Biggest surprise/dissapointment.

[UnknownH]

Yeah. Try the Dragonforce song on Expert. Then try it with 100%.

[Shadowknight]

Big dissapointment.

Final fantasy 13.

8 hours into the game, and so far I have to say I'm dissapointed. It's basic, bland, boring, I feel like all I'm doing is watching a movie. The dungeons so far are entirely linear, you run forward, kill something, move forward, watch movie, kill something, move forward, nother movie. So far that's been the entire game. They removed magic points, so you don't even have to worry about conserving your magic, the battle's last all of 5 seconds, and aftewards your fully healed. The auto-battle button makes the best choices for the situation, entered them myself for awhile before realizing the auto-battle chooses the exact same ones.

Here's how every battle I've fought has gone: Beat them mercilessly. Health low. Switch to heal mode. Full health. Beat them mercilessly.

Graphics are incredible, music's great, but who cares? I think Square's gotten so lost in making games look good they don't pay attention to the point of a game, that it's a game, not a movie.

Even levelling's been dumbed down to the point it's insulting. Choose your job, hit A to use CP to learn new abilities and increase your atk, magic, an def, the only stats in the game. Occasionally hit left or right to get a branch then back to hitting A. Think of it like the spere grid from FFX. Now remove all the customization, make it a straight line with the rare branch to one ability, and that's the crystarium system or whatever it's called. It's a complete waste and I swear it's only to increase the length of the game while you're sitting there holding A to increase abilities.

And in the map there's a save point I swear every five steps. Not that you need them cause if you do die, which is embarrassing but easy to do since they use a system like Persona 3 where if the party leader dies it's game over. You can restart just before entering the fight. Where's the challenge in that?

So far their are few saving graces. One of which are the graphics, and coming from me that's saying something when some of my favorite games are from the 16bit era. The battles are beautiful to watch, just wish you actually did more in them instead of just hitting A.

Another's Gestalt mode, where you summon an eidolon and actually ride on it, it's awesome, but in 8 hours I've only been able to use it once. Because the game decides on your party for you, so far, and even if the character with the eidolon is with you, unless they're the leader you can't use it. Why the hell am I wasting my time slowly hacking away at some giant robot when I have Odin just sitting there ready to unleash unholy hell on whatever sorry monster gets in it's way?

After my dissapointment with FF12 I was looking forward to this. What pisses me off the most is that I know Square can do better. You look through my game collection and you'll see half of them are Square games from the PSX and SNES era. Games that despite being years old I still play cause they're story's and gameplay are so great. Here's hoping they do better with number 14, oh wait that's gonna be another MMORPG that's just a cut and paste of 11. Nevermind.

[AetherRose]

Life.
'nuff said.

[Kurtz]

Another's Gestalt mode, where you summon an eidolon and actually ride on it, it's awesome, but in 8 hours I've only been able to use it once. Because the game decides on your party for you, so far, and even if the character with the eidolon is with you, unless they're the leader you can't use it. Why the hell am I wasting my time slowly hacking away at some giant robot when I have Odin just sitting there ready to unleash unholy hell on whatever sorry monster gets in it's way

You'll be able to control your party on sometime later, don't worry. I do find it disappointing that they leave it too late, but the best and longest part of the game is actually the chapters in the very late game. Yeah, disappointment much, but at least there's more and more you can do later.

[DragonMasterX]

I prefer the older final fantasies. Final Fantasy IV DS for example really knocked me up and got me a really good deal of action, strategy and addictive Boss fights. Plus their stories are also cool.

And I don't know which Guitar Hero has that Dragon Force song, then again I've only fully played 1 and 2. And I still can't get my left Pinky going. I can only play with three of my fingers D:

[Lost]

It was 3, Mar. I don't really care for the song. Every two-bit person on Youtube has posted their 100% Expert score for the DragonForce, and I'm tired of it.

[UnknownH]

Yes, but there's a long version of the song. About 8 minutes long. Try playing that on expert. Also, it takes about 25 hours to get to the good part of 13. At least that's what X-Play says.

[DragonMasterX]

Wonder how hard Bark at the Moon on Expert is, never tried since I'm just going for trying every song on Hard (at Guitar Hero II) and I'm currently stuck practising Sweet Child of Mine (Guns 'n Roses).

Either way, I went to the store yesterday, got Guitar Hero III and V. Gotta go trade III in 'cause it was in German, can't really understand a thing about it and I can't stand playing a game without reading everything in a language I can understand.

New gigantic disappointment: Guitar Hero V. I've been 5 Star'ing every song on Medium ever since starting the career mode. Every single fucking track is like a symphony of snores that hardly entertain me at all. What's with the Star Gauge revamp, anyways? A bar would help more than keeping track of the 'light' those bulbs got. I would've preffered for them to have kept more classic songs instead of jumping to the new stuff from 2000 and on. Not saying absolutely ALL of them are that bad, but most of them don't really give me any sort of 'thrill' as Guitar Hero I and II's respective rosters gave me. Yuck.

[Crimson Fox]

Man, everywhere I go, even here, there's like a 50/50 love or hate split on Final Fantasy 13. Eh, I hated 10 and thought 12 was meh, so I don't really have a lot of hope for 13 as of now. Really, I think the last great Final Fantasy was number 9.

Interesting side note, after 9 was when Square released that shitty Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie, nearly went bankrupt, and then was forced to merge with Enix. I can't help but wonder if that had some sort of effect on how Square makes these games now. Anyways, time to talk about some other games. XP

Surprises: Blades of Steel (NES): A fun sports game? Is there anything you can't do Konami?

It's a fairly simple game being as it's just an 8-bit hockey game, but the controls are good and your teammates are good at keeping up with you. The real selling point of this game is that it's one of the first hockey games to feature fighting where the loser gets sent to the penalty box. It makes no sense, but it's awesome!

Oh, and the advertisements between periods for Contra and Jackal were a clever touch.

Disappointments: Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (SNES): It's a beginner RPG so several things are dumbed down. I can understand them simplifying things for people who are new to RPGs. Still, that's no excuse for giving your game a story so basic that it makes Final Fantasy 1's story look like a masterpiece. Honestly, all you get is that the world is in danger, go and revive the four crystals Hero.

Oh, and the location names suck, suck, SUCK! The first area in the game is Level Forest where you level up, but it gets better. The four cities in the game are Foresta, Aquaria, Fireburg, and Windia. I don't think I need to mention how they're themed.

There are two things that I like about this game though. One, I like being able to see your enemies. I don't hate random encounters, but I prefer being able to see my enemies. Second, enemies have different sprites for the amount of damage that has been dealt to them, which is a nice touch and makes it feel like you're making progress during a battle.

Really though, this game is awful. A two member party just doesn't work well, especially when you have enemies that can cast Stone and Confuse which can devastate you in one turn. Sure you can automatically restart if you lose a fight, but this wouldn't be necessary if they hadn't of made a game with a broken battle system in the first place.

Oh, and the real kicker of why I hate this game. In Japan, this game is known as Final Fantasy USA: Mystic Quest. Besides the fact that the game was actually created in Japan, now the average Japanese gamer will automatically assume that this game's suckiness was the fault of western developers. Fuck that!

[AetherRose]

Mana Khemia...
At first, I thought it sucked, then I got past the tragic learning curve and the obnoxious loading screens to find quite a treasure.