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Old Feb 4th, 2013, 05:20 PM       
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick View Post
That looks nothing like Landstalker.
Actually I looked at some videos of Landstalker's gameplay and minus the isometric perspective, it is indeed incredibly similar. A girly young elf runs around doing awful platforming, dungeon-crawling and hitting shit with his sword. Mild RPG elements. You should play it, Nick. Allow me to reiterate that it is a measly $5.99 US Dollars on PSN, and perfect for a portable system like the PSP or Vita!

Speaking of Matrix software, I finished out my Final Fantasy collection with FF3 on the DS. People were telling me what a grindfest it was, but I've found it's only that if you're bad at RPGs. Don't get me wrong, it is hard as fuck, but the job system allows for a lot of strategy and if something doesn't work you don't have to go out and gain 5 levels, you just have to change your shit up. Example: if a boss is kicking my ass with strong physical attacks, I can make everyone a mage, stick them in the back row, give them two shields each (yes you can dual-wield shields, it's awesome) and have them all spam whatever element the boss is weak to while he's plinking away at the party for double-digit damage. That's a favorite strategy actually, especially for dungeons where you have to go through the entire thing afflicted with Mini (no physical attack power and shit defense). There are a lot of those.

I can't wait to get the Viking class, which is built around turtling like this and has an ability that forces enemies to attack it. It's like Sentinels from FF13, which I actually thought were a cool concept and used a whole bunch.

One thing I hate is that you can't buy goddamn Phoenix Downs, and they're so rare as treasure that if someone in my party gets killed, rather than waste one of my three precious extra lives I'll just reset or go all the way back to the overworld and find a revival fountain, which takes at least 10 minutes after the point when all the dungeons start having a minimum of 8 labyrinthine floors. It's nice that you get fully restored after winning a boss battle, but I'd prefer to just have the resources to end them with everyone alive so the experience is spread evenly. I steadfastly refused to let anyone be a lower or higher level than anyone else in 1 and 5, and that shit ain't changing now because it drives me fucking insane. I'll suck the dick of whatever merchant finally sells me Life.

Not to mention there are no save points, ever; if you die in a dungeon, you have to do the whole fucking thing all over again. What I've started doing is going through the dungeon once, collecting all the treasure and fighting every encounter I get, then when I find the boss room I turn around and go back outside, save and refresh my guys, and go back through it again just running from every encounter so that everyone's on top-form for the boss. Thank fuck Thieves have an auto-escape command. I don't see why Matrix didn't just add save-points to make the game slightly less goddamn psychotic; that's fake difficulty from bad NES-era design and I don't like it.

What I do like are the Anime Kewpie Doll graphics; I thought they were really out of place in a serious (?) dramatic drama like FF4 but they work in a lighthearted NES game like this one and look pretty bitchin'. The re-tooled music is also great as usual, although the new boss theme is definitely worse than the NES version.

Supposedly they're working on a remake of FF5 in the same style, which is probably good since 5 has never really had a perfect release (SNES isn't in English, PSX translation is the stuff of Engrish legends, GBA lags like a bitch and the music quality is a turd on the floor) but I hope instead of doing an unnecessary remake of FF6 next they'll instead do FF2, which is important enough to narrative development in games that it should be played, but actually playing it is beyond fucking horrible and even grindier than Dragon Quest. If any Final Fantasy literally needs a huge full-on revamp, it's that one.

Last edited by Guitar Woman : Feb 4th, 2013 at 05:51 PM.
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