JB0

Well, it can't exactly be WORSE. ... Well, not while bearing any resemblance to Ghost in the Shell. Some of us rabid Masamune Shirow fans may take exception to that, mister. Then again, from my knick and avatar, you can probably tell my opinion is hardly unbiased. Yup. Given a little time, I could probably tell you exactly what page that pic was from, too. Being in color helps, as does the jungle environment. Lets me narrow it down a LOT. Maybe I made a mistake reading the comics first. But if I'd seen the movie first, I likely never would've read anything of Shirow's. As it is, I'm something of a fan. I've read the Shirow comics I have multiple times, kicked myself for not having the cash to grab other stuff when I found it, and recommended his work to others. I still maintain that the point of the Ghost movie was to reduce Motoko from a strong female lead to a simmering pile of angsty crap. Is someone fansubbing those?(ask another stupid question) I've never really kept up with fansubs. Good! Which characters return? Or do they just resemble the old characters? YAY! What I've seen of Shirow's works also tends to inject humor when things start getting too tense(some more than others, obviously). Is that there? Hey, I was just saying it would be damn near impossible for it to be worse than the movie while remaining a Ghost in the Shell product. Because, you know, I hated the movie. Heehee.

That rule is rough at best. It doesn't really hold up to any serious examination. And there is a diffrence between minimal writing and bad writing. Since character class is only selectable at game start, it damn well BETTER NOT focus on the job system, because that would mean the entire focus of the game was party creation. What makes the game sytem unique: No experience levels or character classes. Stats operate on the use it or lose it principle. You use swords, your muscles get big, your brains get little. You lob lighting, your IQ goes up, your strength goes down. Events in battle effect every stat except luck. In my opinion it's the most intricate stat engine to date in ANY RPG, requiring one to actually THINK about their actions and what they'd do to character growth. I don't recall if it was this game or FF3 that introduced front and back ranks. And again you latch onto a relatively trivial point.A far mroe signifigant change was the addition of retargeting from dead monsters. This "feature" served to strip some 95% of the strategy from battles, and is a large part of why I prefer the first 2 games over ALL successive games as far as gameplay goes. You mean IV. And the addition of real-time battles was the big revolutionary feature. Battle was no longer turn-based. That was a BIG deal. Reason only FF and DQ mastered it: most RPGs refuse to touch it on the basis of it's a hideous bastardization of the concept of character class. Ghaleon would SO kick Kefka's ass. FF6's magicite system would be further refined in FF7's materia system. And both FF3 and 5 had, in essence, selectable parties. you just changed character class. FF6 had you swapping characters to change class. Personally, I think Cloud had no real development. They just threw 4 or 5 backstories out and left it to the player to pick one. Any argument to the contrary invariably makes critical failings by choosing scenes that are "true" scenes, with no supporting evidence. The only person that could really know what's going on is Cloud, and his head is so f'ed up that nothing he says can be taken as true. I'd give most character development to Barret. This being ACTUAL development instead of throwing out a new story at random to be discredited at a later date. It WOULD'VE gone to Cait Sith, for going froma backstabing traitor that blackmailed his way onto the team to soemone who would sacrifice his life to protect the black materia, had he not been a remote-control toy and therefore immune to the dangers. Limit breaks were a variation of FF6's desperation attacks, where a severely injured(stooped over) character would occasionally bust out a hyper-move when they attacked. The materia system was an interesting concept, but needed refinement. The removal of a proper equip screen was a slap in the face. And FF7 had a hell of a lot more story than any of the previous games. Beg pard? Most people I know hate the game because the story is steaming crap. I know it's why I quit playing. I couldn't stand to read one more line of badly-written, hopelssly-cliche'd text. Interesting concept,. poor execution. Nooooo, FF7 did that. If it's not a silly-looking boat with propellers sticking out of hte deck, I don't want it. Better than the previous 2 outings. And the equip screen returned! YAY! I bow out, not having a PS2 and having no interest in FFX. Not a true FF. If you count Tactics, you have to count Chocobo Racing too. And good luck there. Square broke that "pattern" a long time ago. I'd say 5 was the last to really fit it, and that's a stretch, as FF2 had a very heavy game system. If a game has a plot, and this plot is forced to your attention at every opportunity, a bad plot becomes a valid criticism. FF7 refused to let you ignore the story. Therefore, a criticism of it is relevant. No problem.

THAT'S what that is? I thought Guld just had some sort of bad-ass logo on his jacket, because he was special like that.

LIES! It IS real! It's just running behind schedule from paperwork!

Well, it can't exactly be WORSE. ... Well, not while bearing any resemblance to Ghost in the Shell.

YAY!

On the one hand... As children's toys, those joke machines would be GONE now if they hadn't been glued. I broke one 3 times before we chunked it. Glued it back twice, then pitched it. Specifically, the bars connecting the front and back fuselage were prone to failure. At least on my Max. On the other hand... What's the point of a non-transformable VF? I had a crisis when my dad was saying "We can fix it, but it won't be able to transform if we do. Whatever mode we fix it in it's stuck." It was like "But it's a TRANSFORMER! Can't you fix it RIGHT?" ... Transformer, of course, being a generic term for any robot that changes, including GoBots, Robotech, and Voltron. Anyways, that was repair #2. I picked "robot".

But Adventure wasn't an RPG. It wasn an adventure. Dragonstomper was an RPG, though. There was a brief flood. Then things died back down as people realized that what "RPG fan" means in America is "Square whore who just likes staring at FMVs". Things now are about back at the pre-FF7 days. The odd RPG gets released, but no one pays any attention to it. The exception is a game released by Square. And this is a GOOD thing? FF7's biggest contribution to the industry was undoing all the lessons learned since the introduction of CD-ROM technology about graphics VS playability. Do you remember the swarm of FMV games on literally everything? Grainy video, minimal interactivity, but it was FMV so it would be good. Only it wasn't. There wasn't any gameplay. No meat to back up the pretty movie clip gravy. It was a hard, painful lesson to learn. The industry has again forgotten that a game has to do more than look good, that it has to PLAY good. And I think we can both agree that hailing FF7 for birthing the modern graphics whore is just INCREDIBLY wrong. When you strip the FMVs and pre-rendered backgrounds from FF7, what you're left with is a mediocre game. It shows promise, but takes a perverse pleasure in shooting itself in the foot every time it's about to cross the line from average to great.

I think it's Chimera.

Of course, the Zentradi had good reason to be somewhat underwhelmed by our forces. Our ships were TINY, we hadn't even figured out beam weaponry yet, Britai's fleet was larger than our ENTIRE space force, and the vast majority of our infrastructure was just sloppy(under the zentradi assumption that everyone's a soldier and everything's a military facility). Us knowing how to repair ships and build nukes was just shocking to them. I mean, they were the mightiest force in the galaxy and they couldn't do it. And we were just a bunch of redneck hicks that hadn't even made a single hyperspace flight yet. Hell, we didn't even have an active colony on Mars. As I recall, they were initially thinking we'd found some prototype Supervision Army vessel, because we were so low-tech we had no business repairing a ship, much less redesigning it.

No. But then, what Macross entry ISN'T an attempt to make some money off of Macross fans? The original TV series and... the original TV series. Thank you. It really shows nothing that hadn't already been stated in the final episode of the original TV series. Misa was captain of Megaroad 1. Hikaru was not letting her leave without him. Minmay asked permission to come along, and was invited by the captain of the mission. Had Misa said no, she probably would've stayed home out of respect for Misa's wishes(What? Minmay did a LOT of growing in those last few episodes.), but with Misa inviting her along, what's to stop her? The biggest celebrity alive as a passenger on the Megaroad 1 would've been GOOD PR for a project deemed vital to humanity's survival, so we know darn well that no one else involved in the project was going to shoot her down. It's a GOOD collection of music videos, but it doesn't really add anything to the story.

Parasite Eve is a great game, but I gotta disagree with you on PE2. I thought it was unoriginal and awful. Gone was the old PE gameplay and instead they gave us Resident Evil. That games only saving grace was its beautiful cinema scenes. PE1's gameplay was an embarassment. PE2 has VASTLY superior gameplay. If being the 100th Resident Evil clone is what constitutes good gameplay, then yeah, I'd have to agree. Must also explain why PE2 went straight to the bargain bin. I'm sorry, but good gameplay is NOT an M4 rifle that shoots 500 exploding poison gas shotgun shells. It also isn't real-time motion but not real-time combat. PE2 played realistically. Sure it was a tad awkward at times, but it was LIGHTYEARS beyond PE1. And in a game that takes place in the "real" world, and uses real weapons and armor, realism matters. Hell, if you wanna get REAL picky, my father criticized the game on the basis of being able to switch firing modes on the M4A1 in combat. On a REAL M4A1, you flip a switch. Aya shifted modes too fast to do that. And of course, she couldn't change fire modes at all with an attachment on. I'm rather certain that some of the gameplay changes were actually in response to reviewers accusing PE1 of being a Resident Evil ripoff(and a bad one at that). It was something along the lines of "Okay, we're being billed as an RE game because our monsters were ugly mutations of real animals. What can we do about that?" "Ummm, we can run with it?" "Okay, do that."). PE2 doesn't really restrict your supplies the way the RE series does, which is really what makes a survival horror game. Well, unless you play in the hardest difficulty settings. The ammo supply boxes ALONE made PE2 not an RE clone. Never mind being able to buy armor and healing items. But mainly, being rid of the timer bar on physical attacks(I can squeeze 5 rounds out in 2 seconds, but I have to wait 2 minutes before I can do it again! Whee, my gun sucks!)and the idiotic customization system are what made PE2 so much better.

Happy Dreamland is a great place. You should try it some time. Yeah, but just trying importing DVD's from there. If I could get my quantum modem working I would. ... Or at least download some rips of Kazaa or something.

But Meteor would've killed the planet, not just the life on its surface. The lifestream saved ITSELF. Whether it saved those obnoxious humans is open to debate.

Well, they also made a point out of dragging the old "mitochondrial attack" FMV out for the ending. You remember the one where they took a cell sample from Aya and mixed it with Maeda's blood, and showed the mitochondria attacking the cell nuclei? When you realize that the game is based on a horror novel(as stated in the credits), it makes more sense for it to end that way. Aya's statement that her mitochondria evolved diffrently is based on incomplete data. Remember, at the time she said that, she didn't even know her and Melissa both got their powers from tissue transplants from Maya. Their mitochondria(at least the ones relevant to the discussion) evolved along the same route because they both had the same mitochondria. And just to clarify, despite it's presentation in the game, events in the Chrysler Building actually take place between the final battle with the Ultimate Being and the opera show in the ending(actually, they override the main ending, but ...). Major spoilers from here to post end. This is all being pulled from memory here. I've got the general gist, but there may be some inaccuracies. The Chrysler Building was "Plan B". In case Eve failed, Klamp made a clone of Aya's sister Maya at the top of the building. She's under the control of her mitochondria, of course. At this point the clone's grown back to about the level Maya was when she died in the car wreck(I got the imprssion that Maya's mitochondria awakening may have been what CAUSED the car wreck in the first place, but not a real strong impression). There's some rambling about the strongest mitochondria leading the revolution or something. With Maya up and in Eve mode, that means her, since as the original she's far stronger than MelissaEve was. Obviously, sister or not, you need to kick her ass before she gets out and unleashes a new and far worse reign of terror. When you DO kick her ass, you prove that YOUR mitochondria are stronger(maybe Maya's eyes were her best feature? *shrugs*). They start revolting, taking over, whatever. The screen starts blacking out as Aya clutches her head. From the dialogue and that one FMV clip in the 1st ending, it's pretty strongly implied that this is what happened in the normal ending, where you never met Maya. It fades to black. Then Maya's spirit or something(real Maya, not MayaEve) makes some noise, and the screen goes back to normal. She seals your mitochondria's powers away, making you another normal human being again. Roll credits. ... Well, okay, it was a tad weird. But the point is Aya doesn't become AyaEve. And that's a plus. Ignoring that, it also provides a continuity fix so PE and PE2 hook together better. Remember you start with jack squat in terms of magic in PE2? That's why, because PE2 picks up off the chrysler Building ending instead of the main one. Likely also why you don't get liberate in PE2. Aya keeps her powers on a far shorter leash now than she did in the first game, as she's "seen" what can happen when they get too out of control, and it scares her(hey, you'd be scared too).

Happy Dreamland is a great place. You should try it some time.

Again, it's VERY open to interpretation. As in it raises more questions than it answers. "Did they live?" "Did they die?" "Who's Red 13's girl?" You know, stuff like that.

Eh, when did Aya flip out and kill people? In the end sequence, during the opera scene. Her mitochondria take over, making her the new Eve. ... Perhaps kill isn't the right word, but they certainly aren't human anymore.

Errr... The best is still the original Atari arcade game.

I prefer the gray frame. It adds a little accent. Sort of like a chrome bumper. ... Only you obviously won't be running into anything with the face of a battroid.

Parasite Eve is a great game, but I gotta disagree with you on PE2. I thought it was unoriginal and awful. Gone was the old PE gameplay and instead they gave us Resident Evil. That games only saving grace was its beautiful cinema scenes. PE1's gameplay was an embarassment. PE2 has VASTLY superior gameplay.

Me, once. ... Almost twice, but the memory card ate my save the first time and I had to start over. Anything special happen of just bragging rights? How does an ending where Aya DOESN'T flip out and kill everyone sound?

Well, YEAH. I coulda told you that when FF7 came out. Faith was briefly restored with Chrono Cross and FF9, but they fell down again. As things stand now, I don't have much hope for Square(now SquareEnix) untill they retire the FF name. Well, if the Enix part of things manages to counterbalance the Square part enough... ... Wait... Enix didn't even MAKE games at the time of the merger. They were licensing out Dragon Quest, for Pete's sake. SquareEnix is doomed untill they realize there's more to life than FF. They could be milking Front Mission and Seiken Densetsu. They could have made Xenogears the best game ever, instead of half a game followed by a slide show. They could make more new games, like Einhander and PE were. Instead, they make FF and then if there's time, hammer something else out before the next FF.

Because it's hard to find. It wasn't really popular in it's first run, so not many went out. But then it refused to die after they quit making it. The price bounced down when Square shipped a second run, but it's bounced back up again since then.

Meh. Ultimately every Square game ever made, including Tom Sawyer, will be in this list, regardless of merit. Short version: Square is JUST ANOTHER GAME COMPANY. Nothing really makes them any better than anyone else aside from they have fanboys.