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Day Three
Did some cleaning. Which I count as a happy thing, since I've done very little else today except play The Last Remnant.
Speaking of TLR - it's a game that splits opinions and I can see why, but some of the negative reviews are actually bullshit. It's either that or their Xbox is broken, because the game does NOT run like a slideshow on my console.
Good:
- Plot: it's exciting so far and makes me want to know what'll happen next. Also, time actually passes! Quite a few months go by between Disc 1 and Disc 2! Surely this is a new concept.
- Character design: awesome, and much more original than lots of RPGs out there. And when was the last time an RPG protagonist had black hair? Rush rules for being a proper brunette. ♥ ALSO: Rush's sister Irina has a personality. She gets kidnapped in the beginning of the game and that's what starts the whole story, and as a rule this sort of victim character is not allowed to have more personality than a pancake and say things other than "brother, save me!111!!!" But oh, Irina is so much more than that.
- Other prettiness: the scenes are amazing. Backgrounds and lightings are rendered so well in gameplay, not just during cutscenes. Rock textures, water reflections, splashes when your char runs on the water, light breaking through the clouds in the sky - all there and all absolutely stunning. Sometimes I just put down the controller and look at the screen and go, "omg, this is so beautiful."
- Battle system: it's easy to try to do something new and failing, but this battle system is very unlike the other RPGs out there and once I understood it, it's so much fun to play. People working in groups rather than individually adds to the mood, like these people are actually comrades and they operate as the skilled people they are, instead of a bunch of people thrown in together by mistake. The "botched" thing (if your group leader falls, your whole group becomes useless) makes me lol, but it makes sense. Also, this system makes it possible to fight large amounts of enemy groups at the same time, and it's a lot about strategies - my 3 groups (or more, depending on how I group my chars) against the enemy's 8... which groups to approach first and how to avoid getting raidlocked or my rare assaulted? Hmmmmm. XD
- Sidequests: very unlike the other RPGs, because TLR has many many many many sidequests. There are lots of points in the game where you can break away from the main plot to play sidequests, rather than in FF where usually you have to save most of the sidequests until before you beat the final boss, and by the time you finish those you forget what the main storyline was already. Also, not all sidequests have completely cheerful+happy endings.
- Loading times: it loads FAST. Don't believe the reviews. Install the game onto your XBox and it loads even faster. The thing is that they decided to load things in small chunks, so there are more loading screens, but you don't wait as long each time.
- David/Rush: it's official (to me.)
Things I don't like:
- Texture pop-in: the game suffers from slight graphics delay, in that when a scene loads, the detailed textures would only get loaded about 1-2 seconds later.
- Calvary call: some mobs do the calvary call during battle, which gets them reinforcements. That's all well and good until you fight something like the Opiliones. Which I did. All 20+ of them. orz
- Criticals: the way to get critical offense/defense is annoying. And although you can set it to auto, how it slows down Matrix-like every single time is just a damn waste of time. ARGH.
And that's that. I think half of the negative reviews are written by people who couldn't make sense of the battle system in their little brains and just toss their controllers, yell "I give up this game sucks" because it can't possibly be that they're stupid.
Speaking of TLR - it's a game that splits opinions and I can see why, but some of the negative reviews are actually bullshit. It's either that or their Xbox is broken, because the game does NOT run like a slideshow on my console.
Good:
- Plot: it's exciting so far and makes me want to know what'll happen next. Also, time actually passes! Quite a few months go by between Disc 1 and Disc 2! Surely this is a new concept.
- Character design: awesome, and much more original than lots of RPGs out there. And when was the last time an RPG protagonist had black hair? Rush rules for being a proper brunette. ♥ ALSO: Rush's sister Irina has a personality. She gets kidnapped in the beginning of the game and that's what starts the whole story, and as a rule this sort of victim character is not allowed to have more personality than a pancake and say things other than "brother, save me!111!!!" But oh, Irina is so much more than that.
- Other prettiness: the scenes are amazing. Backgrounds and lightings are rendered so well in gameplay, not just during cutscenes. Rock textures, water reflections, splashes when your char runs on the water, light breaking through the clouds in the sky - all there and all absolutely stunning. Sometimes I just put down the controller and look at the screen and go, "omg, this is so beautiful."
- Battle system: it's easy to try to do something new and failing, but this battle system is very unlike the other RPGs out there and once I understood it, it's so much fun to play. People working in groups rather than individually adds to the mood, like these people are actually comrades and they operate as the skilled people they are, instead of a bunch of people thrown in together by mistake. The "botched" thing (if your group leader falls, your whole group becomes useless) makes me lol, but it makes sense. Also, this system makes it possible to fight large amounts of enemy groups at the same time, and it's a lot about strategies - my 3 groups (or more, depending on how I group my chars) against the enemy's 8... which groups to approach first and how to avoid getting raidlocked or my rare assaulted? Hmmmmm. XD
- Sidequests: very unlike the other RPGs, because TLR has many many many many sidequests. There are lots of points in the game where you can break away from the main plot to play sidequests, rather than in FF where usually you have to save most of the sidequests until before you beat the final boss, and by the time you finish those you forget what the main storyline was already. Also, not all sidequests have completely cheerful+happy endings.
- Loading times: it loads FAST. Don't believe the reviews. Install the game onto your XBox and it loads even faster. The thing is that they decided to load things in small chunks, so there are more loading screens, but you don't wait as long each time.
- David/Rush: it's official (to me.)
Things I don't like:
- Texture pop-in: the game suffers from slight graphics delay, in that when a scene loads, the detailed textures would only get loaded about 1-2 seconds later.
- Calvary call: some mobs do the calvary call during battle, which gets them reinforcements. That's all well and good until you fight something like the Opiliones. Which I did. All 20+ of them. orz
- Criticals: the way to get critical offense/defense is annoying. And although you can set it to auto, how it slows down Matrix-like every single time is just a damn waste of time. ARGH.
And that's that. I think half of the negative reviews are written by people who couldn't make sense of the battle system in their little brains and just toss their controllers, yell "I give up this game sucks" because it can't possibly be that they're stupid.