Jice Virago wrote:It is a good game, but its lacking on a couple of fronts. My main bones of contention are:
1) Performance- This game has an absurd amount of load times and still has some performance issues, such as some garbled textures and frame rate drops. As I said before, having a hard drive install would have done this game a world of good. As it is, this game should be renamed to "Loading, Please Wait" because those are the words you see most often.
2) The Gayest Minigames since Gay left Gaytown- This is a turn based RPG. There is no need to put in a bunch of timing based elements into the game, much less all the stupid run around and gather tedious shit quests. I swear these guys brought over people from the Lineage 2 design team, because tedious bullshit with no purpose (hi2u funeral montage) seem to be their favorite design element. That and long power point presentations for the memory sequences (four fucking disks and you can't animate the flashbacks?) that you spam through after the first half dozen of them.
3) Customizable Conformity- Four Immortals. Two with choppy stats, two with caster stats. After a couple hours of random grinding, their skill setups are completely identical because there really is one best setup which anyone who has played RPGs more than once in their life will beeline towards. There really needed to be some more diversity here, like a ranged attacking Immortal who could make physical hits from the back rank or even a guy with average stats across the board so you could build them in either direction. I really expected some more diversity from the team that made Chrono Trigger, honestly.
4) Weak Story presentation- The cutscenes are beautiful and well done, but the story itself is pretty scattered and I am having a hard time getting into any of the characters. While none of the characters annoys me (I even think the kids are descently done), the only one I really seem to get into is the thief guy, who has excellent dialog. I honestly believe that this is the biggest issue with this game and that Enchanted Arms actually had a better storyline and characters. If they had only spent less time putting freckles and veins on the giginourmous racks of the female characters and spent more time fleshing out the story, this game would have easily been the best Xbox RPG to date. As it is, I have to place it about on the same level as Enchanted Arms, Blue Dragon, and Fable, but significantly below Jade Empire or Mass Effect.
Remember, before you start up the fanboi rage, I like this game and think it is a good RPG, but I am disappointed in where it fell short, especially given the talent that was behind its creation.
To each their own, but I disagree with you on pretty much all points, but most notably that mass effect was anywhere near as good as this game. I get more enjoyment from looking at the loading screens (which I don't think are as cumbersome as you are stating) than I did on any of my 3 play throughs of that cum stain of a video game.
1) Performance - The load scenes are annoying in some parts, but not that bad overall. I have had 1 time where I had any of the other issues you stated (frame rates, etc) and it was on disc four for about 5 seconds.
2) I don't mind the minigames, I have fun poking around, and a lot of them require you to gather shit, which works out fine cause you can explore and find hidden items/etc while you are doing them to kill two birds with one stone.
3) I don't really think this is an issue that can be addressed in a turn based RPG, given the nature of the game it's just bound to happen and it has happened in any other turn based rpg i can think of, so I can't mark it as a fault for this one in particular. I like the timing thing for melee attacks, it adds a little spice to boring parts in battles and gives you something to aim for, especially with the achievement.
4) I couldn't disagree more about the story presentation - I think it is done the way it is for a reason. The immortals don't remember what they have done or whats going on, or what they are supposed to do, so you get bits and pieces as they remember it. I have gotten into all the characters, and I think there is more story quality in ONE of the 1000 years of dreams writings then there is in the entire game of Mass Effect.
I hate to come off as a dick about it, but I don't want to see people making game developers think that your opinion is what everyone wants.. The "changes" they have tried to make in the RPG genre have been a miserable fucking failure IMO, these types of games are what they should stick to, fuck worrying about getting them more mainstream to get more people to buy it.
