13th February 2013, 6:29 AM
So there's a new Fire Emblem out. I picked it up a few days ago. There's a new system of "matching up" units together to get awesome bonuses, and it works very well. There's also a whole slew of friendship and romance options opened up (romance is considered inherently better in this game though), and the story arc is LONG, taking place over enough time to play as the first set of character's kids later on in the game. The graphics also are pretty nice for the most part, resembling a first gen Gamecube game (just not Luigi's Mansion).
So there's one problem. The overall story is serious, but the inter-personal interactions between all the characters, and their "one note" personalities, are about as slap-stick as I've ever seen a Fire Emblem. I mean it just doesn't STOP, ever! One character uses big words a lot, that IS her personality. Another is never noticed by anyone. That, apparently, counts as a personality trait all by itself. There are hilarious bits about eating too much of some medicine and destroying one's bowels, but overall it just seems like a bizarre mood shift between serious international politics, world threatening evil and the main character's fear s/he will betray everyone, and slapstick romantic comedy escapades. It is VERY jarring. Imagine if there was a new Saw movie, and in between listening to an audio tape describing how everyone in the room has mini-bombs attached to their internal organs and the doors to the room slowly filling with poison gas will only open when a certain number go boom, two characters suddenly go into an Abbot and Costello routine about who's on first.
So there's one problem. The overall story is serious, but the inter-personal interactions between all the characters, and their "one note" personalities, are about as slap-stick as I've ever seen a Fire Emblem. I mean it just doesn't STOP, ever! One character uses big words a lot, that IS her personality. Another is never noticed by anyone. That, apparently, counts as a personality trait all by itself. There are hilarious bits about eating too much of some medicine and destroying one's bowels, but overall it just seems like a bizarre mood shift between serious international politics, world threatening evil and the main character's fear s/he will betray everyone, and slapstick romantic comedy escapades. It is VERY jarring. Imagine if there was a new Saw movie, and in between listening to an audio tape describing how everyone in the room has mini-bombs attached to their internal organs and the doors to the room slowly filling with poison gas will only open when a certain number go boom, two characters suddenly go into an Abbot and Costello routine about who's on first.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)
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