Lurker > Kenri

Oh, I've been waiting for this one.

So I actually went back and read a script dump of FFTA in preparation for this topic, because I remember really liking this game's plot as a kid and I was curious if it held up.

The good news is that conceptually this is one of my favorite video game plots of all time. The idea of four elementary kids accidentally warping reality to create a fantasy world that magically fixes all the problems in their lives, only to slowly realize that the only way to actually fix your life is to do a bunch of hard work and grow as a person, and that therefore the goal of the game is to destroy the escapist fantasy world to return to a kind of shitty real world... that is a compelling concept. That is so much more interesting than a save-the-world plot (even though there's still a little bit of that with trying to restore St. Ivalice, but the game doesn't even pretend that's any character's main motivation). Marche and Mewt are a really interesting hero and villain, too, and a lot of the side characters are surprisingly complex figures (Babus and Cid in particular). If I was rating on concept or potential alone this story is a 10/10.

The bad news is that the execution is legitimately awful. The pacing is all screwed up, with a slow start, nonexistent middle, and rushed end. Bafflingly, most characters don't have any real character development until the post-game, and a major subplot is locked behind 100%ing the game. The dialogue is extremely generic (a huge number of battles start with some variant of "We're going to defeat you all!" "No, it's us who will defeat you all!") A lot of major details about the setting are extremely obscure, to the extent that the average player probably won't notice them at all. The world-building is inconsistent, to the point where the game can't even decide on the relationship between Ivalice and St. Ivalice. Marche is an interesting hero with complicated motivations but 90% of the time his actual dialogue and actions are just Generic Hero Guy.

I really really want to like this game's story, and in a sense I do -- I feel like I could write a 15 page article on all the cool ideas this game's plot has, no problem -- but the game practically goes out of its way to squander its potential.

It is with a heavy heart that I must say:

3/10

also marche did nothing wrong

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KamikazePotato posted...

Souls has an inherently more interesting premise, and even then I didn't rate it very high!

Quite the opposite IMO. Prime definitely has the better premise but I'd probably give the edge to Dark Souls overall. It's close.

idk 5/10 I guess

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Surprised to not see any mention of bells yet. Other than TomNook's signature.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

Okay no, that's not what I meant. The biggest problem with the Trump administration is that he had no goal beyond pleasing the masses, leading to nothing in the way of real direction. It made me retroactively appreciate Bush's presidency because even if I disagreed with his direction for the country, he at least HAD a direction.

The dumb thing is, I realized that after watching Iron Man.

Trump's goal was more like "upset the masses" than please them. Or to be more specific, "own the libs", where libs = ~65% of America.

Bush's direction was a more generic "redirect billions of dollars to large corporations through endless war" i.e. neoconservatism. Hard to say which is worse.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

I feel like the biggest problem with Trump was not racism or sexism, it was more just not having any clue what he was doing. At least Bush did even if I don't agree with what he did.

Not having any clue what he was doing was literally the single best quality of Trump's. Imagine the damage he could have done had he been an actual competent, charismatic politician. (Or even just a normal human being.)

Terrifying. We actually really lucked out that he was as much of a brain-dead laughingstock as he was.

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You love to see it.

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6/10

I wish there was more actual crossover-ness to it instead of the worlds being largely self-contained, but it's fine. There are some really good moments and nothing too terribly stupid... yet...

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Forceful_Dragon posted...

The idea that billionaire donald trump was legitimately believable as an everyman speaks more to how willing people are to deceive themselves than it does to his campaign's presentation of him.

100%. This is a really good way of putting it.

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masterplum posted...

Yeah, people don't remember that George W was extremely personable..

Heroic_TuRtLe posted...

[Trump] did a very good job of presenting himself as an everyman who was going to "drain the swamp"

These were absolutely baffling takes at the time, and they're even worse in retrospect. I'm not gonna claim that people didn't say this but it's definitely not something that's, like, objectively true, and I'd argue that most of the people saying it during each candidate's respective campaign didn't really believe it either.

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cerna_zelva posted...

Imagine a world where having an intelligent, logical, well thought out opinion is considered a "bad" thing, while SCREECHING at the top of your lungs some indoctrinated BS is considered good. This is the world we live in and it is terrifying.

Tantalizingly close to being self-aware.

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Haven't played it but I wish I had at least bought it when it came out, it's super expensive now :(

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"Cleric" is more questionable but "healer" definitely implies robes to me.

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BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

Afghanis for the most part WANT to live in a socially isolated, oppressive and corrupt theocracy.

jfc

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Mac Arrowny posted...

Axiom Verge 2 looks good, but focusing on melee combat instead of guns is sad IMO. Gun Metroidvanias are a lot less common.

Weird, I kind of feel like it's the opposite! Maybe not guns specifically but I feel like most Metroidvanias are projectile based.

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Brawl

My other answers don't really fit the "disastrous reception" part. Arguably Brawl doesn't either.

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It's between Mononoke and Cagliostro for me so I gave Cagliostro the pity vote.

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