So I got this game the moment I found out Studio Ghibli was behind the art direction. It'd be like finding out Pixar actually developed a game (as opposed to having lame movie licensed nonsense based on their movies).
It's amazing! Here's the deal, it's classic RPG and all that used to stand for. There's an overworld map and actual exploration! It's not tube quest! Sure, it may not be as open as your Fallouts or Elderscrolls, but that's fine. An incremental ratcheting of places to explore still means exploration. From the videos, I'll eventually get a dragon to fly around on, so it's all great.
The story is very childish in a good way. There's heart here. Blue Dragon felt a bit too "by the numbers" in its story, this one does what it wants, even if it still does have cliches. There's also an INCREDIBLE amount of world building. Near the start you'll get a magician's guide, and if you read it you'll find Tolkein-esque levels of description of the world. It explains the history of the runic language that spells use, right down to explaining why there are no lower and upper case and such. The writing is amazing, and the translation is amazingly written as well. The wizard's oath and all the three laws of wizardry are awesome (notably because one seems to be utterly ignored by all wizards, one seems to be an excuse to be lazy, and one is hilariously superficial). It actually reminds me of Penny Arcade's extremely well developed Lookouts world.
Much like some of the best RPGs, this one has no random encounters. Not even on the world map! Unlike Chrono Trigger, you do get into fights on the world map, but they're still all visible and avoidable. If you get spotted, you can outrun enemies, or learn the way they move and dodge them. Like Earthbound, if you sneak up on an enemy, you get initiative, and vice versa.
Further, no save points. You can save your game at any point so long as you aren't in the middle of conversation or combat. They didn't try to force "realistic" inventory management in here (which has never, NEVER been realistic, even if I can only carry 10 items in a tetris style grid, those 10 items are still 10 full suits of armor the size of mountains), and noted it loudly when your funny side kick (the Lord High Lord of the Fairies, that's two Lords) gives you a "bottomless bag" (I want to turn it inside out, put it over me, and walk through dungeon walls).
The combat system is classic RPG with just a little bit of character movement. It won't generally let you avoid attacks or anything, but as you hit enemies, if you hit a weak point, orbs will spill out that restore HP and MP. You can run over these to restore it if you're paying attention, giving something to do between turns. Otherwise, it's a classic turn based combat system, which I'm fine with as long as it allows me lots of strategy.
So that last one's been why it is getting some disappointing reviews. I think this game is amazing, but so many reviewers have written things to the tone of "this is a game that refuses to modernize, so you're stuck with an outdated and clunky turn based system instead of real time combat like people expect these days".
I often wonder if these reviewers get the point here. Turn based combat is a genre unto itself and a perfectly acceptable and fun way to play a game, not a forced concession to poor technology. Not EVERY game needs to be an action game demanding quick reaction speed and combo systems, and I would hate it if it got to that. I played Zelda and Secret of Mana before moving on to Final Fantasy 6. FF6 blew me away, because I felt like I was playing a grand version of chess. In fact, I have to wonder what a modern reviewer would say if they had to review chess for the first time. Would they lament that both sides need to take turns, or the odd movement restrictions? Would they suggest the game would be a lot more fun if you could just pick up the rooks and march them straight down the line and knock over all the enemy's pieces, and they had to pick up some pieces and force block you in real time? It just seems to me they don't understand what turn based combat is all about.
At any rate, this is an amazing game if you like this sort of classic RPG, and happily brings back the vast worlds we used to know back during the SNES and Playstation 1 days.
THQ went bankrupt last month, and was sold piece-by-piece at auction over the last day. Here are the results:
Quote:Sega agreed to purchase Relic [studio]
Koch Media [European company that owns the console publisher Deep Silver] agreed to purchase Volition [studio] and Metro [game]
Crytek agreed to purchase Homefront [IP and game Homefront 2]
Take 2 agreed purchase Evolve [game] and
Ubisoft agreed to purchase [THQ] Montreal and South Park [game]
We expect these sales to close this week.
Some assets, including our publishing businesses and Vigil, along with some other
intellectual properties are not included in the sale agreements. They will remain part of
the Chapter 11 case. We will make every effort to find appropriate buyers, if possible.
Also, EA seems to have bought the WWE license. Or maybe Take Two (for 2k). No announcement yet.
It's too bad for Vigil (Darksiders), looks like they're dead... kind of surprising, but you never know, obviously. As for other IPs, like the Darksiders name rights, or Red Faction, or such, either they're unwanted, or that news has not been announced yet. I never liked THQ all that much myself, and haven't played too many of their games, but they have been around for a while, and seemed to be getting better (game quality wise) recently... but unfortunately, it seems that they overreached, and it took them down. Too bad, and particularly too bad for Vigil, who joins the very long list of developers who went under this gen.
As for Atari, they're not quite dead yet, but are heading that way; their American branch, Atari USA (once known as GT Interactive, before Infogrames bought them back in the late '90s), declared bankruptcy recently, so that they can separate themselves from their troubled French parent company; apparently the US branch, which is just a publisher and doesn't own game studios itself anymore, actually is profitable, so they don't want to go down with the unprofitable main company. Understandable.
Yes, really, we're going to get the third of the Wii games Nintendo passed on releasing here, thanks to Xseed; apparently The Last Story was very successful for them, so they're going to release this too probably as a result.
It's too bad that "Operation Rainfall" only focused on these three (first-party Wii) titles, it would have been nice to see Earth Seeker too, and there are plenty of DS games they passed on that also are probably better than Pandora's Tower... oh well.
Yeah, the movie. Overall, I thought it was really good. The main flaw is that there's obviously only two movies worth of material from this book (the film is quite slow paced compared to the LotR movies and covers half of the book), so I don't know how they're going to manage to find three movies worth of stuff here, but other than that, this is great.
The big question for The Hobbit has been, though, do you like the slower pace, and all of the added stuff in this film? The LotR movies, even though 12 hours in length all combined, cut out a lot of stuff from the books. The Hobbit, in contrast, not only includes nearly everything, but it adds lots of stuff too, like Radigast's scenes. Of course as with the LotR movies they make other changes (adding orcs, adding Saruman, etc.), but that's to be expected. But returning to the issue of pace in The Hobbit, I like the slower pace, myself. I really liked that they did have room this time for stuff like the songs; it was too bad that the LotR movies cut out almost all of that stuff. The song the dwarves sang in Bilbo's home that night was moving and important to the plot, too, but I can't see the LotR movies making time for something like that. So yeah, you can see the "padding", but in this one at least, the padding's so well done that I don't care. It's great.
Oh yeah, they did stretch credulity a bit by having at least three different times when people fell from high heights with no injury... I know they were trying to add some somewhat comic bits, but... some of that stuff was going a bit overboard (in that "movie" kind of way). Ah well, it was fun anyway. :)
So yeah, overall, it's quite good, but I do seriously wonder how they're going to find three movies out of this.
The main negatives would be that it's not a complete film (18 minutes long, and it's really only a beginning), that Sonic's not in it enough (like maybe 5 minutes, max), and that the acting is expectedly iffy. But otherwise, it's actually okay. Definitely better than I was thinking... sure, it's silly, but it's probably worth a watch. :)
Please reject the Senate's "Fiscal Cliff" deal and send us over the cliff, that's the only way we'll get anything remotely like a decent deal out of this... (once everything is a tax cut, that is) the Senate deal just gives up way, way too much to the Republicans, and doesn't get nearly enough for us. I have no idea why the Democrats keep being willing to compromise away advantage into disappointment, but they've done it yet again... we give up the only leverage, tax hikes on everyone, in exchange for only two months respite from the sequester? Seriously? That's just crazy, and horrible negociating when you're supposedly trying to save social programs, but set yourself up to get crushed on them in two months. But fortunately, the House GOP is so nuts that they might blow up this deal... here's hoping. No deal is better than a bad deal, right now...
