Postby Bill Cutting » Sat Jul 19, 2008 7:15 pm
This game is pretty damn painful. The main issue is the boat. I tried playing through it the first time, and missed Viki so I had to bloody sail everywhere. And this made me *angry*. The fact that the enemies never improve according to your level gets annoying since you encounter them every two seconds. It makes me sit there and wish there were more islands, more areas to go to, and maybe even boat encounters on the high seas. If there are pirates, why don't they attack you? Jeez. This game could have used a little inspiration from Sid Meier's Pirates! Which makes sailing around in a boat fun.
Graphics are half assed. The Dauntless (or as I named it the Liberator) is too big which is fine I guess and I don't know anything about boats but I would think a boat that size would need more than two masts. Main issue with the graphics is that everything is pretty dull looking, lots of gray. I don't understand this dedication to realism in a FANTASY game but it really is pretty stinko. I guess when most of the map is empty ocean you've already decided to take a half-assed approach to graphics. Nay is possibly one of the ugliest places, and the fact that it and Razril are both abundantly gray doesn't help much. Middleport could have used some zazz but it looked pretty decent. Obel and Na-Nal look pretty good, course the elf tree on Na-Nal is like the crowning achievement of the general rushed feeling of this entire game. And lets just assume that the fact that there's like less than 10 locations and a lot of empty sea is because they rushed this game. Character design has ups and downs, Kika's probably the best looking out of the bunch. What I always liked about Suikoden is that the costumes don't look overdesigned like what has been going on in Final Fantasy since about 8 and hit it's awful overcooked zenith in 10.
Characters are underdeveloped. After having actual *characters* as main characters in 3. Having a silent hero in a voice acted game is pretty weak. At least he was pretty cool with the twin swords and the fact that he was absolutely the best fighter in the game. I just kind of pretended he was a smarty pants that had relations with pretty much every female on the boat.
As far as the other characters go, it's like, well. Everything about this game screams "half-assed." Kika was absolutely awesome though, and it would have been nice if they spotlighted her a lot more, but that came in parts of Tactics, which I'll mention later. Perhaps my fondness for her was because she was voiced by the same woman that voices Major Kusanagi in GitS but still, hot lady pirate = awesome. I liked Keneth for some reason, even though he was underdeveloped. Snowe's story was decent, but could have used fleshing out. The other pirates were cool (well other than Dario, I'll get to that later), I liked Hervey even though he comes out as a character more in Tactics.
Elenor Silverberg was probably the most developed character in the whole game, since everyone else seems like a rush job or they realized late in production that they needed 108 characters instead of the 10 or 15 this game seems to care about. Setsu is annoying and makes you wonder why Lino trusts him, Dario seems to be a monstrous idiot and would have benefited from maybe a storyline that involved him and Louise and the fact that Nalleo is her son. The thing is, all this is done in the comment box which is just...tacked on. One of the things that was nice about the other games esp. 3 is that you're forced to use a bunch of characters, this game basically had your core 4: Mine for most of the game were Jesus (hero), Kika, Jeane, Keneth who was replaced with Ted once I got him. Speaking of Ted, the pseudo homosexual relationship between him and Aldo could have used a spotlight. This is getting tired. Every character in this game needed more development. Plus, most of the time I'm wondering what these characters *do*. Is Oskar actually necessary or is he just to fill out the 108 star requirement?
I guess when the map is as small and ugly as this one is then they can't really do much with it but I guess more EFFORT was required on this game. Which should be a pretty standard refrain by now. Snowe's story seemed entirely too rushed, and there needed to be a lot more development after you recruited him because there's no real reason Laszlo shouldn't have cut off the turd's head other than the fact that their combo is absolutely devastating and makes the last boss a piece of cake even in the 50s. Well Ted helps with that too and so does Jeane with the Thunder rune but you know, whateva.
The whole game is half assed, that's what it feels like. And when you play Tactics, and more development occurs between characters in game, it makes you wonder if it's almost an apology for how completely rushed and storyless IV is. It almost feels like they should have been put together. Like it was one idea that was split into two different games, making both feel kind of lame and incomplete.
Ok so there should be positives right? Uh. Well. Um...Final boss is cool looking even if you don't ever understand why you have to kill it or what it's there for unless you play Tactics (see the above paragraph). Kika is a huge positive, Ted showing up is pretty cool. Elenor. Fishing with Ugetsu is pretty fun. Ummm, Ritapon is pretty fun. Wow that's about it. Really.
Final parties:
vs. Cray
Kika, Lino, Maxine (Cyclone rune owns), Fredrica.
vs. Tree
Hero (Jesus), Jeane, Ted, Snowe. downed it in like 7 turns. which to me is not a negative. I hate final bosses which have billions of hp and all this crap to make it even more powerful and it takes you like an hour to kill it. Hello Final Fantasy I'm talking to you.
Last edited by Bill Cutting on Sat Jul 19, 2008 7:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.