Final Fantasy I

Final Fantasy is one of those games that has haunted me for awhile. Ever since I picked up Final Fantasy Origins when it came out, I've tried playing through it several times, only to get bored about halfway through and abandon it. Thus, this ended up being on the top of my list for "Games I'll Complete For This Blog", and boy, do I have a lot to say about it.

This game is nearly universally praised by both fans and criticize. People who I know to be tough reviewers heap praise on it. Me, myself? I didn't care for it. This will go alongside Final Fantasy VII as one of the most overrated games I have ever played.

I'm going to start by saying I usually enjoy playing NES games of long running franchises, because it's interesting to see the series stripped down to the essentials. However, this is the first turn-based RPG I've played for it, and I'm starting to see that some advancements are made for a reason.

At the start, you customize your character with a name and classes, either Warrior, Thief, Monk, Black Mage, White Mage, and Red Mage. I picked Warrior, Monk, Red Mage, and White Mage, and through that I saw how unbalanced the whole thing is. The Fighter does damage if you can sink gil into equipment, while the Monk does massive damage unarmed. Red Mage was useful in the beginning but started playing can't catch up, while White Mage was good for healing and not much else.

The entire time I was playing this, I was wondering if maybe there was something about the battle system I was missing. It seemed like I was always at a disadvantage, dealing with powerful monsters. Only many weren't powerful in the sense being strong, but having instant-death attacks, stone, poison, or paralyze. And those that really were heavy hitters were still pretty cheap, since in this game there are only potions, which you can only carry a certain amount of, and have to administer one at a time. I was literally more afraid of random encounters than of bosses.

Mages can heal, but you're going to want to stop and think. Each magic user has levels of spells, of which they can learn three each, and each level has charges. And only a few charges. This is not like any other RPG I played, you really have to stop and think whether or not you want to use your magic. This is good, actually, but I'll discuss it more in a moment.

The plot of this game is "There a four fiends, go kill them." While I appreciate simple plots in games, in RPGs they can be a curse, since you have no idea where to go or what to do. Navigating can be a real problem, and it was likely made worse by the fact that I couldn't figure out how to bring up the map until much later in the game. Yeah, I can be an idiot.

Also, this might be an Origins thing, but NPCs would often park themselves right in my path and then take their sweet time moving. That might seem petty, but man was it annoying.

I was growing frustrated by the game by the Flying Fortress, and decided to forget about 100% completion and just beat the game. This turned out to be a mistake, because as it turns out doing that is what was keeping my levels up. Chaos trashed me. But then, after doing all the side stuff, I thrashed him.

So, here's what I wanted to talk about. I've been saying that the difficulty in this game is unbalanced, but then I thought: how exactly do you make a turn based RPG hard any other way? I really don't know. Final Fantasy VII isn't hard, Dragon Quest IV isn't hard, Pokemon and Super Mario RPG weren't hard once I knew what I was doing. Playing it, I realized how illiterate in RPGs I was.

I have a reserve of turn-based RPG series to play: Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Breath of Fire, Pokemon, Digimon World, Phantasy Star, and others. Thus, my review might be considered incomplete until I can better know this style. But for now, thumbs down.

Rating: 4/10

Evil Dead 2

Alright, so the follow up. Here we go:

The film actually retcons the first one by stating it was only Ash and his girlfriend. It then continues where the first one ended, with Ash struggling to survive the Deadites, and the cabin's real owners showing up.

Going into this series, I knew there was a slant into the humorous as the series went on. As such, I was expecting something much funnier movie. And it was, for the first half. But then the second half, when the others show up, it becomes more straight. Never the complete horror of the first movie, but a lot of the humor seems to be sucked out.

I read a theory that Ash lost his mind, and I can see that. The final scene before the others show up is everything in the cabin laughing, and Ash laughing madly with them. I think they were implying Ash was hallucinating a lot before meeting others that grounded him more in reality.

I was cringing when the newcomers though Ash was a murderer, because I've seen that in too many horror films (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th Part VI, Leprechaun 2), but thankfully the truth comes out pretty quick.

Now, the first humor half I loved. Ash's hand, his undead girlfriend, the laughing stuff, was the most memorable part. The second half was okay, but I don't really remember a whole lot about it.

The ends with a lead in to Army of Darkness, which I really want to see. Maybe next year.

Freaks

I first heard of this movie through James Rolfe's Monster Madness. Then it turned out it was in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Then I heard it was on Turner Classic Movies, so I saw it.

It might seem like this is a horror film, and it's often marketed as such, but it's really. It's really a film about people.

Plot: In a circus, a group of "freaks" (played by real people with deformities) live in a society. A little person named Hans falls in love with a trapeze artist named Cleopatra. At first, she just leads him on for her amusement, but then she finds out that he has a lot of money, and decides to marry him, then kill him.

The large part of the movie is just the "freaks" interact, showing they are really just normal people. There's a man with no legs, another with no limbs, Siamese twins, the works. You can forget their different, they're just people trying to get by.

The main plot, I really felt for. I know what it's like to be led on like that. I sympathized with Hans far more than I expected. I've never experienced it to this level, but I know what it's like to be a walking punch line, to be used. So... yeah. It hit me.

There was one scene that everyone says is scary. It's where the freaks take their vengeance on Cleo. But it didn't scare me.

This movie was ahead of it's time, it really was. See it at least once.

Sonic & Mega Man: October 2013

This month... I’m at a loss for things to talk about.

Sonic the Hedgehog #253

More exploring the new world. The Dark Egg Legion is now the Egg Army, with a new leader, Axel, who apparently has no robotic limbs. Rotor is back with no bad back, and is apparently stronger. Antoine and Bunnie are back to normal, plot lines abandoned, yadda yadda.

It's mostly a build up issue. Apparently reality is unraveling, and everything's being set up.

Sonic Universe # 57

I really wish I had already played Sonic Rush Adventure. Captain Whisker and Johnny Turbo show up, and Nega is mentioned, so... I'm in the dark. It's like the issues where a lot of characters I haven't seen yet show up: there's too much and I'm lost.

I like Bean and Bark working with the crew, even though I'm back to not being able to see them as villains. They're just too goofy, I guess. Marine continues to be a load.

But Captain Metal... wow. That last panel made him appeal to me.It looks very Ratchet & Clank to me, if that makes sense. But... why have him when there's already Captain Whisker?

Mega Man # 30

Okay, I'm not sure how I feel about how Mega Man wants to spare the Robot Masters. I really hate "thou shall not kill" when used poorly (like Digimon Adventure 02, where death literally had no meaning). Flash Man calls him a monster for doing so, so I'm hoping it leads somewhere.

Wily seems more careful here. I like it. He's thinking things through and not being rash.

Shadow Man... man, Flynn knows how to take nothing and turn it into something. His official bio said he was found, not made, and taking that and making a plot point out of it was genius. He's the only MM3 Robot Master loyal to Ra Moon on his own. What will come of that? I dunno. I await.

Wolf-Man and Frankenstein: The Legacy Collection

Well, catch up time! I enjoyed a lot in October, but computer troubles prevented reporting on it until now. For starters, lets look at the old school monster movies.

I got ripped off with this one. I was supposed to be buying The Legacy Collection of the Wolf-Man, but it only came with this movie. Oh well.

Anyway, The Wolf Man stars Lon Chaney Jr. as Larry Talbot, a meek man who turns into a werewolf after being bitten. I've seen the more recent version, but this was my first brush with the Universal version. One thing I like about these movies is that they're short, usually not more than 70 minutes, which means it tells the basic story. Though I suppose part of the trade off is I'm not as invested in the characters as I was in the newer version, but there you go.

The effects are good for the 1930s, and it's aged pretty well. Though part of me was thinking back to that episode of Freakazoid where a werewolf goes to him to try and be cured. (I had that problem with Frankenstein too, but we'll discuss that later.)

All in all, good if you have an hour and a half to kill, and I'm looking forward to the sequels.

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Well, here we are. After having it sit on my shelf for awhile, I decided this Halloween I was going to pull this set down from the shelf and watch the entire Frankenstein series.

Frankenstein

One of the movies in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, this little tale based on Mary Shelley's novel is one of those movies that's been parodied to death. The entire time I was watching, I was thinking of Phineas and Ferb, and Johnny Bravo, or in Gargoyles when Xanatos and Demona created Coldstone. There are a few things that people get wrong, like the hunchback being named Fritz, not Igor, but for the most part you know the story.

I just thought it was okay. It felt... incomplete. What is was missing was found in the the next movie.

Bride of Frankenstein

Also in 1001 Movies..., this is like a second half of the first movie in some ways. It adapts some concepts from the novel the first movie left out, like the Monster meeting and befriending a blind man, or Frankenstein making the titular bride.

The Bride is one of the classic Universal movie monsters, so it might surprise you to know she only shows up in the last few minutes of this film, and in none of the sequels. But what's here is good. The above mentioned scene with the blind man is about as emotional as this series gets.  It's very well done. I also like that for the first time there's a clear cut villain in Dr. Petorious, though I want to know what the point of the little men in jars was.

Only real complaint? Why did the Bride just reject the Monster? She just screams. Eh...

Son of Frankenstein

This movie begins a pattern: someone has the monster, blackmails/convinces a Frankenstein into doing something with it, it goes bad. Here, it's Ygor, played by Bela Lugosi, a former assistant of Frankenstein that we never see in the earlier movies, trying to convince Frankenstein's son Wolf into fixing the monster. Wolf agrees, thinking he can redeem his family name by showing what good the experiments can do, buy Ygor plans to use the Monster to get back at the jury that sentenced him to hang.

At an hour and forty minutes, this is the longest of the movies, and it tends to drag, but I liked it. This introduces some interesting characters, not just Ygor but an inspector with one arm. There a bit of dark humor there, obviously.

The Ghost of Frankenstein

I remember an episode of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo where they were watching The Son of the Bride of the Ghost of Frankenstein, or something to that effect. Now I've seen all three movies that make up that title. Yay!

Blah blah, the Monster gets free, Ygor takes it to Frankenstein's other son to get it fixed, yadda yadda. Even in the early days horror movies followed formula. Probably a good thing the proper series ended here, and the rest were crossovers.

House of Frankenstein

This is a sequel to Frankenstein vs. the Wolf Man, which is a movie on the Wolf Man set. It brings together all three major movie monsters... kind of.

The first part is almost a separate movie. Another old assistant of Frankenstein breaks out of jail with a hunchback assistant and kills a traveling carnival worker, who has Dracula's coffin. He's revived (not played by Bela Lugosi, sadly) and agrees to help the scientist before dying in sunlight.

The second part has them coming across Frankenstein's castle, where they find Larry and the Monster embedded in the ice, and once freed Larry agrees to help in exchange for a cure.

I kind of like how there's no clear cut good guy here. Everyone, Larry included, acts selfishly. All of them (spoiler alert) die in quick succession at the end, almost like the movie was in a hurry to wrap itself up.

All in all, good horror history, but I don't think I need to watch it again.

The Running Man

Reading Stephen King's On Writing made me want to do two things: read his books and follow his advice. Luckily, one of his pieces of advice is to read daily, and when you can't read a physical book, to listen to an audio book. Searching the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble, I came across this gem, which he wrote under the pen name Richard Bachman.

The protagonist here is Ben Richards, a poor man living in the ghetto of Co-Op City in the year 2025. When his sixteen month old daughter gets sick, he's desperate enough for money that he signs up for the Games, a collection of deadly game shows made to distract the masses from the ever growing problems of pollution and suffering. He is selected for The Running Man, a game where he must evade the Hunters for thirty days, netting $100 an hour for each hour he stays alive.

First off, skip the forward. It actually spoils the ending.

Even with that, King shows his talent for suspense. There is a feeling of no place is safe throughout, even though you know he has to survive for the seven and a half hours the book goes on. No place is safe for long, with people willing to sell him out at every opportunity. The last part gets a bit explicit in its violence, but not too much.

The story is pretty basic, which is fine. After The Wheel of Time I needed a good game of cat and mouse. The ending... well, I won't spoil it, but King describes it as "A happy ending, by Bachman's standards."

If this is how King writes, I have a lot to look forward to.

Evil Dead

Well, I start of my October with a first: a horror movie that actually managed to scare me! Yes, it’s Evil Dead, a low budget independent film directed by Sam Raimi and starring Bruce Campbell, in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and eventually turned goofy by its sequels. While the later ones might be funny, this one was pure scares.

The plot is five friends go camp out in a cabin in the woods. I only bothered to learn one name, Ash, so the rest we’ll just call the dead meats. They find a strange book in the basement, they play a recording with some weird incantations, and then stuff happens.

I'm glad I didn't know much more about this movie than Ash got a chainsaw hand in the second movie and the infamous tree scene, because I found myself being generally in suspense. The first scene where the woman was possessed by a deadite caught me off guard, and I was generally freaked out. However, the first sign the book was working was the infamous tree rape scene, and I was relieved that Sam Raimi regretted it, because I could have gone my whole life without seeing it. It wasn't scary, just unpleasant.

Everything else was scary though. The possessions... I havent seen The Exorcist as of this reading, but I think I'll pass if it's scarier than this. The creepy laughing, the make up, the voices... yikes. I'm not going to spoil any more of this, since that would ruin the scares, but it works.

A lot of it is atmosphere and camera angles, which makes it works on the small budget. It really speaks volumes for the talent. A lot of it is fear of the unknown. You don't really see a lot of the deadites in this movie. There's a lot we see from POV, but not the monsters themselves.

Oh, and the stop motion effects at the end are a treat. You never see that technique anymore unless it's an entirely animated movie. Always a plus.

The only nitpick? Is there any explanation why Ash wasn't possessed? Maybe in the sequel.

Rating: 9/10

Saints Row 2 DLC

I’ve been concentrating on beating the first Final Fantasy lately, but after missing a whole week of it, I wanted to get another game review fast. I completed Saints Row 2 a few months ago, and it broke my top ten favorite games list, even though I’m not fond of Grand Theft Auto. So I decided to download and play the two DLC packs. And I must say... they weren’t worth the price. Especially after I got the real game with the first one for just $20, I technically spent more on this than the actual game.

The two packs are Corporate Warfare and Ultor Exposed. In total, they took me three hours. Both contain three missions, and are over way too quick.

Corporate Warfare was the one I really wanted to play, because it explains what happened to Dex, and considering he tries to kill you and Julius in the main game, I really wanted some closure. But we get none. After the second mission, he skips town, and you spend the third mission sniping this friends to lure him back, except when it’s over that’s it. No fourth mission, Dex just gets away. And I here he never comes back in the sequels, so... what’s the point?”

I should point out that half the second mission is the Heli Assault Activity, the most annoying activity in the main game.

Ultor Exposed you know from the start is pointless, because Ultor is the same company from the Red Faction series, which takes place in the future. You’re doomed to fail, making the whole thing another waste. And man, the boss battle with the helicopters was annoying. Still, I prefer this one more, because it’s more of the driving and shooting that makes the original game fun.

Bottom line: Good, but not worth the price.

Rating: 6/10

Sonic Select: Book Eight

I hate adding anything new to the backlogs, but the Archie Sonic comic is something I’m trying to catch up on. Unfortunately, Archie isn’t making it easy. It’s re-releasing the main series in order, the Knuckles series too late, and the mini-series and special issues all over the place. This set contains comics that the Archives are both forty issues behind and seventy issues ahead. It’s the whole Tails sage.

The first story, Submersible Rehearsal, is originally from the Sonic Triple Trouble special, which was already reprinted in Select Book One. The plot is pretty basic, setting up Tails’ main conflict. Rotor builds the Sea Fox, but to Tails’ chagrin, he has been forbidden by Sally to put any oil in it. As tails stews over this, an oil soaked bird plops up on shore, saying Robotnik (yeah, remember that name? It’s been awhile since he was called that) has a henchmen building an undersea Roboticizer. Using the oil, Tails takes the Sea Fox on it’s maiden voyage, to beat Robotnik’s Octobot. It’s short, only five pages, and filled with the usual early day laughs.

The next story is the two part Growing Pains, published in Sonic the Hedgehog #28-29, again, already published in the Archives (#7, to be precise). Following the events of the main story of that issue, where Sonic got amnesia and Robotnik convinced him the Freedom Fighters were his enemy, an angry Tails takes the Sea Fox out to a deserted island, where we’re introduced to Fiona Fox... kind of. It’s a duplicate. I still haven’t read the issue where she’s really introduced, so I can’t comment on it, but considering how the real Fiona turns out makes this story tragic.

There’s not much to say about this story either, but I’m a little off-put on how Tails survived that exploding Roboticizer. Robotnik has ask on his face, but Tails looks relatively unharmed, despite being in the blasted thing. Oh well, it children’s comic logic, I guess, but even as a kid I noticed stuff like this.

Now we get to the real meat of this collection, the Tails miniseries. This one hasn’t been published, and it’s the first time I’ve read it. This was written at a time when the comic was drifting between serious and funny, not sure where it wanted to be. The Sally miniseries that predates this was pretty serious, but this one’s pretty goofy.

Robotnik does the whole ‘You Have Failed Me’ thing, and even mentions his “good friend Darth” while doing it, and there’s more of the thousands of Freedom Fighters that popped up everywhere in those days. I hated when these guys showed in the more recent comics because they were a bunch of new characters that I didn’t know on top of the thousands of Echidnas Penders made.

Part one is Tails discovering Robotnik’s blimp, only to be shot down and end up in a rematch with Octobot, which he ends up losing. He’s saved by the Forty Fathom Freedom Fighters, who don’t show up after this until the very end.

Part Two opens with a very embellished retelling from Tails. Here, the story kind of repeats. Tails gets into a fight with forces sent by Crocbot, Robotnik’s underboss, only to be saved by the Downunda Freedom Fighters. The blimp arrives, Crocbot plans to steal Robotnik’s resources, and Tails meets Altair, the first of many Knuckles recolors.

Part Three has Altair tell Tails of a prophecy that I think he fulfilled in an earlier Sonic Select, I don’t know, and goes on to defeat Crocbot with the help of the Downunda Freedom Fighters. Big surprise, they win and Tails decides to go home.

Besides setting up his role for a later story, Tails is actually not much use in the main story, and that’s the point. In the end, Sally and the others were right to keep him out of battle, he’s young and needs more direction. I like this, though considering later stories centered around Sonic combatting this very thing... eh.

The covers for the Tails series are misleading. They make it look like it’s going to be serious, but it ends up being more comical. Crocbot actually looks menacing rather than silly. The silly tone doesn’t mesh well with the mysterious elements of Althair’s prophecy, but it’s serviceable enough.

The final story is The Chosen One, a two-part story told in the back pages of Sonic the Hedgehog #249-250. It’s pretty simple; Zonic pulls Tails and Sonic into his zone to fight Mammoth Mogul, with several other Tails from different worlds. So, it’s a rehash of the fight with RoboRobotnik from early in the comic’s run. It’s... okay.

Yeah, this was a pretty “eh” collection. Nothing really stood out, and considering how long these thing take to get out, it’s a real disappointment. The next Archives isn’t due out until January, so the waiting begins anew.

Rating: 6/10