Geek Pub Talk

As I have gotten to the 25 hour mark with this game, I’m enjoying it.  While the combat isn’t as good as the previous games in the trilogy (the paradigm system is my favourite FF battle system), it’s an interesting change.  It also helped that I picked up a few pointers from looking at the primer section in the strategy guide (apart from the primer section I don’t look at a guide until I have finished a play through myself).  I had been making my set ups too similar rather than a debuff/defence, magic and beat the hell out of them set ups that tend to work rather well against the more traditional fodder enemies.  What is hard in the battle system are the main bosses.  I thought I would do okay as the mini bosses on the lead up were fine.  Then the boss wiped the floor with me on my first go.  Both the main bosses I’ve beaten was by the skin of my teeth.  All out of health items, phoenix downs and EP.  They were tricky, but in a nice way.

Plot wise, for the most part I’m really liking it.  The whole Lightning being Jesus is kinda funny but I’m just going with it.  The main quests so far have been enjoyable and mixed things up.  Any time I get to name a chocobo I’m happy, I called mine Bruce.  Some of the quests can be tricky as the info doesn’t show up on the map and I think this is where the Demon/Dark Souls influence has come in.  There is a lot of fetching or looking for items you have no real idea about their location.  This might be made easier as like the Soul’s games there is this network that can be accessed online during the game.  I haven’t looked into this as I’m worried for potential spoilers.  But I got the idea that people could leave messages.  Once I’ve finished it, I’ll turn it on when I go for a full run.  While the main story is fairly serious, I like that there is some fun to be had in the game.  Like making Lightning fight in a coliseum (that spelling looks wrong but it’s what dictionary.com is telling me) in a ball gown or being attacked by cats for carrying a specific potion.   Some of the stories told in the side quests are also nice, though some of the voice acting lines could have been better written.  Speaking of voice acting, Ali Hillis, once again does a great job of voicing Lightning and the ever popular Troy Baker returns as Snow, and is also rather good.

There is a system in the game that seems to act like Dead Rising.  Run out of days and you can start again retaining your health, strength and magic boosts earned previously.  Part of me is tempted to run out the clock and start again with my upgraded Lightning, but I’m not sure if you gain the bonuses from missions again so for now I will stick to my normal game.  So far, at 25 hours it more positive than at the 5 hour mark, hopefully this enjoyment continues.