skysenshi.com

I’m supposed to write a full-blown review about this game when I’m done with it, but I’m starting to worry if I’d ever be done with it. So I’ll just put in a few notes here, for when I need to write the full review, which will be posted at my site (http://www.otakufridge.com).

1.) I feel like I’m playing an MMORPG without the social interaction. Everytime I finish a stage or before I enter a new dungeon, I always wind up leveling. For instance, I just finished this area called Feywood. Then I nearly get beaten to a pulp by the next boss (my second Quickening, which is what they call limit breaks in this installation, came up short). While barely surviving that, you’d think the next minor minions would be easy? Nope. Four mini-boss like monsters nearly tore my characters into pieces. Except, they’re not really mini-bosses. They were regular monsers! Sigh. The fact that I haven’t seen the “Game Over” screen just yet is something I can thank luck for.

2.) Vaan is a useless hero. In fact, you can remove him from the game and it will not affect the story at all. If you observe well enough, you’d notice that everything here revolves around the Princess Ashe and her quest to restore her kingdom. Which is why, despite her bland personality, she leads my main team.

3.) Nothing here is of epic proportions. I don’t consider that a bad thing. I had grown rather bored of the usual save-the-world themes that are running rampant in multimedia storytelling.

4.) Balthier is one hot pirate. That British gentry accent (not cockney, which is more common to 18th century sailors) makes everything about him paradoxical…at first anyway.

5.) All that hacking, slashing and moving through the license boards get old after 50 hours. Unfortunately, the real meat of the game covers only 10 hours out of that.

6.) My student, Carlo Cruz of ABMA43, looks like Ashe’s husband, the Prince of Nabudis.

7.) It makes sense that enemies don’t carry gil with them. Have you ever heard of a wild animal who waltzes around with a pouch full of money?

8.) I don’t feel the urge to perfect this game. I haven’t had the urge to perfect a Final Fantasy game since VII and VIII. Funny, but I never had this problem with any of the Suikoden series, not even the unpopular Suikoden IV.

Hm. I’ll think of more stuff later, when I’m ready to post my review. In the meantime, I’ll just post my notes in this temporary repository.