really coming off as a sad half-remembered last hoorah.
So... would I recommend it? My answer depends entirely on whether you A) are familiar with King's Quest at large, B) want to see it brought back and C) expect a Telltale game out of this. I won't dope out the multiple choices answer here, but for my taste I'd go with NO and this opinion was sadly heavily influenced by the decline in the last two chapters. I was on-board with all of it early on even with all the heavy-handed callbacks and questionable creative blocks developers found themselves facing.
Game did not hold out for me, but it might for you if all you're looking for is some humor and genuinely touching moments that can trump everything else.
₪ Genre: JRPG
☑ Release date: October 2014
♬ Soundtrack: The Promise and Fighting Fate
So we get to talk business at last, Final Fantasy 13.
This review has been a LONG time coming so let's give you everything you rightly deserve. I'm honestly having trouble concisely wording just how much I dislike it so I'll put forth my radical opinion plainly before I expand on it in usual [overly] long-winded fashion – I consider it rock bottom as far as core Final Fantasy entries go. There are so many ways this game has disappointed, but possibly the worst is that I could see glimmers of greatness in it. Which really just changed my mind from being angry to regular disappointment, and I can't tell which is worse for someone who considers himself a devotee of Final Fantasy as a series.
As befitting my usual style I'll talk about the characters and story first. Or at least as much as I can in a mess like this one that makes you wonder how it even got approved in an actual development process where, I assume, there was a director of some sort. Our main character is Lightning herself, member of Guardian Corps, and we see her busting out of imprisonment on a moving train with her cohort Sazh in what is a very pretty cinematic. Why would she do this? To rescue her sister Serah who was taken away for being a l'Cie – beings branded by fal'Cie – and things kinda escalate when dear sis ends up being turned into crystal for “completing her focus”. Whatever that means for all you know at this point, but still serves as motivation. I forgot to mention she is joined by couple of characters like already referenced Sazh, a family man out to save his son, and others like REAL HEROES DON'T NEED PLANS Snow and a very insecure youth Hope. Others join the menagerie, but it takes a while for that to occur. I do find myself wishing game didn't waste side characters like Cid and Nabaat as basically throwaways who just pop in the story at some point and then ingloriously disappear, though. You could make an argument the story in the background, about PSICOM, Guardian Corps and others would've made a much more fascinating tale to witness instead of what we got, but that's up to taste and par course for JRPGs. Cool ones always die too young.
Now that we've gotten the exposition out of the way the problem with both the story and characters is that they're very very basic. This is not necessarily a problem on its own, but it makes up for a story that really only works if you turn your brain off and just go along with it. Characters are the same in a sense that they're very archetypal and, with the exception of Sazh who clicked with me pretty much from the start, I was legitimately annoyed by all the others aside from too-cool-for-school Fang later on. Notably Lightning who just feels incredibly, well, bland and forgettable. It's a bad sign when your main character in a story-heavy game is so vanilla she might as well not be there aside from completing group shots cutscene team took great effort to include. Remember what I said earlier about how it COULD have been a good game and there are glimmers of quality there? For the vast majority, like 80% of game time, game never really earns what it's going for. Emotional moments? Those usually fall flat on their face because of over the top voice acting that has to fill all dead air with grunts and sighs. Dramatic scenes? Exaggerated body language and cliché writing make sure your eyebrows rocket high up. Which is sad because you can see where some reworking could've resulted in a much better outcome. Scene where Hope and Lightning have a heart-to-heart talk about his dead mother and revenge against NORA is such a moment where you can tell game nearly had it, but then it takes a detour into drama central and botches it. I have my doubts about Japanese VA improving this as I didn't play with it personally so I can't comment about that, but I could not stand the English VA direction one bit and it actively dragged the game down. Alas.
I have to roundabout here and comment on two vital points a lot of people have, somewhat justifiably for the most part, raised about the game in these years since original console launch; level linearity and combat system.
Former is most definitely true as those initial, well, 20-ish hours are linear as all hell and game drip feeds you tutorials at a pace and exhaustiveness that just comes off as insulting unless FF13 is popping your JRPG cherry. There is not a single goddamn thing that would warrant such extensive explanation while things that could use such a manual, like upgrades for example, get more or less token cliff notes to work with. To get away from that and back to linearity – it's true, but a lot of people have this notion game opens up when you get to a single huge zone later on. There's an insidious trap there, though. Up to that point game essentially has a tight leash on your character progression because you're going through corridor after corridor with usually unavoidable enemies unless you really make the effort to finagle around them, but that changes later on when you're given freedom and that very moment set upon by enemies you'll struggle a bit to get anywhere because you've been conditioned that everything is up to your appropriate challenge level and you SHOULD be killing it from the get-go. This pairs up with game's expectation that you won't skip fights as you progress, even though it becomes much easier to do so now, which can lead to unnatural roadblocks in the form of content you're not supposed to tackle yet like advanced missions or just plain necessary progression you can get stuck at. Which leads me to...
My latter comment from paragraph above, that being combat, is simultaneously more straightforward yet also somewhat divisive. It would be dishonest of me to deny how much I enjoyed boss fights in Final Fantasy 13 precisely because Paradigm switching system it went with suits them oh so fine. You see, characters don't really level up anymore as much as they earn CPs which you then use to progressively unlock nodes in the Crystarium for various roles such as Commando, Medic, Saboteur , etc where each of them fills in group roles you're familiar with like damage dealers, buffers, healers, etc. Familiar ATB system is here where each action takes up a certain number of slots required to execute, but your bread and butter when dealing with enemies lies in staggering them. What do I mean by this? Attacking them sufficiently so you fill their Stagger bar which makes them helluva lot more vulnerable and open to attacks. This ties into what I said about bosses because it's great to topple the bastards and then do them in all violent like. It's a lot LESS fun when you realize it's also what you'll be doing in most fights against regular enemies until you're so drastically overpowered you don't have to anymore. Constantly rotating between Paradigms, group role setups of three such as Ravager-Saboteur-Medic for example, becomes a chore because it quickly devolves the entire combat system into a lethal version of Simon Says as you move to counter enemies. This is really an instance where I don't know what to say that could've rectified this because there is no easy answer. Make regular non-random encounters even simpler so you can just power through? Have less enemies running around so you're not in combat every 20 seconds or so? Admittedly, you can change combat speed to slower if you feel like it, but that's preferences and doesn't really fix the issue.
All the chicken scratch that has lead up to this point makes me think about where else story and mechanics merge for dubious results and that would be game's side content. Or is it side content in all honesty? Because I find it strange game would lock things like Chocobo riding and digging for treasures behind tucked away missions. Speaking of which, missions. I wish there was more effort or at least some character put into them past a short blurb of fluff text. Entire pacing once you get to chapter 11 is off in a sense that you're not meant to rush towards the next step of the story, but are instead meant to develop characters by doing other things. Except you can only really grind or seek out mission stones that don't exactly follow linear or logical sequence of becoming available. Running into a target you're not supposed to tackle for good dozen hours is commonplace and you should get accustomed to it.
Still, there exists that sweet spot after you've put couple of hunts under your belt, unlocked Chocobo riding and you feel like the king of the world as you're finally free to explore the world at personal leisure having your hand held for so long. This was when I genuinely enjoyed Final Fantasy 13 but it didn't last as story advanced and you're back to the same old struggling to keep playing.
Then there's also crafting. Oh, the crafting. Square Enix really gypped you, didn't they? You should've been a star in a game of your own. Not to say crafting is complicated or anything, but game gives you no clear indication which gear is better aside from STR and MAG bonuses. Problem here is that if you bothered whatsoever to upgrade the basic weapons for your chumps no subsequent weapon will really measure up. So you gotta upgrade THOSE as well to see how their stat growth compares. Which translates to spending Gil like a maniac on assorted materials you can get from stores you unlock and can only access at save points because who needs towns anyway, right? Factor into that accessories, because you can only equip a weapon and multiple accessories now for the sake of streamlining, and you have a real upgrade chart potential on your hands. Unless, you know, you value sanity and just look it up online. It is fortunate you don't have to go the extra mile to acquire the ultimate weapons considering game is generally easy when you learn how to use Paradigms properly. Presumably it's the post-game content that requires all those hundreds of thousands of upgrade points spent, re-skinned mission targets vanquished and CP farmed... but you got this far. Do I strike as a guy who feels like doing any of that? More power to you if you do, but I'll pass.
Final Fantasy 13's positives are really self-evident and on display so I'd just be doing the game a disservice if I had an agenda here and wanted to smear it for no [justified] reason. Game looks absolutely gorgeous. Somewhat less when you look at textures artists clearly didn't intend for you to have a gander at up close, but it's still amazing to behold and you can tell tremendous effort went into the project. You can't help but wonder where all this creativity even comes from when you behold just how detailed and elaborate levels are, even if it does come at the expense of entire game except for one huge area on Gran Pulse being comprised of just corridors. Which is kinda impressive on its own – you will go through high-tech, ancient ruins and natural locales, but there are corridors and ramps everywhere regardless. You also wouldn't believe but all the weird biotechnological enemy designs are actually explained with a throwaway line and it suddenly made it work for me on some level because I'm weird that way, particularly when you contrast those with awesome mechanical contraptions you also cross swords with.
I think game's biggest asset is its production value and all that entails. There are magnificent cinematics in the game that I couldn't believe they went through the effort to actually have in such quantity. Some are bit overcrowded and I didn't know where exactly to look at, especially when Eidolon's took front stage, but almost seamless switching from gameplay, cutscenes and cinematics in general kept me immersed like none other. Already mentioned VA is not bad or anything, I just can't stand the direction they went with, but I have to give props to voice actors regardless of preference because from what I could hear no one half-assed it here. Soundtrack is also a significant standout, albeit perhaps not the best in the series and with a somewhat grating combat song. It sounds a lot more suited towards story moments Square Enix wanted to tell over simply setting the mood. It worked for me and there's certainly no lack of quantity here with 85 tracks to boast with.
My keyboard is yelling molestation here so it's probably time to stop. Fact Final Fantasy 13 was on my hard drive for couple of years and in all that time I didn't get past chapter 7 until very recently speaks volumes. I did not enjoy the game overall. There were no technical problems aside from some frame drops here and there, and game's visuals were outstanding as well as sound design, but it faltered in both story and mechanics department. Both felt convoluted and contrived when they didn't need to be to be fun. It would've also worked in game's favor if it wasn't so front-loaded with needless assistance that just gets in the way of playing the damn thing.
The way it is I hope I don't see it any time soon and I wouldn't recommend to many people.
Beyond the Rim
The process doesn’t end there. Stories are more than just images. As you continue in the tale, you get to know the characters, motivations and conflicts that make up the core of the story. This requires more parts of the brain. Some parts process emotion. Others infer the thoughts of others, letting us empathize with their experiences. Yet other parts package the experience into memories for future reflection.
Lightweight offering this time, but also one that took pretty much better part of January to really go through because I spaced out my B5 schedule. Also, I wish I could find a proper collection like some other graphical novels have for RVK but tracking down individual volumes had to suffice. There’s also a matter of finishing Echopraxia… which I have no idea how to review properly, just like with its predecessor Blindsight, so let’s just leave it at that. Both were good books.
₪ Genre: Science Fiction
☑ Original run: January 1994 – October 1994
⇲ Episodes: 22
Just like I kinda-sorta promised at the end of 2016, I've finally mustered enough willpower and free time to watch Babylon 5 proper. Following chronology and what little common sense I have I started with season one, also subtitled Signs and Portents, so it's time to share some of the opinions. Not sure how summarizing an entire season of a 20+ episodes show is going to work, but let's give it a shot.
Season one picks up not long after the pilot movie I covered in December wraps up and we see things are still settling in the station. Doctor to replace the previous one, who was suddenly recalled back to Earth after having treated a member of the otherwise enigmatic member of the Vorlon race, has yet to arrive. New commercial resident telepath, third parties arbitrating in deals as a layer of security on a neutral station that is Babylon 5, also follows suit and in these moves we are introduced to two newcomers; Dr. Stephen Franklin and Talia Winters, respectively. Familiar cast of character is lastly reinforced by a no-nonsense Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova who replaces Takashima at her command post. She also inherits the legally dubious parcel of coffee plants, and I say legally dubious because all plants grown on the station are to be used for air recycling or food. Still, this little tidbit tells us a lot about Ivanova and shows her as more than a pessimistic Russian.
Story and structure-wise I'm really not sure what to say without going into spoilers for individual episodes which would be a ridiculous undertaking for all 22 episodes, so I'll just say show embraces crisis of the week but you can also clearly see longer and more elaborate [sub]plots are being woven throughout said episodes. Whether this will pan out or not, and it should considering this “arc structure” is Babylon 5's strongest asset from what I've told, I have yet to see. What I can confirm though, is that this approach certainly enriches individual episodes which A plot and B plot setup where both are usually equally strong and engaging. Even if something like, for example, long lost ancient weapon that uses irrational concept of ideological purity as a measure on who to kill isn't THAT engaging on its own, it's the implications that show raises and general hands-off approach that avoids preaching that makes it grab your attention regardless. I just wish there were more episodes like the eponymous Signs and Portents that are clearly laying down the groundwork for things to come and love their foreshadowing, but I doped out season one is a slow burner that takes all the time it wants to establish, and re-establish, dramatis personae as well as escalate events towards the end.
Not sure if going into production values really adds anything to it because CG scenes still aren't really that hot, but I can work around it. Some costume and makeup designs have changed since the pilot movie and I generally consider them superior. Londo's less goofy hair piece stands out as the most significant improvement, but some are straighter changes like Delenn's look to show more of actress' face, I presume? Station itself still looks grimy and very believable which remains a positive.
In the end, I don't think I can say much about the first season except that I really like what I've seen so far and people I've talked to have most definitely not oversold the show to me. If it's only up from here I already see myself having a great time. Fingers crossed.
₪ Genre: Fantasy, Horror
☑ Publication date: January 2005
⇲ Pages: 48+47+48
Being a rarely seen visitor in the realms of comics I find myself impressed by Requiem Vampire Knight even if I can't really find the best words to put down to... well, paper? Reviewing a visual medium where I can't exactly show screenshots is never easy, especially when posting page scans isn't exactly legal, is always a problem but I'm confident nothing is beyond a Google search if you feel so inclined. I hope to make you after sharing my opinions on first three volumes I've read so far.
Resurrection is name of the world at hand and it is a vicious one that could be very well characterized as a sort of mixture between hell and purgatory, but definitely leaning more on the former, where technology and civilization from every corner of time seems to have mashed together. Entire world has been inverted – seas were landmass was, while sea itself is set upon perpetual blaze. One more characteristic is that time flows backwards all the way to infant age. Why is this important? Because the older you were when you ended up on Resurrection the better it is for you as you have more time to spend being evil.
Real kicker is that, as you can tell from the name, this is a world where people get reborn after dying wherever they came and severity of their crimes decide what they'll be reincarnated as. For example; vampires are the elite and comprised of people who were the most cruel in their lives, inquisitors and other religious zealots come back as werewolves, while some like Lemures, who oppose the ruling vampire elite, are simply victims stuck on Resurrection until they can kill their tormentors who's faults it is they got there in the first place aka people who killed them. Needles to say, author took great joy in placing real historical figures where he thought they belong so you have your Atilla the Hun, Rasputin and others as vampires, but figures like Tomas de Torquemada find themselves being zealous werewolves with cybernetic implants under the whims of others. You will certainly recognized name dropping here and there.
Having dispensed with somewhat front-loaded introduction, that comic itself admittedly handles in a similar manner albeit spread out a bit, I guess I should point out we follow one Heinrich Augsburg, Nazi soldier who got killed on the eastern front during WW2 and who seamlessly finds himself transported to this new world where he has to fight off a marauding band of zombie looters. During the efforts he helps out a masked vampire soldier Otto von Todt who points out the obvious – that Heinrich himself has returned as a vampire, as well. There's a bit more here like our protagonist's history with a woman called Rebecca he lived with back on Earth, but this is swept aside as he goes through a, well, two-year military vampire training that aims to instill in him that being evil as much as possible is the way things should be done. And in fact, entire world seems to run on being evil for evil's sake... as befitting when you consider the greater villain you were in your mortal days, better off you are over there. Heinrich, who renames himself to Requiem after becoming a vampire knight, still secretly keeps committing two grave sins; he doesn't want to deny and forget his past and indulges in strange perversions like sparing an innocent woman from being fed upon. He's weird that way.
It's taken me a good long time just to get over the setting and character basics, but you'll be glad to hear bulk of the work is actually over. Story is very simple, with our boy Requiem getting adjusted to his new existence and as there is a [mandatory] coup against the vampire leader, three guesses who he is and first two don't count, in the upper echelons. There's also an on-going campaign against the forces of Lemuria as one side strives for total dominion while other wants to free themselves.
Dialog itself is very gratuitous and no literary genius, but it hardly has to be for this kind of presentation. This is, after all, a visual spectacle more than anything else and, oh boy, am I failing to find words required to really do it justice. Absolutely gorgeous gothic art style with vibrant and rich dark colors befitting the mood artist is trying to evoke. No expense was spared and two-page spreads in particular are breathtaking on their own. Now, as you can probably surmise from what I've scratched so far that no punches are held back here – there's violence, nudity and gore aplenty, but generally done very tastefully as far as I'm concerned. So if you're squeamish or a prude you might want to give this one a pass just in case. It's no Druuna where Serpieri indulges in his mastery over human anatomy or nudity with explicit sexual acts, but there's still plenty of skin to go around. In both departments, to be honest.
Should you? In my opinion Requiem Vampire Knight is most certainly style over substance, but it is a VERY worthwhile style that will have you scanning each page like there's no tomorrow and marvel at just how much effort must've gone into them.
☽ Coraline Castell ☾
It seems like, for some strange reason, we’ve never met. Pleasure to meet you and your gorgeously designed BLAEO posts adorned with good taste and variety. I go by Coraline and it seems liek I’m 5 months late on my introduction.
Seriously, your posts look amazing in every single way! From content to display. Props to that. I have this desire to copy the hell out of everything but I would never dare, it looks too damn fine for the stuff YOU put on them. However, you little images on top (mosaics, if you will) look super cool and inspirational. Could I do something similar to that on my next post and link back to you?
Also, being blunt: can we be friends? And by ‘friends’ I don’t mean “add me on Steam and let’s pretend we’ll talk about cool stuff we have in common one day in a non-foreseeable future”; I mean “let’s actually chat about the amazing movies, books and loads of stuff you’ve been linking on your BLAEO posts”. Because it’s unsettling me how we’ve never actually crossed paths here before. Then again, my memory is shit, so please feel free to refresh it if I’m dead wrong.
Anywho, as for the post in itself, I never even finished the first chapter of King’s Quest if I recall correctly. Reason being a dear friend of mine gifted me the 1st chapter and the 1st chapter only and since finding out about their epilogue stunt thing, I never bothered with the rest. I can’t really say a thing about FF games since I’ve never played any. Not my style, to keep it short.
Thanks for the awesome update! So much effort was put into this… I feel like a lazy bum.
Arbiter Libera
Likewise and thanks. No worries about missing each other so far with how many posts happen on the site and everything else. It happens.
As far as my posts go feel completely free to use whatever you want - I cobbled the current template based on some great guides from people like Akantha and others. Hell, I think I was even inspired to create these collapsible lists on my profile based on what I saw over in YOUR latest post so I’m a full-time copycat. I’m utterly inept when it comes to graphical design so I just used Fotor Collage for mosaics which should make it easier to achieve the same result. For all its worth the extent of my graphical manipulation skill has been modifying a “thumbs up” image so it becomes a “thumbs mediocre” which I couldn’t find to match the two existing images I got earlier.
Friends? Sure, but I really gotta tell you what I say to everyone else I befriend on Steam and that’s the fact I simply don’t really have the time to socialize as much as I’d like to. Never say never, though. Maybe our schedules align perfectly and we can have a long discussion about these things. :) I am glad to hear the enthusiasm considering I’ve also found your posts equally amazing and have given serious thought to modifying my own to include more images and shorter write-ups, some of which has come to fruition, but I also realized I’m a words first kind a guy. Even if few people read them it’s my own creative outlet so I just let loose.
Here’s hoping to future and I’m looking to your updates as well. I can only dream of ever covering so many games in individual blocks.
Well, as there is no way to oversell B5, so not surprised. ♥
Also, great to read about King’s Quest. Your review just reinforced my decision to not play it for now. I only have the first chapter right now (bought it from Christmas sale 2005 and needless to say got a little disappointed when it went free), but will definitely wait for a proper bundle (at least good BTA) before buying the rest.
Glad to hear you enjoyed the read. Keep in mind plot might work for you even if it didn’t for me. Chapter one was front-loaded as hell to leave a good impression, though.
And yeah, I’m really enjoying Babylon 5. VIR.