Final Fantasy XII
Holy prettiness Bahamut.
During gameplay, I must admit that Final Fantasy XII was a tad irritating, because unlike FFX and FFX2, the "pretty" [read: cinematic] cutscenes were abrupt and infrequent. It felt a lot like they were skimping out after you got through the prettyful intro. This changes, however, about fifteen minutes after Greg stopped playing. Once you move on to the final boss fights on the Bahamut, you get fairly substantial cutscenes until the final gorgeous rap-up cutscene of joy. The story, on the whole, is far less romantic than many of the previous FF games, but just as involved and periodically confusing. The characters are there to be learned and loved, which I found quite enjoyable.
The fight system was eight kinds of amazing. It was close enough to the hackandslash that I know and understand for me to catch on and use with surprising efficiency but still had some of the turn-based elements. This provided a purely melee player like me a chance to fiddle with magics.
We did play with the walk through to get the full story and proper stuff and such, but that's really the only way I could see playing something so ornately complex. It also afforded me a chance to pull Nicole from her computer and force her to do something with me. [Her the navigator, me the pilot.]
I want more FF games. They are fun and exciting and very pretty.
They also have that nice little buzz at the end one may get from finishing a good book--joy that everything is well done and complete combined with the sadness of there being no more.
Whee.
[I'm still sort of buzzed and distracted from the game. I need to go finish the books I am reading. I want to do something else, though. But what? Write? Color! I don't know! Ack.]
During gameplay, I must admit that Final Fantasy XII was a tad irritating, because unlike FFX and FFX2, the "pretty" [read: cinematic] cutscenes were abrupt and infrequent. It felt a lot like they were skimping out after you got through the prettyful intro. This changes, however, about fifteen minutes after Greg stopped playing. Once you move on to the final boss fights on the Bahamut, you get fairly substantial cutscenes until the final gorgeous rap-up cutscene of joy. The story, on the whole, is far less romantic than many of the previous FF games, but just as involved and periodically confusing. The characters are there to be learned and loved, which I found quite enjoyable.
The fight system was eight kinds of amazing. It was close enough to the hackandslash that I know and understand for me to catch on and use with surprising efficiency but still had some of the turn-based elements. This provided a purely melee player like me a chance to fiddle with magics.
We did play with the walk through to get the full story and proper stuff and such, but that's really the only way I could see playing something so ornately complex. It also afforded me a chance to pull Nicole from her computer and force her to do something with me. [Her the navigator, me the pilot.]
I want more FF games. They are fun and exciting and very pretty.
They also have that nice little buzz at the end one may get from finishing a good book--joy that everything is well done and complete combined with the sadness of there being no more.
Whee.
[I'm still sort of buzzed and distracted from the game. I need to go finish the books I am reading. I want to do something else, though. But what? Write? Color! I don't know! Ack.]