Triple Triad

I’m struck by the fact that FFVII opens with the bombing of a corrupt corporation’s energy facility, while FFVIII opens with high school exams. At this point, the tone in VIII couldn’t be more different.

Back to the beginning. The game’s introduction (a series of black and white stills) doesn’t really evoke anything. They deliberately avoid showing character faces, but who knows what that means. After the almost-gaudy title screen, there is what appears to be Squall’s fever-dream, recalling his earlier training with Seifer mixed with random images of Rinoa, who I don’t think he has even met at this point. The production quality upgrade in VIII is immediately apparent. The blocky, grainy stiffness of VII is a memory. The video sequences are smooth and attractive, blending very well with the action. The look of the game itself recalls Resident Evil at times. I’m sometimes tempted at times to run at the walls looking for ammunition and keys.

In 3 hours of play, I’ve only gotten as far as the transport to the SeeD exam battle ground in Balam. Any one who’s played this game can probably guess why: I’ve been sucked into Triple Triad, the game-spanning card battling mini game. I can say without reservation that TT is better than anything they came up with for VII. I refused to leave the Garden until I had played everyone I could and started getting duplicate cards. I have 30 or 40 cards now, including my trump, Quistis.

Giving the townsfolk something to do besides rattling off their one or two lines of conversation is great. I chase people down the hallways of the Garden, demanding that they play cards. I block their retreat, forcing game after game until I have robbed them completely. All of this is really because TT is actually fun, and I haven’t even gotten to any of the interesting rules yet.

Besides the card collecting addiction, though, the game is pretty dull so far. The endless tutorials are arduous and drawing is painful. Examining drawing for a moment, each enemy possesses an endless amount of casts of a few spells. When you draw from them, you get a small random number of these spell casts for yourself. But these are not party owned. Each character has his or her own stock of spells. So in a battle, each character must draw over and over and over again, building up their reserves to a maximum of 99 for each spell. You might say, who needs 99 copies of Esuna or Scan, but these spells are also the batteries for your various statistics thanks the Junction system. So, between wanting the best stats for your characters and filling up your spell list with nice, completionist 99s, of course you’re going to draw until the cows come home. Granted, you will eventually fill up on every spell and hopefully there are draw-enhancement abilities down the line (I’m thinking 3x draw). Still, the combined forces of TT and drawing grind the early hours of the game to a halt.

Battle animations are now nicely motion-captured. They look great. They also take forever. Instead of Cloud beaming over to an enemy for a 1-frame slash, Squall saunters over and give a mighty swing and then resume his stance. It looks nice, but since he’ll be doing that animation like 90,000 times, it’s a bit much.

Most of the characters have already been introduced in the first location: Squall, Seifer, Selphie, Zell, Quistis. This is a departure from the usual “HI I HAVE A PROBLEM I’LL JOIN YOUR PARTY” technique.

I was originally planning to discuss story elements, but there needs to be a story first. So far the game is just Yu-Gi-Oh + Saved By the Bell.