Completed: Xenosaga I, II, and III (beaten/completed on various dates)

System: PS2
Status: Completed (all of them)

The Xenosaga series is one that certainly aimed high, and ended up being completely forgettable (at least for me anyway). I loved the semi-predecessor in Xenogears, despite the utter wreck that is the second disc of that game, and this series seemed to do the same on a multi-game scale, they had high ambitions and designs, but ran out of steam/funding and ended up with much less. It certainly didn't help that all three games are very different in style and design, and their systems don't stay consistent, leading to no actual refinement, but wild swinging of things a game does well, and does poorly. The story between all of them stays consistent, but is basically inscrutable to anyone who doesn't read the supplementary materials, and likely suffers a great deal from the series being cut short(er) than the designers would have liked. I'll go through each game individually though.

Xenosaga I feels like the most direct successor to Xenogears. The combat system is very similar, in that you pick various attacks that add up to larger special attacks. The mix of mechs and ground combat works pretty well, though in general the special attacks of the characters fall far short of their normal attacks, so you generally won't use your spell abilities (not to mention the character that is focused on healing/special attacks can't take a hit). Overall game wise, the balance works out well, its fun to play, with only a few frustrations gameplay wise. The best part of the game is the side card game that is actually very fun to play and well designed, but doesn't make an appearance in any other games, and doesn't impact the main game in any way other than being an inefficient way of getting money. Overall, the first game is average, a decent RPG but nothing absolutely amazing, nor does it stand out in any particular aspect.

Xenosaga II is...much worse than the first game. They changed the art style around majorly, where the first was very animesque, the second shoots right to 'realistic' and is pretty jarring in the transition. The worst change though is the combat system. They take the 'combo' attack system, and remove most special attacks entirely from normal fighting. Your characters get only a few moves per round, and need to hit certain combos on enemies in order to start doing real damage, any damage before that is mostly scratch damage. So in any combat situation beyond common enemies, and sometimes even then, combat is a few turns of 'waiting' to build up attacks, then one huge combo boosted between characters to do as much damage as possible. It is very jarring to have to spend combat turns waiting, because if you don't get at least X number of attacks in to break their guard, you do nothing. What makes it worse is some enemies are immune to certain attack types, weak to things only one character does, and the like. In the end, you end up using a certain short list of characters because they can hit the most weaknesses and do the most straight up melee damage. If I had to score this game individually, I would put it way below par, the only real reason to play it is to see the story before the next game in the series.

Xenosaga III is a nice medium of art styles between the first two. Its not full on big-eye'd anime style, but not fully realistic either, and ends up looking the best for it. The combat system is a good medium as well, and it is quite fun to work through and doesn't make combat a  bore like the second did. This game seems to be where the designers finally settled down on one thing to do, and it works out quite well as they hit their stride. The sidequest system they shoved into the game though, is completely awkward. They basically formalized sidequests, but they did so in a way that if you aren't following a guide 100% through the game, you won't get everything from the sidequests, and will spend hours looking for random characters with no hints from the game itself. Thankfully, its not required to get to the bonus bosses, so no big deal there. The bonus bosses end up being cakewalks though, and the entire game does, once you get the robot summon spells near the middle of the game. The only limiting factor there is your MP, otherwise they will utterly wreck every enemy and boss in the game. The bonus boss is specifically designed to be killed by only those summon spells, leaving the otherwise well done combat system lacking...why bother, when you can one shot everything?

So overall, the series is...ok, the biggest problem is the utterly lackluster second game, which was a big hurdle for me to get through to the rather well done third game. I feel if they had made more of these games and finished the story it would likely be a more positive memory, but the problem is that audience isn't going to keep buying games if they suck in hopes you'll get better.

These are completed, all bonus bosses wiped out the first time around, so they are off my list fully.

Beaten: Dragon's Dogma (on 5/30/13)

System: PS3
Status: Beaten

For all the flak Capcom gets for its treatment of its older franchises, they have recently come up with some pretty awesome new ones. Dragon's Dogma is one of my favorite new ones they have made (the other being Monster Hunter), and its certainly a unique entry.

Where Monster Hunter could be defined as Bossfights: The game, Dragon's Dogma doesn't go quite that far. Dragon's Dogma still has amazing fights and set-pieces, but the key is that the game's engine from the very beginning is designed for it. The very first fight is against a giant dragon, the size of a castle, and when you fight it again later, the only thing that has changed is your gear. The game makes great use of the grab mechanics, sort of like Shadow of the Colossus, in that you need to hang on to monsters and stab/cut/whatever to do some serious damage. The difference between this and Shadow, is that you have allies who can also be away from the enemy, shooting arrows/magic/etc, or you could be doing that and leave your allies jumping on them. The game has a lot of very cool mechanics for different classes working together, such as knights using their shields to fling characters into the air to grab enemies, putting elements on weapons, and the like. The only problem with it is that you are only ever allied with AI characters, so you have to rely on them to act appropriately. They aren't stupid, since the game actually has mechanics for them 'learning' certain monsters and what works...its just too bad they'll remind you that 'Fire works well!' every five minutes, because its certainly true for almost everything.

Still, the game's mechanic treats bossfights almost as incidental...not that they aren't important, but you only a few times get a quest that says 'go kill this big  monster', usually you'll be going somewhere else, you'll see a nasty thing, and you want to go kill it. The game rewards you with pieces of the monster to upgrade your gear with, so you are urged to go hack off bits and stab them. Still, sometimes the reward is the awesome gameplay that happens just from the mechanics, launching from a melee fighter's shield, landing on the wing of a flying griffen, and stabbing them in the wings until they do a death dive and carve a furrow in the ground with their sudden crash landing, while the rest of your team proceeds to hack them apart. There are some reskinned monsters, but they tend to put different spins on them, so that you'll get killed if you assume all drakes or griffen styled enemies are the same.

The game's story is pretty barren, and NPC interaction is really loose. Since you custom make your own character, and interaction is purely determined by doing nice things to people, you can be utterly surprised when the game picks your 'lover', whom you just did quests for.

Still, overall the game is very enjoyable, the only major drawback being that you are walking almost everywhere, and it can take a long while going from points, fighting the same spawned enemies every time. The bigger monsters are more random, but chimeras, wolves, bandits, and the like spawn in the same places every time. Definately a game to pick up though for a unique experience, though perhaps you should find the director's cut, entitled 'Dark Arisen'.

Lost my save due to the PS3 crashing dead, so need to replay the whole game and do new game + plus some achieves to complete.

Beaten: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (on 5/27/13)

System: GBA (played via emulator)
Status: Beaten

Fire Emblem, at least the older ones, are games that are simultaneously amazingly fun and frustrating for me. They are strategy games in the purest sense of the word. There is emphasis on building your characters up, and the character's themselves, but even that requires some strategy, as over utilizing some characters can leave you vulnerable to some things later, and almost every character can be one shot by something if you aren't careful (or brought down by a lot of enemies running onto their blades). The frustrating part is naturally, the games permanent death feature...you will constantly have to restart a map from scratch, because you get through the entire thing...and have an enemy get a lucky critical and take out a character.

Sacred Stones is a bit more lenient about the overall difficulty since it is a Gaiden game. You can actually walk around the map and kill random enemies, or go to a tower and farm there. This lets you level up characters without having a limited number of maps like most of the other games, so you don't 'waste' experience by letting a less useful character get some kills in. Its still difficult as sin, as you can't farm too much, you will break your weapons and you need to spend money replacing them, and the random encounters can still kill characters, but at least it eases off some with some leveling up. Otherwise? Its still a Fire Emblem, and very rewarding when you do get through it, along with a decent story and great challenge.

I finished Eirika's story, so that leaves Ephraim's, hard mode, and the 'monster' mode.

Beaten: Front Mission 3 (on 5/18/13)

System: PS1 (Played via PS1C on the PS3)
Status: Beaten

Front Mission is one of my favorite series of all time, mostly because it combines two things I love, giant military styled 'realistic' robots, and turn based strategy. It is too bad that we never got most of the main-stream games in English, and the series has kind of died off (don't mention the action-game thing they released recently, that's not Front Mission).

Front Mission 3 is a pretty standard game gameplay wise. You control each character piloting a mech, trying to kill your enemies piloting mechs. There is not much innovative about the base gameplay, though the fact that your pilots can eject from their mechs (or be ejected if hit right) is interesting, because it lets you hijack other mechs mid mission, or even non-mech vehicles like helicopters. In practice though, its so dangerous to have them running around on the ground that you likely won't have them there if you can at all help it. There are a few missions where you protect ground-pounders and they can shoot mechs for a little damage while walking around.

Story wise, the game actually splits into two different stories entirely based on the first choice you make in the story, with significant differences, so the game is at least playable twice for that alone. The story I played through this time was ok, typical Front Mission fare of geopolitics and people trying to stop a super project of some sort. It was forgettable, but that doesn't mean much, I forget a lot of good games' stories.

The game has an internet function, where you can browse the in-universe internet, go to websites and access things. You get passwords for places from missions or by sleuthing around and downloading programs, and that lets you access more background and information, and sometimes get access to gear. I'll be honest, after looking around it a bit, and not being able to figure out clues, I just looked up all the passwords that did anything. It was an interesting idea, but actually playing with it is not fun in the least, and requires way more use of note taking than the main game ever does. If you do play it, just look up the passwords, and only the important ones, the little bits of story aren't worth the effort to read through all the text.

I finished the 'Rebel' storyline, which leaves the 'Chinese' storyline for completion.

Beaten: Silent Hill 2 (on 4/24/13)

System: PS2
Status: Beaten

Silent Hill is one of those franchises that the story is good...but the gameplay itself is lackluster. I don't understand what it was about Playstation one and two era horror games that felt that bad controls and overly complicated/frustrating puzzles were a necessity for horror.

On the positive note, the tank controls in this game are easily fixed by changing the control scheme. The puzzles and combat can be fixed by cranking both to easy (They actually have separate settings, which is nice), allowing you to enjoy the game without too much frustration. I know it feels weird to say such for a game, but you don't enjoy Silent Hill 2 for the gameplay, you enjoy it for the story.

Talking about the story goes too much into spoiler territory, so I will just summarize in general what everyone who has already played the game knows: It is a well put together, subtle story of personal horror, dealing with one's demons, and with multiple endings that are not caused by specific A or B choices, but by small actions through the game, such as looking at items repeatedly, staying close to a character, spending too long in an area, and the like.

It is a classic, and it is really sad the later games have gone more full action and ignored the story-based horror for more visceral big scary monster horror. Every monster in the game symbolizes something (as it should for Silent Hill, this isn't Resident Evil), yet later games tend to repeat the monsters without any care for their original symbolism.

I finished the game only once, so I  have one ending out of many. I'm not going to count difficulty to completion, just finishing all the endings.

Completed: Breath of Fire (on 4/21/13)

System: SNES
Status: Completed

Good lord American box art was horrible around this time. This is another Super Famicom game we own that I played on a ROM, and this one was much better. Given, it is the first Breath of Fire, and the series had yet to work its way into its own little niche, but at least it was a decent RPG.

The game is very cookie cutter in story, your village is destroyed, you must save the world, etc. The fact that your character can turn into dragons is barely used beyond spell-like abilities. In fact, in the early game, the story-line related keys do more damage than your character's dragon breath. You have a wide variety of character's to choose from, all different animal-people, which becomes a common theme later on, but you quickly realize some are completely useless. The more useful ones get even better when you fuse them to other characters, which is one unique feature the game has going for them, and once you figure out who is best for this, you'll likely stick with them for the whole game.

The main annoying feature of this game, beyond the utter requisite to grind (seriously, Final Fantasy IV had near perfect balance around this time, why must I walk around outside town for hours in nearly every other game?) is the fact that all the bosses half a health bar...that you can see...and when it gets to zero, the boss changes color, and keeps fighting for what feels like a full half of the fight. If you are going to give the bosses health bars, don't make them lie. If you don't want us to know how much HP is left, just don't give them a health bar.

Otherwise, it is an ok, somewhat forgettable game, nothing unique other than character fusions, which mostly helps you get some use out of utterly worthless characters. No hidden bosses or challenges, so complete with just finishing it.

Completed: Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (on 4/04/13)

System: SNES
Status: Completed

When the wife and I first moved to Cheong-ju, she found a little game store that had a Super Famicom for sale, along with a ton of games for it. Naturally, we snapped these up. Personally, I could always play these via roms, but actually owning them gave me reason to actually finish them. They are now basically the full list of SNES games on my backlog, since my actual US games are back in the states. However, given my Japanese skills are lacking, I actually played these via roms, translated if necessary.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is one of my friend's favorite Final Fantasy's...and I don't see why at all. On its face, its an ok RPG. There really is nothing special about it, and really barely anything that makes it an RPG in the first place. Your selection of items basically is null, you find better gear, you put it on, working your way up to the best gear. There really is no choice in the matter, no benefits/loss or anything of the sort. Even your weapons are basically defined by what kind of damage they do, so the biggest choice you will make in the game is what weapon to use on what enemy. Your allies always use the same gear and can't get better, and you can't choose them either. Boss fights tend to be a matter of luck only, either you deal enough damage to kill them, or they kill you. Leveling helps some, but isn't generally worth it, you could just get a bit luckier next try.

The story is even worse than the gameplay. The original Final Fantasy can be forgiven for its rather base story because it was one of the first (and it still had a better story than the original Dragon Quest, which consisted entirely of 'save princess, kill evil dude, game won'). This game has basically the same story, with less steps and twists than even the original. You can't even explore the map, you're stuck on highlighted paths to areas.

On a positive note, no optional bosses or challenges, so when you finish this game, you never have to touch it again.