Serielley's Adventures in Gaming

I wanted to take a little break from the Final Fantasy Playthrough to review this little game called Nier.

Nier is a new IP from Cavia, the developers that brought us Drakengard 1 & 2, Bullet Witch, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, and a few anime games based off of Naruto and Death Note. Square Enix recently acquired Cavia and placed their publishing seal of approval on Nier in the attempts to get an original IP out into the wild. The reactions from both players and critics have been very, very mixed, and this game isn’t getting all that much press because of it, so I’d expect to see it taking up space in your local game store’s bargain bins in the relatively near future. I say that’s a good thing for those of you who enjoy playing JRPGs, as you’ll be able to get a really decent game for a good price. I almost didn’t pick this game up, as I hadn’t seen too much press on it, and noone was really talking about it. I’m glad I took the time to check it out!

The main strength of Nier is its brilliant, dark, and moody storyline which is brilliantly voice acted by a cast of anime and video game voice veterans who do an amazing job of communicating what can be a sometimes difficult to understand plot. I would be remiss if I didn’t give huge kudos to Jamieson Price who voices the main character, and Liam O’Brien, the voice of the main character’s book companion Grimoire Weiss. (Yes, I wrote “book companion”… it takes a lot more time to explain than you might think.) These two really bring their characters to life, and add depth and emotion to the game that you really don’t expect.

The basic premise is that the main character (Nier, if you don’t name him something else) is searching for something that will cure his young daughter of a mysterious disease called the Black Scrawl. That’s really all I can say without going into spoiler territory, so if you’re into that kind of thing…

There’s so much more to the story, and what is in the spoilers barely scratches the surface. As you progress further, the marketing catchline for the game “Nothing is as it seems,” really figures heavily into what happens. The best, and most impressive thing to me in regards to the story is that when you begin a New Game+ after finishing the first time, even more of the story becomes available, and this process repeats itself up to 3 times! That’s right, in order to see the entire story for the game, you have to beat it at least 3 times. Most games would just toss in an extra cutscene at the end to justify playing through one more time, but Cavia decides to add even more information as you play through the new game in the form of multiple new cutscenes and entirely new perspectives during the main questline. This really makes it worth your while to play through those extra times, that is, if you get involved in the story enough to do so.

One final note about the storyline. Rainbows and unicorns do not exist in this dojo. This story will seriously #$%& with your head in certain places, and can be very dark. It does have humor, and some light points, but for the most part, this is not a lighthearted story by any stretch of the imagination.

Now, on to gameplay and graphics.

As you can see, there’s really not anything too innovative about either the graphics or the gameplay. The graphics especially aren’t anything to write home about, and you frequently encounter a little tearing or artifacts. Gameplay can be repetitive at times, especially if you choose to complete all of the optional sidequests which amount to basic fetch quests. There are other diversions like fishing or gardening, but overall, playing Nier feels to me like playing an offline MMO, which I don’t have a problem with, but others might.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed playing Nier. I’m still playing it to see all of the endings, and to complete one of the gardening sidequests. It has been a really enjoyable experience, and the storyline is one of the best I’ve come across in a long time. If Cavia can mesh their story creating abilities with better graphics and more innovative gameplay in the future, they would easily be able to have a AAA best-selling title on their hands.

Now, please excuse me, as I need to go harvest some plants.

E3 is just around the corner! I have my own predictions and hopes for the gaming event of the year, and the Final Fantasy Playthrough continues with Final Fantasy II. Coming soon!

Final Fantasy was released here in the U.S. in 1990, when I was ten. I honestly don’t remember playing it. I know that I did, though, because as I played through it recently, points in the storyline toyed with my memory, giving me at least the illusion that I’ve done this before, I’ve found my way out of this labyrinth before… I just really wish I could remember for sure. Whether I remember or not, I’ve recently finished playing through the game that started it all.

Sadly, I don’t have an NES anymore, so I couldn’t play the original game the way it was meant to be played, but I’m ok with that. Playing the PSP version released in 2007 was a great experience, with updated graphics and music, so it was worth it. Not the same, but worth it. The PSP version has additional content as well that I didn’t take a chance to explore, as I wanted to just play the original game. Maybe sometime in the future I’ll get back to that and see what it’s all about, but for now, playing the original game was just fine for the time being.

The original Final Fantasy has a very basic story and doesn’t really dig too deeply into the motivations of the characters or the history of the world they are trying to save.  The world itself doesn’t have a name, but is governed by the four elemental crystals of Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth. 200 years before the beginning of our story, a great change came upon the land, and the four elements began to fail. The four Warriors of Light appear one day in a kingdom called Corneria, whose princess has just been kidnapped by a former member of the royal court, Garland. They carry with them crystals corresponding to the four elements, but they are dead and useless. The King of Corneria sends them to rescue his daughter, and thus our story begins.

The “monomyth”, Universal Myth, or the “hero’s journey” is basically what we are progressing through with Final Fantasy and most other video games based on the quest motif. Joseph Campbell provided us with the basis and understanding of this concept which basically goes thusly:

In a monomyth, the hero begins in the ordinary world, and receives a call to enter an unknown world of strange powers and events. The hero who accepts the call to enter this strange world must face tasks and trials, either alone or with assistance. In the most intense versions of the narrative, the hero must survive a severe challenge, often with help. If the hero survives, the hero may achieve a great gift or “boon.” The hero must then decide whether to return to the ordinary world with this boon. If the hero does decide to return, he or she often faces challenges on the return journey. If the hero returns successfully, the boon or gift may be used to improve the world. The stories of Osiris, Prometheus, Moses, Buddha, for example, follow this structure closely.^[1]

Campbell describes some 17 stages or steps along this journey. Very few myths contain all 17 stages — some myths contain many of the stages, while others contain only a few; some myths may have as a focus only one of the stages, while other myths may deal with the stages in a somewhat different order. These 17 stages may be organized in a number of ways, including division into three sections: Departure (sometimes called Separation), Initiation, and Return. “Departure” deals with the hero’s adventure prior to the quest; “Initiation” deals with the hero’s many adventures along the way; and “Return” deals with the hero’s return home with knowledge and powers acquired on the journey. – Wikipedia,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth

The hero’s journey has been with humanity since its earliest beginnings and cultures around the world from ancient to modern have embraced it and made it their own. I think this is an important thing to keep in mind as we talk about the original Final Fantasy (and the series in general) and try to explain why it had such an impact that it has endured for over twenty years. The Quest is something that all of us can relate to in one form or another, and it can resonate deeply within people if they are so inclined.

For myself personally, the hero’s journey has been something that I’ve been familiar with since a very early age. Since I was an early reader, my family regularly gifted me with books, and my favorites were ones that contained fairy tales. There was one in particular that contained all sorts of traditional tales, pre-Brothers Grimm, and looking back now, I can see how profoundly they affected me. I devoured anything about ancient civilizations and loved the tales of King Arthur as I grew older. Video games fell naturally into this sphere for me as they were another way to experience a story and thrilling adventure.

By the time I was ten, I had only played video games like Mario Bros. and the first few Zelda games, and though they were excellent, you can’t exactly say that they had compelling plotlines. Then comes along Final Fantasy. Despite the spare plot and storyline, the Quest was still there, and I’d like to think my younger self saw and recognized this. Hindsight is 20/20, right? I really wish I could remember more of my first experiences with the series, but alas… time has eaten away at that part of my brain. Regardless of my lack of memory, I know the original Final Fantasy hooked me from the beginning, and here we are today.

I really enjoyed playing through Final Fantasy twenty years down the road. It only took me about 12 hours to finish, but it was great fun. Even with the polished graphics and music, the gameplay is still the same turn-based simplicity that changed the RPG gaming landscape so long ago. It holds up well today, in the world of fast paced combat and shiny graphics, and I’m glad that I revisited it for no other reason than to experience the Quest one more time.

Next up in the Final Fantasy Playthrough is Final Fantasy II, also on the PSP. I’ve been working on it for the last few weeks, and I have to admit that I’m having a little difficulty playing through it. Some of that might be attributed to picking up the new game Nier for the PS3 (review coming soon!), but I think there’s more to my reluctance than that. I’ll explore this in my post after either finishing it or giving up and moving on. We’ll see what happens!

A while back, I was examining my gaming options for the year. (Does anyone else do this, or am I just really that nerdy? Never mind, I know the answer to that…) I realized that after I finished God of War 3, I’d be left high and dry, without any new games that I was interested in until Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is released during the Summer. Sure, I’ve got all sorts of games that I can play and some that I still haven’t finished like The Witcher, The Last Remnant, one of the new Zelda games, and another playthrough of the amazing Chrono Trigger. Yep, I could finish all of those if I wanted to, but the problem was that I didn’t really have any burning desire to do so.

As I was playing Final Fantasy XIII, I realized that there were some games in the Final Fantasy series that I’d never finished either. Whether it was from lack of interest or boredom, there were portions of the series that I had completely ignored, and as a Squenix fangirl, that bothered me, right down to the bottom of my chocobo infested soul. I took stock of what we had in the collection and realized that we were only missing a few of the games, so why not get them and then sit down and play through the entire series, from start to finish? It would be a pleasant way to spend my gaming time, and would be something I’d never done before, so why not?

I decided too that it would be a fun project to write about here on the blog, and would keep me posting on a regular basis, so it really was a win-win idea all the way around. I probably write about Final Fantasy too much, and this might be overkill, but to those of you who aren’t fans of the series, I beg your indulgence. I don’t want to write reviews about the games, since that’s been done and overdone for the last twenty-plus years. Instead, I want to write about my experiences playing the games, about the memories I have about growing up with the series, and perhaps some in-depth analysis of story and character.

Now I had to decide how I’d play them through. Would I include the spin-offs? Would I am for specific goals like leveling the characters to max level, or gaining all of the ultimate weapons? Here’s my plan for the Playthrough:

Just play.

I’m not going to burden myself with aiming high, as I don’t want to burn myself out, and I want to just experience the games again. I want to enjoy what they have to offer, and not infuse the experience with elitism. I will, however, toss in two of the spin-offs, just because I can. Here’s my playthrough order, even though it’s probably pretty obvious and goes without saying:

• Final Fantasy (PSP, 20th Anniversary Edition)
• Final Fantasy II (PSP, 20th Anniversary Edition)
• Final Fantasy III (Nintendo DS)
• Final Fantasy IV (Nintendo DS)
• Final Fantasy V (PS1 Anthology Collection)
• Final Fantasy VI (PS1 Anthology Collection)
• Final Fantasy VII (Playstation Network, played on PSP)
• Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core (PSP)
• Final Fantasy VIII (Playstation Network, played on PSP)
• Final Fantasy IX (Playstation Network, maybe PSP, maybe PS3?)
• Final Fantasy X (PS2)
• Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)
• Final Fantasy XI (writeup only, as I’m not going to be playing this one again due to it’s online and addictive nature!)
• Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
• Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)
• Final Fantasy XIV (yes, going to write about this as well, as there is a strong possibility it’ll either be out, or I’ll be playing open beta)

Whoo! That’s a lot of gaming. It’ll be quality gaming though, and I know I’ll enjoy the hell out of it. I have no idea how long this will take, as some of these games can be well over 100 hours long. I hope though, that with each game, I’ll discover new things about each one, and won’t bore my visitors to tears. Ha!

Final Fantasy has been a part of my life for the last twenty-someodd years. I’ve grown up with the series as I’ve said before, and it has been a part of my most important friendships, not to mention THE most important friendship I have, with my husband. I’m looking forward to reliving memories of the past, and creating new memories for the future during this playthrough. I hope you’ll join me on this trip, and please feel free to add your own memories to mine as we travel together. I’d love to hear from you about how Final Fantasy has been a part of your lives, and what kind of role it played or plays in your life. That sounds really deep, and makes Final Fantasy seem like more than what it is, just a game. Is it though? This is the kind of question I want to explore as I playthrough each game.

I’m still not done with it. I could probably just leave that sentence, and let it stand for my review, but I don’t pay the upkeep on this website for nothing, so I might as well write something more, eh? Before we move forward, please look at the title of this post again so you can either keep reading or stop now. I especially want to point out the part where it says “SQUARE FANGIRL”. I am. Very much so. My husband will tell you this. It is, perhaps, one of my more fatal flaws and will surely be my downfall one day. That being said, I do have some negative things to say about Final Fantasy XIII, so this review won’t completely be chocobos farting rainbows with happy moogles flying around tossing candy about. As cool as that would be…

Anyways, let’s jump right into it, shall we? Technical stuff first, of course. I’m still playing the game on the PS3, on a beautiful 23 inch widescreen HD monitor. There, that was easy. (Easier than laying out my PC specs at least, heh.) Hubby played on the XBox 360 on the same model of monitor, so I do have a frame of reference for the graphics when we get to that part. At this point in time, I’ve logged about 90 hours into the game, and have beaten the story portion, and am now running hither and thither finishing up all of the sidequests, getting the ultimate weapons, and attempting to get all of the trophies for the game.

This is going to be a long review, so hit the jump for my novella.

(continue reading…)

Ed. Note: Unfortunately, Mass Effect 2 doesn’t have the functionality to take screenshots in-game, so I don’t have any exciting images for this post.

I think it’s fairly obvious that I’m a RPG and MMO fangirl, and this being said, it could also be assumed that I’m not a big fan of shooters. I just don’t have those vaunted “twitch” reflexes required to shoot things before I die a horrible, bloody death. I also have no teabagging skills, so I’m automatically a failure when it comes to this type of game. It’s not that I haven’t tried, either! I’ve tried to play Halo, but just couldn’t do it. Way back in the day, I even tried my hands at some Tribes, but alas… The only shooting game I’ve ever been decent at was Goldeneye back on the N64. Ahhh… Goldeneye. I will always remember the paintball gun fondly.

Now that we have my ineptitude at shooters established, we can talk about Mass Effect. Mass Effect, when it came out back in 2007 for XBox 360 (May 2008 for PC), took a while to take off. It was billed as a space opera RPG/Shooter. Say what? Yep, a RPG/Shooter. Your character would progress to your desires, much like any respectable RPG, with you tweaking stats, customizing your appearance, collecting phat lewts, inventory management, experience and leveling up; all of the basic fun things that come with your normal RPG. Except for the fact that you shoot things. No swords or lightsabers, but guns, and lots of them. You are able to use a pseudo-magical ability called Biotics, but for the most part, it was you, shooting things with your gun of choice. Needless to say, I was not interested in the game at all, regardless of how much RPG was in it.

Let’s go back in time now to November/December of last year, good old 2009. (It already seems so far away… bizarre.) At that point in time, I’ve already finished Dragon Age: Origins, and have been introduced to the goodness that is Bioware. At this point in time as well, I’m in a major gaming rut. I had become burnt out on the MMOs I had subscriptions for, didn’t have anything on the PC I wanted to play offline, and was faced with the gamer’s dilemma: What in the hell am I going to play now? My husband swooped in and saved the day yet again. “Why don’t you try Mass Effect?” He says, knowing full well my dislike of shooters. Well, I was that desperate, so yeah, I gave it a shot.

Holy. %$#^.

I was missing out. I should have picked up that game a looooong time ago. I loved Mass Effect, since I didn’t have to be too twitchy to play it. I could do everything I was used to in a RPG, enjoy an epic storyline, and actually have fun shooting things. What I loved most about it though was what has made Bioware the “Square Enix of the West” (well, that’s what I like to call them now), which is the characterization and story. You make choices in the game that affect the sequels. You really feel like the main character, Commander Shepard, is YOUR character. You make choices to shape him/her into what you want them to become. Do you want Shepard to be a female badass, not taking crap from anyone and not afraid to whip out the big guns to solve a bar fight? Or do you want your Shepard to be a war-hero paragon, saving lives and doing the right thing no matter what the cost? Lots of games attempt what Bioware does with their games when it comes to really owning your character and being a part of the game world that they create, but almost all of them fail miserably. This is what Bioware does, and damn if they don’t do it well.

So, I’ve talked a lot about Mass Effect, and this is really supposed to be a review of its sequel, Mass Effect 2. It’s good to have context? So, here are the pros and cons about the game from my point of view, after completing one playthrough on the PC version using a save game imported from the first Mass Effect using my female Shepard Paragon Soldier game.

Pros:

• Gameplay- The gameplay has been greatly improved from the first game. A lot of mention has been made around the internet that Bioware simplified the game too much and took out too many of the RPG elements. I can agree partly with the RPG portion, but as for the the rest of the changes that were made, I think they’re great. Inventory management in the first game was a nightmare, and Bioware removed that  issue in the sequel, which was welcome. Speaking as a non-shooter fan, actually playing the game, being in battles was really fun. I didn’t have to have twitchy skills to play, and was able to have a good time shooting things up and utilizing the powers of my teammates to get the job done. I even switched to doing a lot of sniping towards the end of the game because it was so satisfying to look through the scope and get headshot after headshot.
• Story- This is probably the thing I love the most about Mass Effect. I’m a big reader, and love fantasy and sci-fi novels. My favorite novels are the ones that use heavy worldbuilding, where as you read, you really get a sense of the history of the world, and how the civilizations written about came to be. Mass Effect’s writers use this same principle in their writing for the game. Each culture has its own distinct “feel”, and you really get a sense of the history and life of the universe as you visit each main city/hub and look at the architecture and listen to the conversations in the background. The main story isn’t anything new, per se, good vs. evil, saving the universe, etc. It’s the way everything is put together that makes the story elements of Mass Effect fantastic. If you add in the fact that your Shepard is what you make of him/her, and their interactions with the universe, it really brings you into the world.
• Graphics- Playing on the PC, with a relatively excellent system really makes Mass Effect 2 shine. Everything has been updated from the original game, and it looks great. I very rarely ran into any kind of graphical problems like screen tearing, artifacts, etc. There is a real sense of scale and size no matter where you go, and everything looks beautiful. (Except for the male Shepard I created for the fun of it as another character. Ugly does not even begin to describe him. I’ll probably delete that one…)
• Sound- The music for Mass Effect 2 does not disappoint. I love firing up the game and just listening to the music that plays on the splash screen. The rest of the game has great music as well, and is epic, morose, thoughtful, and creepy in all of the right places. The sound effects are great as well, and if you have surround sound they’re even better. Along with this, the voice acting is superb as usual. There are a lot of big names in the game like Martin Sheen as the Illusive Man, Tricia Helfer as EDI (the Normandy’s AI), Michael Dorn, Armin Shimmerman, and many more. Seth Green as Joker steals the show though. I don’t know who wrote his lines, but almost every time I talked with Joker, I came away laughing my ass off. Jennifer Hale as female Shepard does a fantastic job once again. I really enjoy her voice work in both of these games, and find it hard to listen to her male counterpart now because she is SO GOOD.

Cons:

• Length of Game- This first playthrough ended up at about 30 hours even. It felt really short, and I didn’t rush through the game (at least I don’t think I did…). When I got past the ending, I really wanted more. I know there will be DLC in the coming months/years, but I really, really wanted more time in the game itself. Now, I’m used to playing Final Fantasy, where I can easily put in over 100 hours in one game doing everything I possibly can, so I’m a little biased when it comes to the length of my single-player games. Still though, I really felt like the game could have been longer. More, Bioware! Give me more!
• No Exploration- In Mass Effect 1, you got a little vehicle called the Mako that you could use to land on planets and explore them. Driving the Mako was a pain in the ass, but it was really fun to explore each planet. I was really sad that Bioware took this feature out of Mass Effect 2, and I know I’m not the only one. I’m going to cross my fingers that it will return in the next game.
• Flirty Dialogue- I found that at times, the dialogue that I could have with the male teammates in the game was too flirty. That’s not really how I, or my Shepard rolls. It would really be great to have a selection of different dialogue options that reflected exactly who you want your Shepard to be. Sometimes the choices felt too narrow.

So, basically, Mass Effect 2 was one of the best games that I’ve played in a loooong time. I’m taking a bit of a break from it now, as I want to play through it again, but don’t want to get burnt out so soon. I highly recommend this game to anyone, since there’s a lot there that can appeal to all different sorts of gamers. If you’ve never tried a shooter before, this is a great game to try. If you’ve never played a RPG before, the same applies. Go out and get it! You won’t regret it, I promise.