Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving! As for me, it’s always a wonderful holiday season when this comes in the mail.
This’ll probably be the last post of the year. If you don’t want to read spoilers about Skyward Sword, I wouldn’t suggest scrolling down past the Type-0 rant.
Getting back immediately to what I was talking about before with Final Fantasy Type-0… Mmm… there were two major annoyances. The first is the camera. Type-0 features a camera similar to The 3rd Birthday, following you around in 3rd person. I’ll be honest; this is quite nitpicky because the camera actually works fine the majority of the time. When it doesn’t though, it really, really hurts. Cameras getting stuck on walls in close quarters combat with some deadly mobs can spell the end of you. Some of the random battlefields have small monsters combined with tall grass, leading to zero vision when you lock onto anything.
The second annoyance is the items, or rather the difficulty of using anything that you don’t have on your single item hotkey while in combat. The game doesn’t pause what’s going on when you load up the item menu, so what you’re left with is selecting what you want as quick as you can while also trying to discern where to move (assuming you’re trying to run away from something) with the opaque item screen blocking your way. This is still a bit nitpicky, because if you’re doing okay you really won’t touch the menu at all, but it wouldn’t hurt to try to give us more item hotkeys somehow. I can still guarantee that there will be a few missions where you’ll want to use an Ether or something but all you have hotkeyed are Hi-Potions.
Sigh…the original post I had written up about this was a lot more negative but I toned it down a lot since. The game is actually pretty amazingly fun overall. The Kill Sight system was really refreshing, although for bosses it really favored ranged attacks. The soundtrack is also a such a treat… I’m a sucker for great battle themes and Type-0 really brings it with tracks like Weapons of White and Echo of the Dreadnoughts.
It’s rare for me to play a game with so many playable character choices and actually end up liking all of them, both personality and gameplay-wise. Of course I did have my favorites (Cinque, Deuce, and Rem) but everybody in Class Zero is pretty fun to play once you get the hang of their styles. It’s kind of a shame that the game doesn’t share experience between everyone in Class Zero though. You’ll find that the people you favor the most will gradually outlevel everyone and then there will be no point in bringing anyone other than your first three since they’ll just die immediately. I guess that’s what the Arena is for, but it’s still a pain in the ass to go out of your way to get the rest of Class Zero up to par.
Without spoiling too much, I can say that I liked the story and I would highly recommend a second playthrough immediately after the first. Yeah. I think that’s all I can say about that.
I’ve no idea when this is coming out overseas, but according to recent news it IS being worked on for an overseas release, so I guess be patient!
Next up was Skyrim, but I really don’t think I need to say much. Amazingly huge. Amazingly buggy. I haven’t finished it, and I’m taking a break from it for quite a while due to broken quests.
And finally we have The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
Ugh. I don’t know what I can write up about this that sounds decent. The second half of the game is so chalk full of fillers it’s kind of sickening. These are the same things happening in every recent Zelda, yet somehow worse because it happens in reused areas. Flying lost its charm very quickly; the sky is actually quite barren and tedious to travel back and forth across. The game needs to stop telling me what X item is when I just picked one up five minutes ago.
Why do six of the twelve bosses in the entire game consist of Ghirahim and The Imprisoned and their rehashes? Why was the final boss such a bore? And why would he create a realm to fight in that would actually HELP Link? Since Ghirahim was capable of a more human form, why didn’t we see Fi’s? Why does the game torture me with reminders about my low battery or hearts?
Maybe I’m just totally jaded on Zelda games now, but honestly so many of these problems have been around for ages that people seem to think it should be how standard Zelda is. It shouldn’t be. I’m actually shocked at how many sites gave Skyward a 10/10. Some actually admit to only playing it for a few hours, which actually makes sense, because the first half is actually good. They’re lying to themselves and to potential purchasers if they think the entire game is like that though.
This month still has Frontier Gate left, something I didn’t remember while I was writing my last post. Chances are I won’t be able to give impressions until the end of the month/early January though, so don’t expect anything for a bit.
