I wrapped up two games this weekend: Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age and Yurukill: The Calumination games
I don’t have much to add to all the good things that have been said about FFXII lately; they’re all true. The scope is astounding and the party is one you want to live with – one impressive thing is how it takes archetypes that can easily go wrong, like Balthier’s cocky rogue or Larsa’s idealistic youth, and makes them wholly likeable. Because it’s easier to complain, I’ll say that the last leg of the game was more than a bit too much; I suppose the intent was to make the final stretch of your journey feel like a massive undertaking, but I didn’t find much joy in the obtuse, sprawling, cruel, Phantasy Star-esque final dungeons. So much of the joy of the game was journeying between manageable dungeons and villages, taking in the open spaces between to enjoy all of the hunts and sidequests, and the last 10 hours or so just halts that to stick you in perpetual dungeon hell. I don’t think I could have managed finishing the game circa 2006 if I didn’t have a real thicc strategy guide, though I did find a unique enjoyment in navigating multiple sources of flawed information (the Eurogamer guide is overall the best, but it flat out gets directions and things wrong sometimes, or tells you to “go back the way you came” in a maze of 1,000 rooms), piecing together maps and charts to find my way. It felt quaint.
Vayne was also a bit of a letdown, as he had such a fascinating start, but then seemed to be largely forgotten till he ends up as Final Fantasy’s own Arkham Steroid Joker with his cheeks out. Buff Tom Hiddleston is not very high in the Final Fantasy final boss rankings, though I understand thematically that the game is more about the foibles of human power than it is about killing gods and such. And that’s one very strong part of what makes it, overall, an experience that I’m already fond of.
I’ve talked a lot about Yurukill, so briefly I will say that it’s more of a 6 than a sought-after 7. I will admit that the central gimmick of smashing an STG into a visual novel straight-up carried it for me. The VN itself was pure fast food; it was smoothly written in that the dialogue was polished and goes down real easy, but nutritionally poor in that the actual mechanics of the narrative are pretty bad. It falls victim to a lot of bad Japanese video game and anime writing, with plenty of handwaving “we just said it, therefore it is so” situations and a lot of “because it’s my dream!” nonsense. Oh, and the puzzles are astoundingly elementary; even so, the characters will often solve them for you. Until the final chapter, in which it commits the most unforgiveable sin imaginable, which is including not one, but two sliding picture puzzles in a single chapter. If you put a sliding picture puzzle in your game, you should go to jail immediately. That said, the style is there, the characters have lots of dumb charm, the voice acting is great, and the G.rev-developed shmup sandwiched in there – which eventually opens up as a pretty robust 7-stage standalone STG with four unique characters/ships – is pretty dang good! It’s an understandable shame that lots of STG fans won’t be able to stomach the VN (or the price) to get there. The strange part is, for all of my recognizing its flaws here, this’ll likely be one of the most memorable games of the year for me, down to it just being so conceptually interesting.
Finally, still working my way through Klonoa 2 in delight. I wake up every morning and my
