Final Fantasy 7 (Spoilers!!!!) Late-ish game thoughts

Note: I'm putting up spoiler tags, but by now this has become one of gaming's most infamous scenes, so I feel like you shouldn't care so much.

So I just thought I'd post my thoughts on the Middle Plot Twist of Final Fantasy VII.

Yes, Aerith dies near the middle of Final Fantasy 7. It's an infamous and famous scene that has garnered a lot of jokes, analyses, and sad montages over the years. One guy (TheGamingTheorist) even suggested that the entire scene should be viewed a different way, that Cloud killed.

To fill those of you who haven't heard his ideas, he says that Aerith doesn't die from Sephiroth stabbing 7 (or 9, I forget which it is) feet of steel straight through her, but instead drowns when she sinks far too far into the murky depths of a nearby pool. Go look it up if you want. Be warned: the creator, MattPatt, is fond of inappropriate imagery. Look up a transcription of his theory instead. I personally find it a bit far-fetched, but it is believable that Cloud subconsciously finished the job under Sephiroth's control. After all, shortly before this scene, Cloud was about to kill Aerith himself, albeit under the influence of Sephiroth.

Anyway, I felt like the scene was executed pretty well, however, the camera focused a bit too much on Aerith's mother's Materia bouncing away from Aerith. It kinda ruins a death scene when you literally say to yourself: "Hey look, a Materia!" instead of "Oh no! Aerith is dead!!" As far as I can tell, it's justified in that the Materia is important, it being the opposing Materia to Meteor and all, but it still kinda messed up the scene a bit.

Soon after, Sephiroth drops a Jenova boss for you to fight, as he has been doing all game. What's different is that you fight it to the sound of Aerith's theme. The boss is intentionally easy, and it seems to be nothing but a distraction. Finally, Cloud "buries" Aerith by dropping her into a nearby pool of water.

I thought the entire scene was really emotional. I'm somewhat ashamed that I wasn't all that sad, but, in my defense, I'd known all about the death scene for years previous to starting this game. All I wondered was when it would happen.

I haven't finished Final Fantasy 7 quite yet, but I've enjoyed the continuing Saga of Cloud and his motley crew trying to stop the Meteor.

Till next time,
Joseph

P.S.: To those of you who are FFVII veterens, is there supposed to be a huge difficulty spike when you get to the downed airship? I keep getting instakilled by random battle enemies.

Final Fantasy VII and Zelda: Link to the Past

I have recently bought both Final Fantasy VII and Link to the Past. I have made it a decent way through FF VII, I'm on my way to the Temple of the Ancients after a stop in Wutai. In terms of Link to the Past, I started last night(12/7), and got through to the first pendent.

I've never played either of these games before and thought I'd ask the opinion of the few people who read my blog. What do you think of them? How far am I in FF VII? (give me an approximate percentage.)

Until next time,

Joseph

Pokemon X and Y Finished and Review

So I finished Pokemon Y mid November, but I'm finally getting around to actually blogging about it. I finished the game with almost the same team I was using when I last posted. To refresh your memories, I was using:

• Greninja
• Gardevoir
• Blazikin
• Talonflame
• Raichu
• Venusaur

I ended up switching out Talonflame for the titular Dark/Flying legendary of Pokemon Y: Yveltal!!!

He was a major part of my Team as I moved through the last part of the game.

Anyway, now for some more review/thoughts!

Overall, I feel like Pokemon Y is definitely one of the best games to date. I haven't enjoyed Pokemon this much since I was playing Pokemon Pearl. Like I said before, Pokemon Black didn't really cut it for me. I didn't like it as much.

The glaring problem with X and Y is their extremely easy difficulty. I'm pretty sure I didn't have a Pokemon faint before the second Gym. I never blacked out, and the Champion was easier than any of the Elite Four. I realize this makes the games more accessible to new players, but Game Freak doesn't need to worry about selling their games anymore. They almost always break a sales record at this point.

The main reason for the lack of difficulty is probably all the new features: Pokemon-Amie, Super Training, and the return of the Exp All.

Many people may not remember this, but back in Pokemon Blue, there was an item called the Exp All that share the earned Exp between all the party members. It makes a return in the form of a toggle-able item that shares the experience to the whole party. Luckily, the item leaves half the Exp for the battling Pokemon, which works better. Through this, every Pokemon you carry is constantly leveling up in the background every so often. That means less training has to be done.

Another new thing is Pokemon-Amie, which boils down to being Nintendogs with Pokemon. You can poke them, rub them, massage them, I suppose, etc. There are also Pokepuffs you can feed them, and minigames to get more Pokepuffs. You do all this to improve "playfullness", "Happiness"(not related to in game happiness), etc. These can apparently give you boosts in battle, like a random attack raise. I've never encountered to benefits, so I really don't know.

Last of all is Super Training, which is a minigame that simplifies EV Training. You play a shooting gallery game which raises whatever stat you want it to. You can also earn punching bags that will raise a stat if you tap them repeatedly. If you don't know what EV Training is, go look it up on Bulbapedia.org.

Anyway, I enjoyed the game overall and give it a 9/10, citing the nonexistant difficulty as it's main flaw.

Pokemon X and Y Update #1

So I've been playing Pokemon Y a bunch recently (I got it a week ago). I thought I'd post an update on my progress. I suppose I should post a SPOILER WARNING, but I don't feel like there are all that many spoilers. It's not there are any big amazing or surprising events that have happened.

Just a note: this will not be a full review, just a few things I've liked so far and some complements to the games.

So, at the point I'm at, I've got 4 badges and my team is levels 34-38. 

My Team consists of: 

• Mary the Gardevoir
• 
• Argyl the Raichu
• 
• Mr. L the Greninja
• 
• Farkas the Venusaur
• 
• Zelda the Talonflame
• 
• Blazikin (No genius nickname here)
• (Yes, I realize this is actually Mega Blazikin)

If you are a Pokemon Veteran, you can see I have a pretty power packed team of Awesomeness. BTW the last four are the in game models.

As to the quality of the actual game....... IT'S Freaking Amazing!!!!

This is the Kalos Region^^^^ My first complement is the actual world. It is laid out in a somewhat scattered way, while maintaining a fairly linear path. This is refreshing after Pokemon Black and White, which looked like this:

It be boring follow the line up to the Circle, then go halfway around the Circle to the end. No fun at all. Although, Black and White were pretty decent.

My next complement is that there are a plethora of awesome Pokemon to find and catch. I have caught everything I could find and have already filled almost two boxes! And I'm not even trying to find a lot! What's better is that it seems like the designers intentionally built in all the best Pokemon from the Previous games in, so everything I've caught would be an awesome member of my team.

The subjective length of the game is pretty nice too. The game feels long and like a big journey. I haven't felt like that in a Pokemon Game since Pokemon Pearl came out. I just barely got Fly, so I can finally poke around some more in the different towns.

I'll post another update on my progress at some point soon, but for now see ya'll in the funny papers. (How is that an outro??)

Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies

So, my first post is gonna be about a little known game(well, at least I'd never heard of it) called Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies. As you can well see, it is the 4th entry in the Ace Combat series.

So first things first, Ace Combat 4 is a Jet fighter game by Namco on the PlayStation 2. You fly your Jet and blow stuff up. Pretty simple, right? Pretty much, yeah..... Anyway, on to the review portion before I start doubting why I'm reviewing this game!

Story: Believe it or not, this game has a story, albeit a kind of weird one. It follows a young rookie pilot in the Independent States Allied Forces(ISAF) by the call-sign Mobius 1. You control him as he takes on 18 missions to defeat the nation Eurusia(Eurasia much?) in a war for control of the continent Usea. What complicates things is that the Eurusians have a super weapon called Stonehenge that can obliterate any and all planes flying over 1000ft within a thousand miles. Plus, the Eurusians have an elite squadron of pilots called the Yellow Squadron who can out dogfight everyone at ISAF except you. Stonehenge is eventually destroyed and the Eurusians build another Super weapon, which is destroyed. This entire story is told through mission briefings and radio chatter during missions. That's the gist of the story, pretty bland, but bearable.

There is also a side story that is essentially a bunch of between mission cutscenes following a young boy living under Eurusian authority. He talks about his parents being killed by the Eurusians, working at a bar frequented by the Yellow Squadron, spying for the ISAF resistance, and other such side stories.

I give it a 5/10 for being pretty generic.

Graphics: The Game looks decently good by PS2 standards. Here, have a look:


Images are from Gamespot.com BTW.

Things are blocky and there are many low res textures, but I never had the specific thought that anything in the game was specifically ugly.

7/10 for acceptable graphics

Gameplay/Controls: This Game is all about gameplay. The Story is not great, the graphics are meh, but the gameplay is awesome!! This game has the interesting quirk of essentially getting easier after the first few missions. Each Plane in the game has a Stability rating which affects how tight you controls are. After you purchase your second or third new plane, the Stability ratings flatline near the the top of the spectrum, so the game has tight controls once you buy a decent plane.

In terms of the what the controls actually are: the Left Analog Stick steers, with the traditional Y axis switch that is a tradition in flying. Speed is controlled through R1 and L1, raising and lowering the throttle respectively. X fires the guns, while Triangle switches lock-on targets, and O fires locked on missiles(your main way to take things out). You can also push Select to switch to dropping bombs, or a better Air to Air missile(You pick your extra weapon before missions).

There are 18 missions, giving an almost perfect length to the game, not lengthy, but not over in a flash either.

The Game functions on an arcade system of obtaining Points depending on how well you fight. They convert to money to buy new plains and extra weapons for your planes. You will likely gain enough money to buy a few new planes and weapons, but not enough to be wasteful, so you need to carefully pick your purchases to get the best stuff.

I give the Gameplay a 9.5/10, with the only real flaw being the weird Stability stat screwing up new players.

Sound/Voice Acting: Ace Combat 4 has some good music. It is not especially memorable, but the final mission has freaking amazing music. As I said before, a lot of the story is told through radio chatter during missions. The voice talent used is pretty good, with your superiors sounding official and informative, and your fellow pilots yelling and cheering for you. Luckily, Namco didn't include the normal Swearing that have come to be expected from fictional military personnel. One guy says SOB (he literally says S-O-B), but that's about it in the cussing department.

Sound and Voice Acting gets a 8/10 because it could have used some better, more memorable music.

My overall rating for this game is 8/10. It's not amazing, but I had a great time playing it.

Welcome To My Gaming Corner

Welcome to my random blog I decided to start simply to post my thoughts on various games, and to do random reviews of some games. Needless to say, this will not be the most professional thing, but who cares? I'm doing this completely for the fun of it!