Not Dead Yet

I’ve been derailed variously by Street Fighter IV and other commitments, but have made some progress all the same. The game is sitting better with me now, mostly because it has gotten sort of interesting. At Galbadia Garden we were given our mission: assassinate the Sorceress. Ostensibly this is because she will wrest full power from President Deling and lead the country into ruin. But who knows what the real reason is. It seems that the country of Esthar, traditionally ruled by a sorceress, was a huge pain in the ass for the rest of the world some time ago and had to be beat down in some war. Why exactly is anyone interested in working with them now? Now, Edea (the sorceress) has a nice set of virtual goggles that includes a wig of retractable hair. This is the coolest thing I have seen in the game so far. What could it be for? I could come up with several theories, but I hope it has something to do with either spying on or controlling Laguna in his world or timeline or whatever it may be. It’s starting to look like Laguna’s adventures take place in the past and that he may be someone’s (probably Squall’s) ancestor. It has already turned out that Laguna’s crush, the piano player, is Rinoa’s mother… I think.

The people of Centra sound like this game’s Lunarians/Cetra/Magi. They fit the required Final Fantasy role of people-who-did-something-X-thousand-years-ago, in this case, being the forbearers of some of the planet’s modern inhabitants. The history of the sorceresses suggests that they may be good people corrupted, and that someone we’ve met in Laguna’s timeline actually became Edea.

The battle against Edea at the end of disc one was actually enjoyable. Having to draw and cast her protective magic as a means of survival was finally a good use of the system. Battling the Brothers in the Tomb of the Unknown King also involved a certain amount of satisfying strategy. And this is all well and good, if only the random battles didn’t take so long. FFVII had this right: the random battles should not take more than 30 seconds.

After more Laguna at the start of disc 2, I have to say his dorkiness is growing on me. He’s Final Fantasy’s own Dan, overconfident and hopelessly inept and inappropriate. The other characters like him despite themselves. Back in the present, we escaped from strangely illogical drill-prison and have split our party down the middle, with one group off to stop Galbadian missiles from destroying Trabia Garden and the other heading to Balamb Garden to play cards or something.

After 20+ hours, I still don’t feel like the game has started yet. There is no groove to get into. The game play is plagued by constant interruptions. You’re either sitting around for 30 minutes Drawing, being thrust into Laguna’s mostly unrelated story, or methodically challenging everyone in town to a card game. The random encounter rate in some areas, like the over world, is stupidly high.

Guardian Forces, as it turns out, are just fancy materia. They combine summon, command, and independent materia all into one simple equip. Of course, this removes the flexibility that materia had, which let you equip a bunch of one type if you so chose. But the bigger crime is that, once again, your characters have almost nothing to distinguish themselves other than their single limit break. At certain points, you choose your party members. Why? What does it really matter, other than which dialog trees you’ll see?

I’m fighting to keep FFVIII inside my head despite the line of more interesting thoughts in line outside. The whole point of this exercise was to complete a title that, you know, pretty much everyone should be complete. If I give up at this point, I’ll be reduced to reading the story faq. For shame.

Losing It

I’m going to take a break from describing the development of the plot so far, because frankly I’m having trouble remembering what’s happened so far. Other FF games have had their share of bad design and stupid ideas, but none have been as downright boring as this one. The anchor that drags the whole experience down is the battles. You fight so often in FF games, it’s not surprise they can make or break the title, and VIII is just broken. Even with the configurable speeds maxed, battles move like frozen molasses. It’s not even just the drawing either. Everything takes too long. The battle animations are slow, the GFs are infamously slow, even battle intros and conclusions are slow. The battle commands I have available so far don’t help. Besides the standard Attack, Magic, GF and Draw, I have Card and Doom. Card is card, I don’t have any complaints about it. Doom, however, generally has the effect of making battles take even longer, assuming you wait for the Doom clock to run out and actually kill the enemy.

I’m genuinely surprised at how much the lack of any equipment has detracted from the game. I’m supposed to be able to upgrade weapons, but that hasn’t happened yet, 15 or so hours in. Collecting and equipping items is fun. Why eliminate it? You don’t collect money either, it just shows up in your inventory periodically as “salary”. Given these shifts, what does the game really want you to focus on? Drawing, Junctioning and Triple Triad, it seems. Oh and the story. But even that has been borderline. Seifer’s supposed death at the hands of the Galbadians finally jarred me out of my semi-stupor by actually being interesting.

The main thrusts of the story (the Squall/Seifer/Rinoa triangle, the relationship between Deling and the Sorceress, Laguna) are not holding my attention. What about, the Lunar Cry? What is up with that? How about these GFs, let’s learn more about them. Even the broadcast interference is more interesting than the Forest Owls or Laguna’s crush on a piano player. I honestly have trouble playing more than an hour or two at a time without falling asleep.

I’ve been told things pick up at the end of disc 1. I’ve also been told by a few people that they never finished the game. Part of writing this blog is to make sure that doesn’t happen to me. I wish the game wasn’t working so hard to make sure it does.