Creates the ultimate sin at the start
posted by YukariOro (SAN ANTONIO, TX) Aug 5, 2010
Member since Aug 2010
34
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First off, I did beat the game, put in a total of 80+ hours and even 5-starred about 1/3 of the missions before I just quit. The constant grinding got to me, and worse, it felt like constant grinding.
Okay, the first thing Square Enix did wrong with this game is commit one of the ultimate sins in storytelling. Very rarely can you toss a reader/gamer into a story mid-story and in mid-action and NOT lose interest. Check out any book on how-to-write or storytelling, and you'll see this listed as one of the worst mistakes a storyteller can make. It's often a fatal flaw. Not saying it can't be done, just that it's rarely done well, and SE doesn't do it well.
I didn't have so much a complaint about the paradigms or even the linear parts of the story, tho I must admit, one of the things I love best about jrpgs and rpgs in general is being able to explore outside the main storyline. Honestly tho, the paradigms to me, if you set them up right, felt a lot like turn-based to me, you still basically were deciding what each and every character did.
The one thing I think really ruined the combat system is how unforgiving it was to anyone that didn't toe the time limit. I tend to be methodical and slow in fighting, I get the job done, but I'm not fast about getting it done. More than once I had doom cast on me during a boss fight as a result. As a result, I grew frustrated because in the end, it wasn't tactics that ruled the day, but speed that became the utmost important. It was during the missions later that I realized, your tactics aren't graded at all, just your speed. The faster you kill something, the more likely you are to 5-star, period.
Still, I enjoyed the game, but I wish the developers had concentrated more on gameplay rather than CGI. As a graphic artist, I love CGI, but I don't play video games for CGI, I play them for good gameplay and characters I care about. And maybe that's why jrpgs are slowly dying, not for lack of fans, but lack of good storytelling.
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