Sky Pirate's Den
Friday, August 26, 2011
New FFXIII-2 Trailer
This looks great, but the more I think of it, the more I realize that this game is going to have a ton of needlessly dramatic scenes. I hope that that will be just an assumption. Also, there's just something about the voice acting that irks me, especially when it comes to Serah's voice acting.
Wait a minute, what's this? Somebody's boomerang killed that giant crazy alien monster? Is that Hope? No way! That's gotta be him! Wow, it looks like he finally ascended into his first steps towards becoming awesome. Let's hope that the game delivers what I see in the trailers here.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Serah's CG Render Plus New Location Information
It fits! This is great!
In case you hadn't noticed, that's Serah's appearance for the upcoming FFXIII-2 which, unlike Typo, has been confirmed for release in the U.S., thank god. That revealing outfit is going to give Noel and I a very freaking difficult time focusing on our true goal: the search for Lightning. It's okay because in the end Lightning's new armor is even more revealing. My god, Square is not holding back on this game. Hopefully I can remember my commitment.
What I found interesting, not to mention amazing, is that Paddra Ruins is a "new" location in FFXIII-2. It was that crazy place in FFXIII's Yaschas Massif that looked like an entire modern city, but Square decided to make FFXIII extremely limited in terms of exploration, and therefore you couldn't see anything more than a courtyard swarming with Cie'th there. Ugh. I am so glad that they are making this place more explorable. I definitely wanted to get at least a look of what was inside one of those fallen skyscrapers. It looks like I can do so now.
FFXII Main Theme
While I'm here in Ivalice, I can't stop listening to this song! It is so beautiful :')
Edit: Yeah I'll admit I am a noob and didn't realize that this is really the generic theme song for Final Fantasy as it appeared for Final Fantasy Vanilla, as I call it. Not Vanilla Bean, not French Vanilla, just plain old Vanilla. That's what it is! Don't get me wrong, I guess you could call it a wonderful and "revolutionary" RPG, but compared to this, it sucks. Besides, this version of the song with an orchestra that I believe to be real is much better than that synthesizer version, so shut your trap. It therefore belongs to Final Fantasy XII.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Must Return to Ivalice!!!!
Well, Readers, I have to admit real life is boring as hell. There's no anticipation of school, all my friends are busy, and therefore my real-life blog that I have made unavailable to the public until the final years of my life has been sitting around not collecting any posts. This sucks. I don't wanna play FFXIII again because I have beaten that game seventeen different times (I am dead serious), and that eighteenth time that I promised a playthrough for is not going to come because why do so when FFXIII-2 is coming out?
Now that I have a new computer, my emulators for FFVI and FFVII have become unavailable to me. I could download them again for my Mac, but for some reason my Mac doesn't seem to agree with the concept of emulator software, therefore rendering FFVII unavailable for a replay and FFVI unavailable to be finished. I don't have FFX yet, but with the recent acquisition of a debit card and a checking account, hopefully the day that I can sit down and play that game for the LAWLZ will come soon. For now, I am extremely bored, and playing those four measly missions in the Final Fantasy Typo Demo is starting to get old, as much as I want to disagree with that statement. I mean, how many times am I going to send Rem through a city in Milites and blow up everyone with her powerful magic that makes her Thunder Missile spell so awesome to watch (and hot)? How many times am I going to whip everyone's ass with her knife attacks that are fun to watch (and hot)? How many times am I going to pan the camera against the floor as I go up the stairs to get a view under her skirt that is hot to watch (and hot)?
Sure, Final Fantasy Typo could be an amazing game, and I definitely would love to spend hours playing it if I ever find the time, but that is only applicable for the game. The demo, on the other hand, is fun until you realize that you are never going to see the rest of the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy, that you are never going to check out the other half of Class Zero, that you are never going to make Rem a god-like war machine like Lightning after many hours of stat development, that you are never going to kill that Cid guy, and that you are never going to find out what really happened to No. 10, no matter how many hours you put into that demo.
Therefore, I am only left with one option: return to Ivalice. The problem I have always had with Final Fantasy XII was that, after a long while of playing, I lose the incentive to play it and I inevitable forget about it. It is a wonderful game, and I have beaten it a couple of times, but I never got to finish it at this age where I can appropriately enjoy the game. Plus, I never played through the game via Blue Highwind's walkthrough. I only managed to get through half of it with his walkthrough before I lost the motivation to play FFXII. Now, with nothing going on for me, I guess there's no reason not to try it out again. I'm still waiting on some job applications to be fully reviewed, so I guess in the meantime I should head on over to my dad's place and pick up my dusty PS2. I wish my PS3 could play FFXII.
So what does this mean in the grand scope of things? Well, not much, other than I might do a playthrough on the game if I can find the appropriate times to put it down and write about it. With my MacBook, it will be much easier to stop what I am doing and switch over to write about it. The same goes for Blue's walkthrough on the game. Before, I had to go through much ink and paper to make his walkthrough accessible to me, but now that I have a "portable computer," all that trouble is a thing of the past. So let's do it, Readers, let's go back to Ivalice! That is probably by far the largest and most developed setting in the whole Final Fantasy Series. In my opinion, Ivalice is to Final Fantasy as Azeroth is to World of Warcraft. Plus, I never heard a bad thing about any of the games that take place in that world's setting. I'm sorry if you aren't on board with me on this one, Readers, but I am going to do it. I am going to go through FFXII and try to make a playthrough on it. If I do, expect to see it on its own page, unlike the Typo Demo's playthrough. Until next time, Readers who decide to stay here on Earth. Have fun with its ordinariness.
Now that I have a new computer, my emulators for FFVI and FFVII have become unavailable to me. I could download them again for my Mac, but for some reason my Mac doesn't seem to agree with the concept of emulator software, therefore rendering FFVII unavailable for a replay and FFVI unavailable to be finished. I don't have FFX yet, but with the recent acquisition of a debit card and a checking account, hopefully the day that I can sit down and play that game for the LAWLZ will come soon. For now, I am extremely bored, and playing those four measly missions in the Final Fantasy Typo Demo is starting to get old, as much as I want to disagree with that statement. I mean, how many times am I going to send Rem through a city in Milites and blow up everyone with her powerful magic that makes her Thunder Missile spell so awesome to watch (and hot)? How many times am I going to whip everyone's ass with her knife attacks that are fun to watch (and hot)? How many times am I going to pan the camera against the floor as I go up the stairs to get a view under her skirt that is hot to watch (and hot)?
Sure, Final Fantasy Typo could be an amazing game, and I definitely would love to spend hours playing it if I ever find the time, but that is only applicable for the game. The demo, on the other hand, is fun until you realize that you are never going to see the rest of the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy, that you are never going to check out the other half of Class Zero, that you are never going to make Rem a god-like war machine like Lightning after many hours of stat development, that you are never going to kill that Cid guy, and that you are never going to find out what really happened to No. 10, no matter how many hours you put into that demo.
Therefore, I am only left with one option: return to Ivalice. The problem I have always had with Final Fantasy XII was that, after a long while of playing, I lose the incentive to play it and I inevitable forget about it. It is a wonderful game, and I have beaten it a couple of times, but I never got to finish it at this age where I can appropriately enjoy the game. Plus, I never played through the game via Blue Highwind's walkthrough. I only managed to get through half of it with his walkthrough before I lost the motivation to play FFXII. Now, with nothing going on for me, I guess there's no reason not to try it out again. I'm still waiting on some job applications to be fully reviewed, so I guess in the meantime I should head on over to my dad's place and pick up my dusty PS2. I wish my PS3 could play FFXII.
So what does this mean in the grand scope of things? Well, not much, other than I might do a playthrough on the game if I can find the appropriate times to put it down and write about it. With my MacBook, it will be much easier to stop what I am doing and switch over to write about it. The same goes for Blue's walkthrough on the game. Before, I had to go through much ink and paper to make his walkthrough accessible to me, but now that I have a "portable computer," all that trouble is a thing of the past. So let's do it, Readers, let's go back to Ivalice! That is probably by far the largest and most developed setting in the whole Final Fantasy Series. In my opinion, Ivalice is to Final Fantasy as Azeroth is to World of Warcraft. Plus, I never heard a bad thing about any of the games that take place in that world's setting. I'm sorry if you aren't on board with me on this one, Readers, but I am going to do it. I am going to go through FFXII and try to make a playthrough on it. If I do, expect to see it on its own page, unlike the Typo Demo's playthrough. Until next time, Readers who decide to stay here on Earth. Have fun with its ordinariness.
Rem's Summer Outfit
Update: I was playing the demo a little more and I found that I can get a good view of her "skirt" by making the camera look up while going up some stairs. This enabled me to learn that she is actually wearing pink panties.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Final Fantasy Typo Demo: Mission 4
This mission is called Through the Heart of the Enemy, and like Mission 3, there are no cutscenes except at the end. Upon starting the mission, I found that it was actually a challenge. It appears to be in The Forbidden Forest again, what a coincidence! My favorite training ground has become the last stand of war in this demo. Oh, how I'm excited. Well, I lost Sice on my first try, since I thought I could tank everything. I am going to try again using King so that way I can kill the smaller enemies easily.
Nope I still lost Sice. This isn't good. Let's see if that Magical Armor is anywhere in my inventory.
Well, there is not much to say about this "impossible" mission. I decided to make Machina my sacrifice character again and use Shiva to eliminate a couple of the giant mecha, some soldiers wielding chainguns, and those annoying bull-mecha that keep running my party over. After Shiva left, I brought Rem into the picture and was once again amazed by how her unassuming Thunder shotgun magic went a long way in taking down those damn Magitek Armor. Of course, I am sure that if many people were reading this, they would call fowl upon the use of magic due to limited MP. I don't know how I did it really. I guess the fact that I charged each spell was what saved that MP there. By the way, if you are playing as Rem and you are trying to take down the giant guys, don't use Fire RF. It sucks, does only five damage. Her knives are more effective than that magic, somehow. The soldiers aren't too much of a problem neither, even though I hadn't seen one of them with a red circle around them. I just used King to wipe them out. As for the giant mecha, again, Rem's Thunder Shotgun goes a long way. I can also admit I was sort of lucky here and there because I was healed just before I died.
At the end of all this, a cutscene plays in an entirely different location. Da hell? You see all the Rubrum soldiers running up and killing all the Imperial soldiers, but then they are raped by another penis in Magitek Armor. This guy has an eye patch and everything, so he must be scary. But what the hell happened to No. 10 and the Green Goblin I saw in the last Mission? This demo is kind of stupid because of that, but it's not supposed to be about the cutscenes, I guess. The gameplay is fantastic, on the other hand.
And with that, that is pretty much the end of the demo, supposedly. I came, I saw, I conquered. Those Missions weren't all that difficult at all. There's supposedly a few other things I can do, but I don't know how to do them since it's all in Japanese and nobody wants to post videos of the sidequests in the demo. I'll see if I can get you Readers another post on this demo, if not, oh well. It's been a pleasure. Now let's just hope I didn't waste my time with this demo and that Square will actually release the game in English.
Nope I still lost Sice. This isn't good. Let's see if that Magical Armor is anywhere in my inventory.
Well, there is not much to say about this "impossible" mission. I decided to make Machina my sacrifice character again and use Shiva to eliminate a couple of the giant mecha, some soldiers wielding chainguns, and those annoying bull-mecha that keep running my party over. After Shiva left, I brought Rem into the picture and was once again amazed by how her unassuming Thunder shotgun magic went a long way in taking down those damn Magitek Armor. Of course, I am sure that if many people were reading this, they would call fowl upon the use of magic due to limited MP. I don't know how I did it really. I guess the fact that I charged each spell was what saved that MP there. By the way, if you are playing as Rem and you are trying to take down the giant guys, don't use Fire RF. It sucks, does only five damage. Her knives are more effective than that magic, somehow. The soldiers aren't too much of a problem neither, even though I hadn't seen one of them with a red circle around them. I just used King to wipe them out. As for the giant mecha, again, Rem's Thunder Shotgun goes a long way. I can also admit I was sort of lucky here and there because I was healed just before I died.
At the end of all this, a cutscene plays in an entirely different location. Da hell? You see all the Rubrum soldiers running up and killing all the Imperial soldiers, but then they are raped by another penis in Magitek Armor. This guy has an eye patch and everything, so he must be scary. But what the hell happened to No. 10 and the Green Goblin I saw in the last Mission? This demo is kind of stupid because of that, but it's not supposed to be about the cutscenes, I guess. The gameplay is fantastic, on the other hand.
And with that, that is pretty much the end of the demo, supposedly. I came, I saw, I conquered. Those Missions weren't all that difficult at all. There's supposedly a few other things I can do, but I don't know how to do them since it's all in Japanese and nobody wants to post videos of the sidequests in the demo. I'll see if I can get you Readers another post on this demo, if not, oh well. It's been a pleasure. Now let's just hope I didn't waste my time with this demo and that Square will actually release the game in English.
Final Fantasy Typo Demo: Mission 3 (Rush the Big Bridge)
Alright, this mission doesn't have any cutscenes except for one at the end, which has no dialogue. When I started off, I was in some kind of canyon, I think, and upon moving forward everything looks like cliffs and rocks and whatnot. There is supposedly several pieces of "magic armor," I'll keep an eye out for that. I hadn't seen No. 10 anywhere. I thought it was the guy in Mission 2 who was guiding me through the ice area, but he just disappeared. Well, that could've been No. 10, but he wasn't wearing a Class Zero uniform, neither.
Well, okay, the first thing I notice is this huge thing that looks like Bahamut from FFX. What the hell? I see it shooting lasers everywhere and all this other stuff. I guess I will be fighting with it! Sounds awesome!
King seems like he is the most useful here. All this Magitek Armor running around basically means to me that I need to pay more attention to those yellow circles than before. I managed to get one S.O down, but then I foolishly accepted another where I have to defeat three huge Magitek Armor in only thirty seconds. How the game expects me to do that is beyond me (I guess this is where Shiva comes into play). I am going to try that S.O again by sacrificing a character for Shiva (I guess Machina is going to have to do for now).
Holy shit, I raped those machines to hell. It was crazy. First, I completed the first S.O, which the time changed to a minute when before it was three. Da hell? I guess the S.O timers are random here. When I reached the part with the three giant mecha, the timer gave me two minutes. I wasted no time; I switched to my sacrifice character and summoned Shiva, which took care of those machines instantly. I was shocked. Those things had huge amounts of health, and their defense was inconceivable, but Shiva drained their health like water in a sink. I was very impressed. Well, I managed to reach a save crystal. There are little crystals on the floor; they could either be the summer outfits or the "magical armor." These dead guys on the floor look familiar... no, it can't be! They're students from the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy! Those bastards! They killed children! If these people are from the school... that could mean... no, I refuse to believe it. No. 10 can not be dead! I am going to destroy all these Magitek pieces of crap and I will find No. 10! Come at me, Empire!
So on with the charge. I ran into the next area as Rem and raped all the soldiers by killing them with the red circle around them. I started another S.O, and I managed to kill the Magitek Armor at the end of the area just in time. In the next area, there were a bunch of soldiers and this Magitek Armor that was shooting artillery. I was trying to kill the soldiers before starting the S.O, because that artillery guy was annoying as hell. Whenever I waited long enough for the red circle to show up on the small fry, I would get blasted by that stupid thing. I managed to get rid of the soldiers, though, and so I started the S.O. The thing needed me to do something in one minute, and I thought it was to take out that Magitek Armor. So I switched to Sice and spammed the hell out of that thing, and I took apart that mecha in seconds. However, the S.O was still counting down, which was scaring me because I then started thinking that it needed me to complete the area. I switched to King and managed to take out two snipers using the red circle thing, and then it said I completed the S.O. Immediately after that happened, another S.O notification popped up, and I thought the game was saying that I failed, lol. I opened that one up and it was two minutes. I figured it was the one that I needed to get out of the area for. So as I approached the exit to the area and thus the end of the mission, three mecha came out. They were like bulls, charging all over the place. Nonetheless, I made short work of them with King. I nearly died a couple of times, but I didn't worry because Rem and Sice had my back. After I destroyed the last enemies and cleared the S.O, another notification to do one popped up, ha ha. I accepted it and ended the mission immediately after like a boss.
Some crazy stuff is going on at the last cutscene. A bunch of soldiers that I saw from the beginning of the demo are running around screaming. There's this airship that they're all running to that flies away and is chased by a bunch of dragons. All of a sudden, this giant beam of fire comes out of nowhere and blows up that whole area and kills everyone. Class Zero looks ahead and sees...
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? THE GREEN GOBLIN? Oh no... this can't be. That must be No. 10. Oh shit. What happened to you, man?
Well, the cutscene ends with that ominous guy that I have decided to be No. 10 in this demo. You don't know if the guy is good or evil, but considering that he came in a bolt of fire and killed thousands of allies, I assume he is evil. Damn it. Looks like I am going to have to go Mano a Mano against No. 10. You up for this, Rem?
By the way, this mission was also easy. I just needed to restart a couple of times because the S.O's were ridiculously short on time. However, if I played through it without the S.O's, I probably would've finished in ten minutes. I didn't even need to use Shiva on that part, I just did so that I could complete the S.O. I wonder how "impossible" the next mission really is.
Well, okay, the first thing I notice is this huge thing that looks like Bahamut from FFX. What the hell? I see it shooting lasers everywhere and all this other stuff. I guess I will be fighting with it! Sounds awesome!
King seems like he is the most useful here. All this Magitek Armor running around basically means to me that I need to pay more attention to those yellow circles than before. I managed to get one S.O down, but then I foolishly accepted another where I have to defeat three huge Magitek Armor in only thirty seconds. How the game expects me to do that is beyond me (I guess this is where Shiva comes into play). I am going to try that S.O again by sacrificing a character for Shiva (I guess Machina is going to have to do for now).
Holy shit, I raped those machines to hell. It was crazy. First, I completed the first S.O, which the time changed to a minute when before it was three. Da hell? I guess the S.O timers are random here. When I reached the part with the three giant mecha, the timer gave me two minutes. I wasted no time; I switched to my sacrifice character and summoned Shiva, which took care of those machines instantly. I was shocked. Those things had huge amounts of health, and their defense was inconceivable, but Shiva drained their health like water in a sink. I was very impressed. Well, I managed to reach a save crystal. There are little crystals on the floor; they could either be the summer outfits or the "magical armor." These dead guys on the floor look familiar... no, it can't be! They're students from the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy! Those bastards! They killed children! If these people are from the school... that could mean... no, I refuse to believe it. No. 10 can not be dead! I am going to destroy all these Magitek pieces of crap and I will find No. 10! Come at me, Empire!
So on with the charge. I ran into the next area as Rem and raped all the soldiers by killing them with the red circle around them. I started another S.O, and I managed to kill the Magitek Armor at the end of the area just in time. In the next area, there were a bunch of soldiers and this Magitek Armor that was shooting artillery. I was trying to kill the soldiers before starting the S.O, because that artillery guy was annoying as hell. Whenever I waited long enough for the red circle to show up on the small fry, I would get blasted by that stupid thing. I managed to get rid of the soldiers, though, and so I started the S.O. The thing needed me to do something in one minute, and I thought it was to take out that Magitek Armor. So I switched to Sice and spammed the hell out of that thing, and I took apart that mecha in seconds. However, the S.O was still counting down, which was scaring me because I then started thinking that it needed me to complete the area. I switched to King and managed to take out two snipers using the red circle thing, and then it said I completed the S.O. Immediately after that happened, another S.O notification popped up, and I thought the game was saying that I failed, lol. I opened that one up and it was two minutes. I figured it was the one that I needed to get out of the area for. So as I approached the exit to the area and thus the end of the mission, three mecha came out. They were like bulls, charging all over the place. Nonetheless, I made short work of them with King. I nearly died a couple of times, but I didn't worry because Rem and Sice had my back. After I destroyed the last enemies and cleared the S.O, another notification to do one popped up, ha ha. I accepted it and ended the mission immediately after like a boss.
Some crazy stuff is going on at the last cutscene. A bunch of soldiers that I saw from the beginning of the demo are running around screaming. There's this airship that they're all running to that flies away and is chased by a bunch of dragons. All of a sudden, this giant beam of fire comes out of nowhere and blows up that whole area and kills everyone. Class Zero looks ahead and sees...
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? THE GREEN GOBLIN? Oh no... this can't be. That must be No. 10. Oh shit. What happened to you, man?
Well, the cutscene ends with that ominous guy that I have decided to be No. 10 in this demo. You don't know if the guy is good or evil, but considering that he came in a bolt of fire and killed thousands of allies, I assume he is evil. Damn it. Looks like I am going to have to go Mano a Mano against No. 10. You up for this, Rem?
By the way, this mission was also easy. I just needed to restart a couple of times because the S.O's were ridiculously short on time. However, if I played through it without the S.O's, I probably would've finished in ten minutes. I didn't even need to use Shiva on that part, I just did so that I could complete the S.O. I wonder how "impossible" the next mission really is.
Final Fantasy Typo Demo: Mission 2
I don't think I can equip those summer outfits. If I could... well, I don't know. I don't really care about the summer outfits that much, though. I decided to do another run through of Mission 1, and I tried doing some of the S.O challenges. I still have no idea what I was rewarded, but I noticed that during those events my party seemed to be getting buffed up. I am still worried about dying at the end of those things, so I what I decided was to give each mission an initial completion to get the feel for them, and then try out the S.O's. On this run through, I played as Rem and I didn't die for once. I raped the hell out of the Behemoth compared to last time, but then again I spammed the hell out of magic since I was given an unlimited magic buff and Rem is supposedly the best magic caster. After killing that damn thing and completing the mission, I found that I had gotten a C on one thing, and A on another and a B on another, which equaled a B in total. The highest score is an S, but I don't I will be able to figure out how to do that. Oh well. On to Mission 2: Giudecca Battle.
It looks like this takes place in Concordia. All I see is a bunch of ice all around me... is that a dragon! How did I go from a Behemoth to a dragon?! Well, shit. Sorry Readers, but I might be out for a while on this one!
Well, the dragon turned out to be nothing. However, on the second area, I accidentally accepted an S.O out of my nervousness, and I got myself killed for failing it. Well, it looks like it is time to start over.
Okay, so the purpose of that S.O is to run through that area without killing any enemies. It made my whole party invisible, so I guess that should've been a big clue. The next area is just some giant circular ice area with a bunch of small dragons flying around and attacking. Sice died here, unfortunately, but I put up a great effort to keep Rem alive. I spammed her thunder shotgun magic, which seemed pretty effective against the dragons. For some reason, King wasn't having any problem whatsoever. I guess he's just a badass like that. I even opened up the "pause" menu and tried using a few items, and he managed to keep himself alive somehow. I leveled up Rem once, but I think King leveled up a few times. The Victory Fanfare plays whenever a character levels up. I heard it like five times. People say that the only way to beat this mission is to use Shiva, but it really wasn't hard at all. I didn't see what the hell everyone made a huge fuss about. At the end, these weird zombie fish men came out of nowhere and another S.O came up. Having watched a video of someone else do it, I tried it out. I think the point of it was not to get hit by any of those zombie men, because the guy in the video was dodging everything. So that is what I did, dodged and spammed magic. After that, these letters came up on screen which indicated I completed the mission. Wait, what? That's it? What about that huge dragon? Well, that was lame. Then again, I guess I am better off not even trying to touch it. But still, this mission was bogus. If this was really difficult for other players, I can't imagine how easy Mission 3 must be.
Well, then again, I did get low grades on this mission, but that was because I wasn't sure of half of what the hell was going on. I am going to try out different spells for Rem before I move on with the game.
Edit: It turns out that the S.O with the zombie fishmen is not avoiding damage. I got hit by one of them and nothing happened. This mission is piss easy.
It looks like this takes place in Concordia. All I see is a bunch of ice all around me... is that a dragon! How did I go from a Behemoth to a dragon?! Well, shit. Sorry Readers, but I might be out for a while on this one!
Well, the dragon turned out to be nothing. However, on the second area, I accidentally accepted an S.O out of my nervousness, and I got myself killed for failing it. Well, it looks like it is time to start over.
Okay, so the purpose of that S.O is to run through that area without killing any enemies. It made my whole party invisible, so I guess that should've been a big clue. The next area is just some giant circular ice area with a bunch of small dragons flying around and attacking. Sice died here, unfortunately, but I put up a great effort to keep Rem alive. I spammed her thunder shotgun magic, which seemed pretty effective against the dragons. For some reason, King wasn't having any problem whatsoever. I guess he's just a badass like that. I even opened up the "pause" menu and tried using a few items, and he managed to keep himself alive somehow. I leveled up Rem once, but I think King leveled up a few times. The Victory Fanfare plays whenever a character levels up. I heard it like five times. People say that the only way to beat this mission is to use Shiva, but it really wasn't hard at all. I didn't see what the hell everyone made a huge fuss about. At the end, these weird zombie fish men came out of nowhere and another S.O came up. Having watched a video of someone else do it, I tried it out. I think the point of it was not to get hit by any of those zombie men, because the guy in the video was dodging everything. So that is what I did, dodged and spammed magic. After that, these letters came up on screen which indicated I completed the mission. Wait, what? That's it? What about that huge dragon? Well, that was lame. Then again, I guess I am better off not even trying to touch it. But still, this mission was bogus. If this was really difficult for other players, I can't imagine how easy Mission 3 must be.
Well, then again, I did get low grades on this mission, but that was because I wasn't sure of half of what the hell was going on. I am going to try out different spells for Rem before I move on with the game.
Edit: It turns out that the S.O with the zombie fishmen is not avoiding damage. I got hit by one of them and nothing happened. This mission is piss easy.
Final Fantasy Typo Demo: Mission 1
It seems that each mission I choose will give me a set of cutscenes that are obviously not going to be one after the other in the real game, but at the same time it disappoints me a little. I don't know why. I don't even understand anything that they're saying, so I don't see why it matters to me. Here's the cutscene for Mission 1, Operation Empire Escape.
I lol'd at the part where King returns insults to the soldier. Time to move on. I am on my own from here on out, because the guide on Siliconera sucks and only covers basic information. I especially love the last cutscene, though; the part where the Cid of this game just says that somebody left. Who the hell is he talking about? I assume it's that emperor guy who's mysteriously vanished, but I doubt that a person with the title of High Commander wouldn't notice when his ruler is missing.
Okay, so let's begin. My party of Rem, Sice and King started off at some junction with a save point. Taking a look around, I can see that this city is actually kind of modern with a futuristic feel. There are steel buildings and skyscrapers here and there. The soldiers run around with guns. They even come in military vehicles. This place has everything it needs to be a warzone. So anyway, as I started heading through the first area, I found that my party was automatically being switched out by a bunch of silhouettes. I wouldn't have had a problem with them, since they were level ten, but they weren't balancing out my party correctly. I was trying to make my party consist of a favorite lead (Rem), a heavy hitter (Sice), and a ranged attacker (King). When the silhouettes would come in, they would come in when everyone was at full health when their purpose is to come in when my party was dying. It was annoying because I would then find myself in a party with shadow figures of Nine and Machina, and I didn't need those characters at the time.
So in the midst of this confusion, I got killed. Rem died and I couldn't bring her back unless I had Phoenix Downs, but I doubt that they are in the demo. This really pissed me off. I had to resort to using Queen as my interchangeable lead for Rem. Tons of experience potential for Rem was completely thrown out the window. As I pushed through the Imperial forces, I began to notice that there were some stronger enemies with more health than others. A couple of these were apparently leaders. What would happen with them would be that if I killed one of them, the rest of my foes would surrender. I killed them before I killed the leaders, though, so I have no idea if this actually works in the demo. I saw a yellow circle around those enemies instead of a red one, and I assume that means that only does a ton of damage rather than instantly kill them, because that is all I've seen happen.
Another thing of interest was some of the enemies I fought. There was one enemy that reminded me of these guys, but it looked a little more robotic. After running through sprawling streets and all, I came across a giant spider robot thing. It was apparently being controlled by someone, so I assume it was one of the many forms of Magitek Armor in the game. What I found cool about running around the city was that I could hear all these people on the radio, which I presume to have been enemy broadcasting. It was a nice touch. What bothered me was that I was getting all these on screen notifications by a moogle and by the game about different things, and since I can't read a lick of Japanese I will never know what or how important that information could've been. There were also these things that kept popping up called S.O's. They are apparently little challenges, like survive a set of enemies without taking damage; however, I would never be able to know what the challenges were since I can't read Japanese, so I had to ignore them.
Getting back to the Magitek Armor boss, it was a pretty vicious battle that seemed impossible. The thing had a ton of health, each attack it did cost me almost two hundred points in damage, and the highest health I have as a character is four hundred. Queen had around three hundred, and as my last valuable lead, I had been worried sick about how things will go for her. After a while, the Magitek Armor would run off and stand on the side of a building, and from there it would just spam rockets. It took me a while to figure out that I was supposed to hide behind several trucks, which would be shot by the rockets and blown out of the way, creating a path forward. However, at the end of this, there were just a bunch of barricades. The mecha would then hang from a skyline ahead of the barricades and continue to spam rockets. There was no way across, and again it took me a while to notice an entrance to one of the buildings. Once inside, that annoying mecha would come at me again. I had to attack it through the doorway, which felt a little awkward. Then, it would climb up to one of the windows and spam more rockets (like, jeez, enough with the rockets!). Finally, after completing my hundred-thousandth dodge roll, the Magitek Armor gave up and ran away. I continued further into the building to be greeted by a save crystal and some circle on the floor that restores all stats. Unfortunately, it didn't revive poor Rem. Sorry Rem, I will be sure that I will know what I am doing the next time we embark on a mission.
After saving, I started heading up the stairs. The interior of this building was very... how do I put it? It was like any other modern steel building facility you could think of, I guess. Nothing was fancy about the building, it had a warehouse feel to it. Again, it gave me a sense of futurism that felt very different from the setting of the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy. As I traversed the hallway, I noticed a fork in the road that lead to some stairwell with a force field in the middle of it, preventing me from going further. I think I needed to accept an S.O challenge, but the risk of failing them would be death, so I didn't want to take any chances. I kept moving forward until all of a sudden, this big yeti looking thing comes out of nowhere and attacks my party. It wasn't really all that bad, though. It kept tripping all over the place and giving me the yellow circle around it. It took me a few tries, but I managed to hit it a couple of times while it was yellow and I managed to knock out a lot of its health. Also, even though I was getting hit a little hard, it wasn't as bad as that Magitek Armor. Besides that, someone was healing me. I believe it was Sice.
So after I killed that random as hell yeti, I kept moving forward and noticed a shiny thing behind a crate. I picked it up and I was notified that I found something, but I have no idea what the hell it was since the name was in Japanese. As I kept going, I found myself in a battle with these three bat things that were from the practice battles in The Forbidden Forest. These guys are so easy, and for some reason the game rewarded me with a Victory Fanfare for killing them (I guess it was just there to let fans know that YES, THERE WILL BE VICTORY FANFARE AGAIN!). That area definitely looked like a warehouse with all these crates and barrels and whatnot, but I couldn't go down to that place. I was rather on some balcony which lead to another hall. Along the way I found another shiny thing, but this time I wasn't even notified that I had found something. Da hell?
At the end of this hallway was none other than a Behemoth, once again on all its fours! Yes, another iconic Behemoth and not a stupid-looking FFXII Wolfman. Those things looked so stupid. This guy was definitely vicious looking, but the fight against him was even scarier than the way he looked. As I tried to take him down, his quick attacks were leaving my entire party at dangerously low health. Also, the fact that this was located in a small room in the building contributed to the difficulty of the fight, given that the monster was about the size of a dragon. After several desperate attempts to heal, Sice and King died and I was left with just seventy health. One more blow from that Behemoth would've ended Queen for me, and then I would've been stuck with Machina or Nine as my lead. I was already facing the inevitable option of placing Ace and Machina in my party as backup, but I couldn't do so because adding party members requires you to do that in real time during the game, and given that the Behemoth was relentless, I had no time to stop and bring those guys out. So I took a last stand as Queen against the Behemoth, mano a mano, and I managed to hit the guy during the incredibly brief period of time that a yellow cirlce showed up on his giant ass. I hit him while that happened, and not only did I bring him down to almost little health (well, I had already knocked down a couple bars of his health, so if you are doing this I wouldn't expect the same thing to happen with full health), I also sort of knocked him out! He was on the floor struggling to get up, and I didn't take any chances then; I mashed the hell out of the melee button and killed that beast for good!
After he died, I healed myself by standing (you can do that in the game. It works better by "sheathing" your weapons with L and R). Then, I brought out Ace and Machina for further assignment, since I figured this was only the beginning. I walked out to the roof of the building, and I guess I could've gotten a good view of this Milites city, but I paid no mind to it. I went down some fire escape, and about halfway down, the mission ended. While it was a sigh of relief for me, I wished I could keep going. The mission then concludes with that last cutscene of Cid saying that somebody left, whoever the hell that person is. Also, at the end of the mission I was taken to a screen that shows my results. I got a D on one thing and a C on everything else. Damn. Also, I think I was rewarded something, but once again I have no idea what it is.
Stay tuned as I figure out which moogle leads me to Mission 2! Will it be Moogle Number 1, the pimp, Moogle Number 2, that blue guy by the door, or Moogle Number 3, the moogle that is constantly whining throughout the game! Find out next time!
Edit: Oh, I have an idea as to who Cid could be talking about! During my short stay in this Milites city, I searched for No. 10 and came back to Hogwarts without him or her. I couldn't find the guy anywhere. However, maybe Cid knows where he is! Maybe that's who he was referring to when he said, "So he's left." That's gotta be No. 10, I just know it!
Edit 2: I found out that those crystal things are apparently the "summer costumes." I don't know which belongs to whom, nor do I see a way to equip them. I'll have it all figured out in the next post.
I lol'd at the part where King returns insults to the soldier. Time to move on. I am on my own from here on out, because the guide on Siliconera sucks and only covers basic information. I especially love the last cutscene, though; the part where the Cid of this game just says that somebody left. Who the hell is he talking about? I assume it's that emperor guy who's mysteriously vanished, but I doubt that a person with the title of High Commander wouldn't notice when his ruler is missing.
Okay, so let's begin. My party of Rem, Sice and King started off at some junction with a save point. Taking a look around, I can see that this city is actually kind of modern with a futuristic feel. There are steel buildings and skyscrapers here and there. The soldiers run around with guns. They even come in military vehicles. This place has everything it needs to be a warzone. So anyway, as I started heading through the first area, I found that my party was automatically being switched out by a bunch of silhouettes. I wouldn't have had a problem with them, since they were level ten, but they weren't balancing out my party correctly. I was trying to make my party consist of a favorite lead (Rem), a heavy hitter (Sice), and a ranged attacker (King). When the silhouettes would come in, they would come in when everyone was at full health when their purpose is to come in when my party was dying. It was annoying because I would then find myself in a party with shadow figures of Nine and Machina, and I didn't need those characters at the time.
So in the midst of this confusion, I got killed. Rem died and I couldn't bring her back unless I had Phoenix Downs, but I doubt that they are in the demo. This really pissed me off. I had to resort to using Queen as my interchangeable lead for Rem. Tons of experience potential for Rem was completely thrown out the window. As I pushed through the Imperial forces, I began to notice that there were some stronger enemies with more health than others. A couple of these were apparently leaders. What would happen with them would be that if I killed one of them, the rest of my foes would surrender. I killed them before I killed the leaders, though, so I have no idea if this actually works in the demo. I saw a yellow circle around those enemies instead of a red one, and I assume that means that only does a ton of damage rather than instantly kill them, because that is all I've seen happen.
Another thing of interest was some of the enemies I fought. There was one enemy that reminded me of these guys, but it looked a little more robotic. After running through sprawling streets and all, I came across a giant spider robot thing. It was apparently being controlled by someone, so I assume it was one of the many forms of Magitek Armor in the game. What I found cool about running around the city was that I could hear all these people on the radio, which I presume to have been enemy broadcasting. It was a nice touch. What bothered me was that I was getting all these on screen notifications by a moogle and by the game about different things, and since I can't read a lick of Japanese I will never know what or how important that information could've been. There were also these things that kept popping up called S.O's. They are apparently little challenges, like survive a set of enemies without taking damage; however, I would never be able to know what the challenges were since I can't read Japanese, so I had to ignore them.
Getting back to the Magitek Armor boss, it was a pretty vicious battle that seemed impossible. The thing had a ton of health, each attack it did cost me almost two hundred points in damage, and the highest health I have as a character is four hundred. Queen had around three hundred, and as my last valuable lead, I had been worried sick about how things will go for her. After a while, the Magitek Armor would run off and stand on the side of a building, and from there it would just spam rockets. It took me a while to figure out that I was supposed to hide behind several trucks, which would be shot by the rockets and blown out of the way, creating a path forward. However, at the end of this, there were just a bunch of barricades. The mecha would then hang from a skyline ahead of the barricades and continue to spam rockets. There was no way across, and again it took me a while to notice an entrance to one of the buildings. Once inside, that annoying mecha would come at me again. I had to attack it through the doorway, which felt a little awkward. Then, it would climb up to one of the windows and spam more rockets (like, jeez, enough with the rockets!). Finally, after completing my hundred-thousandth dodge roll, the Magitek Armor gave up and ran away. I continued further into the building to be greeted by a save crystal and some circle on the floor that restores all stats. Unfortunately, it didn't revive poor Rem. Sorry Rem, I will be sure that I will know what I am doing the next time we embark on a mission.
After saving, I started heading up the stairs. The interior of this building was very... how do I put it? It was like any other modern steel building facility you could think of, I guess. Nothing was fancy about the building, it had a warehouse feel to it. Again, it gave me a sense of futurism that felt very different from the setting of the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy. As I traversed the hallway, I noticed a fork in the road that lead to some stairwell with a force field in the middle of it, preventing me from going further. I think I needed to accept an S.O challenge, but the risk of failing them would be death, so I didn't want to take any chances. I kept moving forward until all of a sudden, this big yeti looking thing comes out of nowhere and attacks my party. It wasn't really all that bad, though. It kept tripping all over the place and giving me the yellow circle around it. It took me a few tries, but I managed to hit it a couple of times while it was yellow and I managed to knock out a lot of its health. Also, even though I was getting hit a little hard, it wasn't as bad as that Magitek Armor. Besides that, someone was healing me. I believe it was Sice.
So after I killed that random as hell yeti, I kept moving forward and noticed a shiny thing behind a crate. I picked it up and I was notified that I found something, but I have no idea what the hell it was since the name was in Japanese. As I kept going, I found myself in a battle with these three bat things that were from the practice battles in The Forbidden Forest. These guys are so easy, and for some reason the game rewarded me with a Victory Fanfare for killing them (I guess it was just there to let fans know that YES, THERE WILL BE VICTORY FANFARE AGAIN!). That area definitely looked like a warehouse with all these crates and barrels and whatnot, but I couldn't go down to that place. I was rather on some balcony which lead to another hall. Along the way I found another shiny thing, but this time I wasn't even notified that I had found something. Da hell?
At the end of this hallway was none other than a Behemoth, once again on all its fours! Yes, another iconic Behemoth and not a stupid-looking FFXII Wolfman. Those things looked so stupid. This guy was definitely vicious looking, but the fight against him was even scarier than the way he looked. As I tried to take him down, his quick attacks were leaving my entire party at dangerously low health. Also, the fact that this was located in a small room in the building contributed to the difficulty of the fight, given that the monster was about the size of a dragon. After several desperate attempts to heal, Sice and King died and I was left with just seventy health. One more blow from that Behemoth would've ended Queen for me, and then I would've been stuck with Machina or Nine as my lead. I was already facing the inevitable option of placing Ace and Machina in my party as backup, but I couldn't do so because adding party members requires you to do that in real time during the game, and given that the Behemoth was relentless, I had no time to stop and bring those guys out. So I took a last stand as Queen against the Behemoth, mano a mano, and I managed to hit the guy during the incredibly brief period of time that a yellow cirlce showed up on his giant ass. I hit him while that happened, and not only did I bring him down to almost little health (well, I had already knocked down a couple bars of his health, so if you are doing this I wouldn't expect the same thing to happen with full health), I also sort of knocked him out! He was on the floor struggling to get up, and I didn't take any chances then; I mashed the hell out of the melee button and killed that beast for good!
After he died, I healed myself by standing (you can do that in the game. It works better by "sheathing" your weapons with L and R). Then, I brought out Ace and Machina for further assignment, since I figured this was only the beginning. I walked out to the roof of the building, and I guess I could've gotten a good view of this Milites city, but I paid no mind to it. I went down some fire escape, and about halfway down, the mission ended. While it was a sigh of relief for me, I wished I could keep going. The mission then concludes with that last cutscene of Cid saying that somebody left, whoever the hell that person is. Also, at the end of the mission I was taken to a screen that shows my results. I got a D on one thing and a C on everything else. Damn. Also, I think I was rewarded something, but once again I have no idea what it is.
Stay tuned as I figure out which moogle leads me to Mission 2! Will it be Moogle Number 1, the pimp, Moogle Number 2, that blue guy by the door, or Moogle Number 3, the moogle that is constantly whining throughout the game! Find out next time!
Edit: Oh, I have an idea as to who Cid could be talking about! During my short stay in this Milites city, I searched for No. 10 and came back to Hogwarts without him or her. I couldn't find the guy anywhere. However, maybe Cid knows where he is! Maybe that's who he was referring to when he said, "So he's left." That's gotta be No. 10, I just know it!
Edit 2: I found out that those crystal things are apparently the "summer costumes." I don't know which belongs to whom, nor do I see a way to equip them. I'll have it all figured out in the next post.
Type-0 Demo Playthrough: Prelude
Okay, I have downloaded the game and it actually works! The problem is, I have no idea what the hell I am doing here. On the very first screen, I am given the option to choose between two things, and I don't see what I am supposed to pick since it is all in Japanese. I'll just go with the failsafe choice of always selecting the top choice.
Okay, I assume that choice led me to a trailer, because that's what I just saw. Showed off many things, but not much of it was really new to me. I am sure that there is a video of it on Youtube somewhere. I remember seeing many of the scenes in the video with English subtitles, but I don't remember what the hell anyone was talking about. Oh well, let's get on with the game already!
You know what, I am just going to post the videos so that I won't have to describe them. Let's start with the demo's opening scenes.
So as you can see, a ton of crazy stuff is happening. I was hoping that the guy you see all bloody and dying next to a chocobo would be No. 10, but it seems he is Izana, Machina's older brother. Since he is not of much interest to this demo, I am going to move on from him. As he dies and people are being obliterated left and right, the game's supposed protagonist Ace comes to his side and tries to help him, and another one of Square's newest hotties by the name of Queen walks by and tells Ace that there's nothing that can be done (I especially like the glasses, that's a new touch). I presume this is because their magic crystal I mentioned in another post had been taken by now. In any case, they abandon the guy for no reason I can particularly fathom. The scene moves on to Machina and Rem, another cutie, who discuss that the powers of their crystal seem to be returning. Cool, let's go kill things already!
It appears that I start off in the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy, playing as the cute Rem girl I just mentioned. I tried using some of the attack controls and all to see her moves, but I guess I can't do so inside a non hostile environment. Oh well, let's move on. Pretty interesting red screens they have here. They're like doors; I guess they're there to keep outsiders out. I tried going out through the door behind me, but some moogle is whining and not letting me go that way. I guess the only way forward is literally forward. After heading out the door ahead of me, I found myself where I was trying to go in the first place: the school's courtyard. It is a lively place with many kiddos running around and funny looking moogles floating all over the place. There is a fountain statue in the center of some bird that isn't all that much of interest. Looking up, I can see the top of the main buildings of the school, but there is a tower that extends out of view. I tried moving the camera up some more to get a better view of Rem's skirt, if you know what I'm saying, but the camera doesn't let me do that. However, when i do a dodge roll, I can get a very brief glimpse at her white panties. AWWWW YEEEAAAHHHH.
Alright, enough with the tomfoolery, let's head into Hogwarts now. I have to talk to a blue moogle to get inside, so let's talk to him. Once inside... DAMN this place is sweet! I can see myself spending hours here! It's just a living room area, but it has this Eighteenth Century Elizabethan feel to it. I love it! There are several characters here with blue and red icons over their heads. The blue icons indicate area changes, like the blue moogle I spoke to, to friends and item shops and etc. The Red icons indicate quest characters and whatnot. The guide on Siliconera says to speak to some black moogle in the center of the room, which I swear to god looks like a pimp. He has three options, the first is to practice battle, the second is to start the first mission, and the third is to stop talking to him. I decided to go with Practice Battle so that way I can get a feel for the game already.
Alright, so here's the lowdown. The battle practice took me to some forest to practice my moves (I think this also happens in Harry Potter where Harry and his classmates are sent to practice magic in the Forbidden Forest. Square is definitely pulling a Harry Potter ripoff here). Triangle does normal melee attacks, which are supposedly weak but I found myself able to make short work of my opponents with melee attacks. Then I tried using her other abilities. Square does magic, which was a shotgun blast of lighting. The more you charge it up, the more powerful it is, but I think it costs more MP as well. Circle does a special ability, but I haven't quite figured out the proponents of the Circle attack yet. I am going to go into The Forbidden Forest again to try it out some more, but from what I've seen, it is the most powerful attack. X supposedly blocks, but I have yet to see that happen. I just dodged rolled and charged up a cure spell. I also nearly got whooped by a bunch of weird dog things. I am going to try that again because I was really unsatisfied with how that went.
Okay, so the Circle attack does cost MP. It can be charged up as well to do more damage than it already does. The melee attack, as far as I can see, can't be charged, but when I held down triangle Rem just kept attacking, but I prefer to button mash. I was able to keep doing more rounds at the end of the whole thing, but unfortunately I had to stop and go back to the Elizabethan salon or else I would eventually die. I leveled up a couple of times by doing this, by the way. It turns out that the Crystarium in this game is what you use to power up spells. I don't want to mess with it just yet, though. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, after you kill an enemy, you can lock onto its corpse and absorb something called Phantoma, which I presume to be the creature's ghost. It gives back some MP, and I think it also gives you points to spend for the Crystarium. Also, when you lock on to an enemy, you'll sometimes see the target thing change to a red circle. As far as I see, it means Instant Death as Square calls it. When you hit the enemy with that red circle around them, it kills them automatically. I think it works with just about any normal enemy in the game, but I am not too sure. I am going to train just a little more, and then I'll continue with this game.
Well, I think I am done practicing for now. I have gotten the hang of the controls and stuff. I was able to summon Shiva, but using her was a nightmare. She was impossible to control as she was sliding all over the place with her ice rollerskates. Plus, I killed myself to summon her and the practice battle ended. Thankfully I didn't get a game over on the demo of the freaking game. That would've been so embarrassing. Let's move on plotwise now, because this damn moogle is constantly kupo-whining at me about something.
Before I move on, I am going to read this guy's information on the game. He is lists the different qualities of each character and states that he didn't like Rem too much. I beg to differ, I think she is a wonderful character. He said that her magic was weak, but her fire magic was doing two hundred hit points for me, so I have no idea what he's talking about. Since I can go through each character, it looks like I am going to be spending a little more time in The Forbidden Forest. I am going to check out this Nine guy, since he has a lance and the Jump ability and is therefore the Dragoon of the game.
Nine seemed pretty cool to me, but what sucks about him is that he is useless against flying enemies. His standard move is a thrust of his lance, and he doesn't aim at the target, so flying enemies are definitely not an adversary I would want to face. Let's see, who's next here... Ah, it's Queen! Remember, the hot chick with the glasses? Let's check her out. The guy says that she's cool, so let's see if there is more to her than just her looks.
She's pretty good. I still like Rem better, I don't know why. I guess it's a first character first serve loyalty thing. However, Queen is definitely better than Nine. Like Nine, she also attacks in a straight line, but she seems to do a jump whenever I am fighting a flying adversary. She has this blizzard attack that you sort of use a first person aiming thing, and that shoots a "missile" of ice that hits pretty hard and freezes enemies, it seems. Her ability is this cross of energy that heals allies and hurts enemies. Damage done to them is transferred as health. However, it only seems useful with other party members present. Let's check out Ace now. (Ugh, it's the boy with cards. How the hell do you use cards in a fight?)
Ace can be a potentially good character, but he is really weak. Two hits and I am already close to death. Also, he has no reliable method of healing himself. I doubt Nine does, neither, but he at least has better health. Queen and Rem so far are the only characters I've seen that can heal themselves. Ace's fighting style is pretty neat, I admit. Seeing his cards fly around and kill enemies is reminiscent of Luxford from Organization XIII (this whole Class Zero is actually reminiscent of Organization XIII). Also, when he dodge rolls, he teleports through his cards somehow. His special ability, Deck Open, allows you to draw four random cards which can do a variety of things. This includes restoring health and MP, but it is not very reliable as it is random. Besides, you will find yourself down to low health pretty soon after healing anyway.
Next we have Sice, the emo girl of Class Zero that runs around with a giant scythe as her name implies. The author of the article said she was a great character, let's see if I can agree... Well, damn, she actually is really good. In my opinion, she is the heaviest hitter, and she moves pretty damn fast for someone holding an oversized scythe. Her thunder magic is pretty cool to watch, and her Dark Nebula attack is pretty strong although I don't find it really all that spectacular. Again, I like Rem better. Queen might be in competition with Sice, though.
Okay, next we have King, the guy with the two guns. I have always been interested in King, he kind of reminds me of Balthier for some reason. The author says he is really strong with his abilities and all... Well, I agree. I like him a lot better than Ace and Nine. He is really strong, health wise. He tends to lose accuracy with his guns as targets get a little out of range, but that's okay. His blizzard bomb is powerful, and his Powered Bullet attack is even more so. Last we have Machina, who I have always been interested in playing as well. The guy complains he is slow, but I have handled slow characters before, so maybe this guy won't be so bad.
Machina is actually pretty good, but I am not so sure if he is really as good as I think he is. I am going to have to check him out later on during the actual missions. So far, I have my party system set up. Rem, Sice, and King are my primary three. Queen will have to play Rem's role in my reserve party as the two are pretty much interchangeable, in both battle skills and appearance! Following Queen will be Ace and Machina, to test him out for a bit. I might end up switching him out with Nine. I know I had originally taken a large interest in him due to his Dragoon role, but he's just not that spectacular.
Well, I am going to hit the hay for now. Tomorrow I am going to level up my characters a bit before I move on with the game. Then I'll cover Mission 1 here. Stay tuned!
Okay, I assume that choice led me to a trailer, because that's what I just saw. Showed off many things, but not much of it was really new to me. I am sure that there is a video of it on Youtube somewhere. I remember seeing many of the scenes in the video with English subtitles, but I don't remember what the hell anyone was talking about. Oh well, let's get on with the game already!
You know what, I am just going to post the videos so that I won't have to describe them. Let's start with the demo's opening scenes.
So as you can see, a ton of crazy stuff is happening. I was hoping that the guy you see all bloody and dying next to a chocobo would be No. 10, but it seems he is Izana, Machina's older brother. Since he is not of much interest to this demo, I am going to move on from him. As he dies and people are being obliterated left and right, the game's supposed protagonist Ace comes to his side and tries to help him, and another one of Square's newest hotties by the name of Queen walks by and tells Ace that there's nothing that can be done (I especially like the glasses, that's a new touch). I presume this is because their magic crystal I mentioned in another post had been taken by now. In any case, they abandon the guy for no reason I can particularly fathom. The scene moves on to Machina and Rem, another cutie, who discuss that the powers of their crystal seem to be returning. Cool, let's go kill things already!
It appears that I start off in the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy, playing as the cute Rem girl I just mentioned. I tried using some of the attack controls and all to see her moves, but I guess I can't do so inside a non hostile environment. Oh well, let's move on. Pretty interesting red screens they have here. They're like doors; I guess they're there to keep outsiders out. I tried going out through the door behind me, but some moogle is whining and not letting me go that way. I guess the only way forward is literally forward. After heading out the door ahead of me, I found myself where I was trying to go in the first place: the school's courtyard. It is a lively place with many kiddos running around and funny looking moogles floating all over the place. There is a fountain statue in the center of some bird that isn't all that much of interest. Looking up, I can see the top of the main buildings of the school, but there is a tower that extends out of view. I tried moving the camera up some more to get a better view of Rem's skirt, if you know what I'm saying, but the camera doesn't let me do that. However, when i do a dodge roll, I can get a very brief glimpse at her white panties. AWWWW YEEEAAAHHHH.
Alright, enough with the tomfoolery, let's head into Hogwarts now. I have to talk to a blue moogle to get inside, so let's talk to him. Once inside... DAMN this place is sweet! I can see myself spending hours here! It's just a living room area, but it has this Eighteenth Century Elizabethan feel to it. I love it! There are several characters here with blue and red icons over their heads. The blue icons indicate area changes, like the blue moogle I spoke to, to friends and item shops and etc. The Red icons indicate quest characters and whatnot. The guide on Siliconera says to speak to some black moogle in the center of the room, which I swear to god looks like a pimp. He has three options, the first is to practice battle, the second is to start the first mission, and the third is to stop talking to him. I decided to go with Practice Battle so that way I can get a feel for the game already.
Alright, so here's the lowdown. The battle practice took me to some forest to practice my moves (I think this also happens in Harry Potter where Harry and his classmates are sent to practice magic in the Forbidden Forest. Square is definitely pulling a Harry Potter ripoff here). Triangle does normal melee attacks, which are supposedly weak but I found myself able to make short work of my opponents with melee attacks. Then I tried using her other abilities. Square does magic, which was a shotgun blast of lighting. The more you charge it up, the more powerful it is, but I think it costs more MP as well. Circle does a special ability, but I haven't quite figured out the proponents of the Circle attack yet. I am going to go into The Forbidden Forest again to try it out some more, but from what I've seen, it is the most powerful attack. X supposedly blocks, but I have yet to see that happen. I just dodged rolled and charged up a cure spell. I also nearly got whooped by a bunch of weird dog things. I am going to try that again because I was really unsatisfied with how that went.
Okay, so the Circle attack does cost MP. It can be charged up as well to do more damage than it already does. The melee attack, as far as I can see, can't be charged, but when I held down triangle Rem just kept attacking, but I prefer to button mash. I was able to keep doing more rounds at the end of the whole thing, but unfortunately I had to stop and go back to the Elizabethan salon or else I would eventually die. I leveled up a couple of times by doing this, by the way. It turns out that the Crystarium in this game is what you use to power up spells. I don't want to mess with it just yet, though. Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention, after you kill an enemy, you can lock onto its corpse and absorb something called Phantoma, which I presume to be the creature's ghost. It gives back some MP, and I think it also gives you points to spend for the Crystarium. Also, when you lock on to an enemy, you'll sometimes see the target thing change to a red circle. As far as I see, it means Instant Death as Square calls it. When you hit the enemy with that red circle around them, it kills them automatically. I think it works with just about any normal enemy in the game, but I am not too sure. I am going to train just a little more, and then I'll continue with this game.
Well, I think I am done practicing for now. I have gotten the hang of the controls and stuff. I was able to summon Shiva, but using her was a nightmare. She was impossible to control as she was sliding all over the place with her ice rollerskates. Plus, I killed myself to summon her and the practice battle ended. Thankfully I didn't get a game over on the demo of the freaking game. That would've been so embarrassing. Let's move on plotwise now, because this damn moogle is constantly kupo-whining at me about something.
Before I move on, I am going to read this guy's information on the game. He is lists the different qualities of each character and states that he didn't like Rem too much. I beg to differ, I think she is a wonderful character. He said that her magic was weak, but her fire magic was doing two hundred hit points for me, so I have no idea what he's talking about. Since I can go through each character, it looks like I am going to be spending a little more time in The Forbidden Forest. I am going to check out this Nine guy, since he has a lance and the Jump ability and is therefore the Dragoon of the game.
Nine seemed pretty cool to me, but what sucks about him is that he is useless against flying enemies. His standard move is a thrust of his lance, and he doesn't aim at the target, so flying enemies are definitely not an adversary I would want to face. Let's see, who's next here... Ah, it's Queen! Remember, the hot chick with the glasses? Let's check her out. The guy says that she's cool, so let's see if there is more to her than just her looks.
She's pretty good. I still like Rem better, I don't know why. I guess it's a first character first serve loyalty thing. However, Queen is definitely better than Nine. Like Nine, she also attacks in a straight line, but she seems to do a jump whenever I am fighting a flying adversary. She has this blizzard attack that you sort of use a first person aiming thing, and that shoots a "missile" of ice that hits pretty hard and freezes enemies, it seems. Her ability is this cross of energy that heals allies and hurts enemies. Damage done to them is transferred as health. However, it only seems useful with other party members present. Let's check out Ace now. (Ugh, it's the boy with cards. How the hell do you use cards in a fight?)
Ace can be a potentially good character, but he is really weak. Two hits and I am already close to death. Also, he has no reliable method of healing himself. I doubt Nine does, neither, but he at least has better health. Queen and Rem so far are the only characters I've seen that can heal themselves. Ace's fighting style is pretty neat, I admit. Seeing his cards fly around and kill enemies is reminiscent of Luxford from Organization XIII (this whole Class Zero is actually reminiscent of Organization XIII). Also, when he dodge rolls, he teleports through his cards somehow. His special ability, Deck Open, allows you to draw four random cards which can do a variety of things. This includes restoring health and MP, but it is not very reliable as it is random. Besides, you will find yourself down to low health pretty soon after healing anyway.
Next we have Sice, the emo girl of Class Zero that runs around with a giant scythe as her name implies. The author of the article said she was a great character, let's see if I can agree... Well, damn, she actually is really good. In my opinion, she is the heaviest hitter, and she moves pretty damn fast for someone holding an oversized scythe. Her thunder magic is pretty cool to watch, and her Dark Nebula attack is pretty strong although I don't find it really all that spectacular. Again, I like Rem better. Queen might be in competition with Sice, though.
Okay, next we have King, the guy with the two guns. I have always been interested in King, he kind of reminds me of Balthier for some reason. The author says he is really strong with his abilities and all... Well, I agree. I like him a lot better than Ace and Nine. He is really strong, health wise. He tends to lose accuracy with his guns as targets get a little out of range, but that's okay. His blizzard bomb is powerful, and his Powered Bullet attack is even more so. Last we have Machina, who I have always been interested in playing as well. The guy complains he is slow, but I have handled slow characters before, so maybe this guy won't be so bad.
Machina is actually pretty good, but I am not so sure if he is really as good as I think he is. I am going to have to check him out later on during the actual missions. So far, I have my party system set up. Rem, Sice, and King are my primary three. Queen will have to play Rem's role in my reserve party as the two are pretty much interchangeable, in both battle skills and appearance! Following Queen will be Ace and Machina, to test him out for a bit. I might end up switching him out with Nine. I know I had originally taken a large interest in him due to his Dragoon role, but he's just not that spectacular.
Well, I am going to hit the hay for now. Tomorrow I am going to level up my characters a bit before I move on with the game. Then I'll cover Mission 1 here. Stay tuned!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Type-0 Demo
It turns out that the demo of the game wasn't just for a bunch of Japanese people who attended the demo event. The folks at Siliconera shared this awesome article here that gives links and instructions on how to download the demo, either via PSN Japan or the company's website (I personally went with the other link to the company's website, as that is the method that Siliconera explains and to get the demo off of Japanese PSN you need a JPSN account, which sounds a little complicated to me since I am an English noob).
The article also gives lovely links to other articles that explain the game's controls an whatnot. I don't know if it's included on that page, but here's a link to a guide for the demo. This should be interesting. Expect a playthrough, and this time I am ABSOLUTELY SERIOUS about it. I know I said I would do FFXIII and Dissidia 012, and I know I never got around to doing them. I can't find the time to do it. However, given that this is a demo, things might be different. Let's see if I can at least find No. 10 during my brief aventure into FF Typo.
The article also gives lovely links to other articles that explain the game's controls an whatnot. I don't know if it's included on that page, but here's a link to a guide for the demo. This should be interesting. Expect a playthrough, and this time I am ABSOLUTELY SERIOUS about it. I know I said I would do FFXIII and Dissidia 012, and I know I never got around to doing them. I can't find the time to do it. However, given that this is a demo, things might be different. Let's see if I can at least find No. 10 during my brief aventure into FF Typo.
Final Fantasy Type-0
Well, the first thing that I read about this game is that the gameplay is centered around magic. It is something that the characters rely on since they are aligned with a crystal of magic or something. It seems to me that the game is going to start off at some school of magic, and with that I see that Square is now trying to make a Final Fantasy version of Harry Potter. I remember when I noticed a ton of similarities between Final Fantasy XII and Star Wars. Maybe Square is trying to do something where they recreate various movie series. Next thing I know, there will be a Final Fantasy with an eccentric detective who sets off on some adventure with a friend who has some Japanese-ish variant of the name John H. Watson.
So the first thing of interest to me is the class of characters. Class Zero, as they are named, is the group of youngsters who embark on this story. Each character is ridiculously named after a trump (playing card), and they are given their own number. At first, I read that the class consisted of twelve characters, but after I skimmed through the list I saw that the last guy was No. 13. The Final Fantasy Wiki stated many times that there were twelve characters in the class, and I didn't understand at first how they could make the mistake of saying that there were twelve characters numerous times on both the Final Fantasy Type-0 page and the Class Zero page. Then I looked through the students again, and I noticed that No. 10 wasn't listed. Uh oh. What the hell happened to No. 10? Who is he/she anyway? Nothing on the wiki even hints that they had a clue that there wasn't a No. 10. There's no reference to any interviews with the directors of the game where somebody asked the question "who's No. 10," which leads me to assume that nobody ever noticed that No. 10 was missing. Am I seriously the only one here who noticed that there is a student missing in the Hogwarts School of Final Fantasy?
Actually, the school is named Peristylium Suzaku, the first part of the name meaning "garden" in Latin (I know a little Latin. Cool, huh?). When I noticed that, I realized that this game was starting to feel a little similar to Final Fantasy VIII... a little too similar. Any similarity with that game, aside from the gunblade, is too similar. The gunblade itself was something that I found rather stupid until Lightning received the perfected version of the weapon.
Another plus I see in FF Type-0 (I'm going to call it "Typo," from now on, because of how they changed the name) is the party system. As in FFXII, this game allows you to chose a party of three and switch between party members at any time; and when the lead member dies, you can switch in someone else from the list of fourteen playable characters (two "transfer students" are also in Class Zero, but they don't have official trump card names like the rest of the bozos in the class, so I guess they aren't considered cool enough to be a numbered student. Whatever). I like this party system much better than in Final Fantasy XIII, but I suppose in FFXIII that kind of system wouldn't make sense given the pace of battle. However, Square said that Typo is supposed to be the fastest version of their ATB battle system yet. I can never figure out a damn thing of what they mean by their ambiguous statements such as that.
Let's talk more about the setting. Above is the Hogwarts Final Fantasy Edition school where Class Zero studies magic. It's good to know that it is not as ridiculous-looking as Balamb Garden. It actually looks like an authentic school, and in my opinion it gives off that magical feel. Unfortunately, other than the school and the map, I haven't really seen anything else from Typo's world. I assume that this game is not future-esque like in FFVII, FFVIII, FFX, and FFXIII, which I always found interesting about Square's RPGs. It's okay with me though, because I am starting to take interest in the fantasy themes and all. The world, I presume, is called Oriens, and is divided into four nations, which are the Suzaku Fiefdom of Rubrum, the Milites Empire, the Lorican Alliance, and the Kingdom of Concordia. That school is from Suzaku. I don't have much to say about Suzaku and Concordia since neither page on the wiki provided a suffice amount of quality pictures for me to look at. The Milites Empire seems to be technologically advanced as there seems to be asphalt roads, steel buildings with lights and all that other crap, and mecha running around (which happened to be named Magitek Armor. Interesting). The Lorican Alliance looks like a European city, like something out of Rome or Austria from old history.
Apparently, what's going on is that the Empire wants each nation's crystal for themselves, so they are invading each country with their specialization in weapons due to their crystal. They are easily able to take over the nations of Lexington and Concord... I mean Lorican and Concordia. Apparently, those two nations found themselves stuck with the lame crystals, as Lorican's crystal is the Crystal of Shielding and Concordia's crystal is the Crystal of Dragons. You would think that the Crystal of Dragons sounds pretty badass to be considered a lame crystal, but it has to be stupid because the Empire is apparently able to overcome the adversary shown below.
So all that is left is the nation Rubrum. Apparently, Rubrum proves to be a difficult adversary to the Empire. However, I also read that the students of Class Zero are trying to get their crystal back in this game. The stupid idiots on the Final Fantasy Wiki are never clear with what they write. If that is the story, a bunch of kiddos fighting a huge imperial government, it sounds interesting. I just hope that the game does not turn into another Final Fantasy VIII. Square said that the game is hardly similar to the other FFXIII titles, which is why they removed the Agito XIII part of the title and replaced it with Typo, but I don't see the lack of similarity. Apparently in Versus XIII, it is exactly the same concept. A city with a crystal is under attack by other people who wish to have it, because apparently the crystals of their cities "died" or something. How is that not anything like Typo? Whatever, at least in that sense I can assume rightfully that the game will hardly be as annoying as FFVIII was. It also seems that I am noticing things that nobody else is noticing today. On terms of Final Fantasy, first I noticed the notorious missing student No. 10 whom the idiots of FFWiki failed to pay any mind to, and now it is how this game has the same concept as Versus XIII and Square doesn't realize it. I don't really mind the latter, but I am very interested to know just who is the ominous No. 10?
I guess he or she was somebody who wasn't created because Square couldn't think of a cool name for the character. You could clearly see that they were running out of ideas with the names since No. 7, No. 8, and No. 9 were named Seven, Eight, and Nine respectively, when they could've been named Mullet, Ocho, and Nina, also respectively. I guess when they got to ten, they thought, "Shit, what the hell do we name this guy? Screw it, let's go on to the easy ones, the court cards. Jack, Queen, and King. There, simple as that." Ten could've been named Dime or Sawbuck, but I guess that never came across their minds. And where's the Joker? Why isn't he included in Class Zero as the class clown? Goddamn it Square, there goes another perfectly good character. For that purpose, when the game comes out, I will be deliberately keeping an eye out for No. 10 and the Joker student.
Then again, the game might never be released here. So far, only a Japanese release has been listed. America and Europe haven't even been mentioned... Wait, I take that back, because the director of the game said he was trying to make the game "appeal to North Americans." That could mean anything, though, but I will keep an eye out for any information on a release date. Hopefully that will be at least a week before it's time to head on over to Tallahassee.
Edit: As a matter of fact, it turns out that Cater, Cinque, and Sice aren't even real names for cards as well. Something is definitely up with Square's naming system for this game. The name of the moogle is even ridiculous, it's Hattsumikamine Rōtoyōsuna Eripuruchi. Talk about the longest damn name in the world. I wonder if the voice actors in the game have to go through the trouble of pronouncing that whole goddamn thing. That name should definitely say something about whether Square is really considering releasing this game overseas.
Edit 2: Cinque is actually a card name for five, but it apparently is no longer used. I still don't see anything on Sice and Cater
Edit 3: Sice and Cater are apparently names for the sides of dice. That clears up the confusion. I still don't know what the hell happened to No. 10.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)