Final Fantasy VIII Retro Review

For those who don’t know, next year is the 20^th anniversary of the release of Final Fantasy VIII and, just like with the hopes of a remaster of Xenogears, fans of this series is hoping for a remaster to come out on next-gen systems, much in the way that Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII have.

Final Fantasy XIII is a rather unique game in the franchises’ history due to the heavy focus on the love story between the main protagonist Squall, and Rinoa, debatably the most important female protagonist in the game.  The game tackles themes about love, time travel, multiple dimensions, and the manipulation of the past to change the present.  There are also hints of memory manipulation within the main story and over all there, are heavy Sci-Fi elements that help to build and flush the Final Fantasy VIII world out, creating a rich universe that I personally think would be interesting to explore further.

The graphics during the gameplay portions of the game suffer by today’s standards considering the game uses 3D character models on a 2D pre-rendered background as did its predecessor and successor.  By the standards of 1999, though, graphically this game was a powerhouse considering it was on the PSX and by incorporating CGI cut scenes that DO stand up to today’s standards into the game, Squaresoft (now SquareEnix) set an incredibly high standard for its competitors to meet.  Performance wise, the game excels, with only a few moments of slowdown and stuttering in a couple of scenes where Squaresoft was experimenting with incorporation their CGI cut scenes into the standard gameplay portions of the game.

The musical score, just as it has been in all Final Fantasy titles, is absolutely beautiful and is integral in pulling the player into the story and the events that are happening at that time.  The score is so memorable that, after having played the game once, most people can picture their time in the game that corresponds with the piece that they are listening and still feel the same emotions as what they felt the first time around.

Gameplay in Final Fantasy VIII is, as has been the standard of the series, tight and well thought out with the exception being the combat.  Combat is, in my opinion, the dark stain on this particular title.  The standard combat is perfectly fine in the way that is works, the issue comes in when you get your Guardian Forces, or GFs if you will, because once you get them (one in particular) leveled up a little bit, it is possible to go the rest of the game with minimal amounts of combat.  Because of this (and the fact that the enemies scale to your character’s levels) I was able to progress to the end of the game and defeat the final boss while maintaining a level around 20, which is incredibly low, by just repeatedly summoning my GFs into battle, making sure my characters were never in too much danger.  One of the places that the gameplay does shine though, is in the Junction System.  This system allows the player to junction magic to the characters’ stats, providing all kind of benefits, which makes for some really interesting combinations.

(The scores take the standards of the games at the time of release into consideration as opposed to today’s standards)

Graphics – 10

Performance – 8

Sound – 10

Gameplay – 7

Story – 10

Replayability – 10

Total – 9.2 out of 10

- Arylin Michelle

Xenogears Retro Review

With this year being the 20^th anniversary of the release of Xenogears on the PSX, I figured it would be a good time to take a look back on it as fans of the game hope for a remastered version for next gen systems.  Xenogears was, and still is, called one of the best RPGs of all time, with its number one competitors in the console world being Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, both of which came out on the SNES system in 1995 and 1994 respectively.  It tackled religious and Freudian themes with its narration, creating a very thought provoking experience. 

The story centers around protagonist, Fei Fong Wong, an amnesiac young man who was left in a remote village three years prior to the events of the game.  When a battle using giant mechs called Gears erupts between two waring nations and threatens to destroy the village, Fei climbs into an abandoned Gear.  In his attempt to defend the village, Fei accidentally destroys instead and is ostracized by the surviving villagers.  This event is what sets the whole story into motion.  Over its course, Fei is introduced to an interesting blend of characters that join him on his quest.  Each character is extremely well developed and experiences growth over the course of the story and that is a very good thing considering the amount of two dimensional characters in today’s games.

Graphically, by today’s standards, the game suffers but at the time the game came out, they were pretty good, if a bit cartoony.  I believe that is this game were made today, it would probably have been made utilizing cell shading technology which was not available in 1998.  The game world itself is 3D, unlike the Final Fantasy of the time which were 3D sprites on 2D backgrounds, so there are occasionally clipping issues as well as a couple of areas where the environment obscures sections of the screen but, considering the time the game was made, these were very minor inconveniences.

The performance of the game was phenomenal, I never experienced any crashes or freezes, and only got a slight stutter in the frame rate in a couple of area. 

The music and sound were all top notch for its time and even holds up to today’s standards.

As good as the music and the graphics were, the gameplay is where this game really shined.  The environmental movement of your characters was smooth, with a good range of motion and easy to control for the jumping portions of the game.  The combat was an interesting blend of active time and turn based combat that incorporated martial arts move sets which allowed for the creation of powerful combos.  The combat was easy to pick up and learn but took time to really master. 

All in all, I would say that even by today’s standards, Xenogears is still a contender for the top spot as the number one RPG of all time and with this year being the 20^th anniversary, who knows, maybe a HD remaster (and hopefully not a remake that will screw it up like what is currently happening to Final Fantasy VII) is on its way for a new generation of gamer to experience this masterpiece.

(The scores take the standards of the games at the time of release into consideration as opposed to today’s standards)

Graphics – 9

Performance – 9

Sound – 10

Gameplay – 10

Story – 10

Replayability – 9

Total – 9.5 out of 10

- Arylin Michelle

Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition for PS4 Review

Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition for the PS4 harkens back to wonderful days of Isometric RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, games that I personally enjoyed quite a bit on the PC, and that is a good thing.  I have played the original version of Pillars on the PC and, for the most part, Pillars makes a smooth jump from the PC to the PS4, playing almost as if it were originally designed for the console instead.  There are a few issues though that need to be addressed.

*Warning – potential spoilers ahead*

Graphically, Pillars of Eternity; Complete Edition is beautiful.  The game takes full advantage of the consoles hardware to deliver a visual treat that is on par with the PC version at max settings.  This does come with a price though, there were times when, due to the amount of enemies on the screen or the amount of particle effects, I experienced some slowdown in the framerate, creating a choppy, if only briefly, visual experience.  Also, occasionally when going to my journal in order to check my quest log, the game would jumble all the lines of text on top themselves making it impossible to read until you changes tabs in your journal, then when you came back to the quest text the issue would be resolved.  This also happened sometimes with the tooltips for items, weapons, armor, and spells though, in those cases, the issue would persist.

I have previously talked about some of the performance issues when it came to combat but there were a few more issues on top of that when it came to performance.  For one, the load times are often very long and considering that this is a game where you can move a few steps to reach the area that you need to go after entering current area, this can get tedious, especially if you are having to do a lot of back and forth for quest purposes.  Also, in the latter half of the game, including the White March expansions, I experienced frequent crashes about every hour and a half to two and a half hours of gameplay.  These crashes would occur either when loading into a new area or when the game was autosaving after entering the new area.  While annoying this wasn’t too big of an issue with the one exception of the time it corrupted my save data.  Luckily, the game autosaves after entering a new area and keeps multiple autosave files so when this occurred, it was a simple matter of redoing what I had just finished doing in that previous area.

When it comes to the music and the sound in the game, both are superb.  The music is perfect for the fantasy setting with the score bringing to mind the music from The Lord of the Rings movies.  The voice acting was excellent as well, with the actors bringing out all the fun quirks of the cast of NPCs that join your party.  My only real issue when it comes to the voice acting is some of the overly repetitious uses of certain lines and the, by the end of the game, highly annoying “Stand Together!” line shouted by your sneaking thief as she moves to disarm a trap.

The combat in Pillars is, like its predecessors, all about pausing and micromanaging your party member in order to use them to the fullest of their abilities.  The is an option to turn on or off AI scripts that will control your party members for you and, while the scripts are actually pretty good, that helps to fill in the gaps between issuing orders to them but, occasionally, these scripts will leave your party members just standing around doing nothing because the AI can’t figure out the next best course of action.

The story of Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition is, in the beginning what appears to be a rather cookie cutter storyline for a fantasy RPG but, as you progress, it turns into a well thought out tale where the current state of the world is called into question because of the reality behind the true nature of the gods.  The decisions you make over the course of the main story will all effect the flow of events later on in the game and not always in the way you would expect.  Also, aside from a main story that goes from simplistic to epic over its course, each of the side quests have their own well thought out storylines that add character and depth to the world and, in some cases, also affect the outcome of major events.  Be warned though, due to the nature of this game and the presentation of the story, it is very text heavy, requiring a lot of reading to follow the events in play.

In conclusion, Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition is an excellent addition to the libraries of anyone who enjoys the classic isometric RPGs of the late 1990s and early 2000s and I feel that is it an important push in the right direction for a genre that is not often appreciated in todays over saturated game market.

Graphics – 9
Performance – 6
Sound – 9
Gameplay – 8
Story – 9
Replayability – 10

Total – 8.5 out of 10

- Arylin Michelle

*If you wish to watch my entire play through of this game, it can be found on my YouTube channel here*