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Tarq plays games and complains

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Entry II: FFIX HD Remake

(Dredges up old review blog to prevent people spending money on junk) Good. An unbiased intro.   So, I just want to preface this by saying this is a review of the re-release and not the original game. So the review is going to be pretty short and, hey, I do actually love the original release; To me, FFIX is pretty much the peak of the JRPG genre; it handled equipment/skills with more thought than its predecessors, had excellent side-content, and an iconic villain that, amazingly, is barely cringeworthy considering his near two decades old flamboyance. And since its just a re-release all that great stuff is still there. Its just everything else that's bad.   So, to address the elephant in the room, how does the game look? Actually, pretty darn good. Or, the bits they touched at least. Which is just character models, and most of the cutscenes and most of the battlebacks I've encountered have been worked on too. Now, that sentence already provide two issues: Firstly, yes, I omitted the maps from that. Square would have you believe that Zidane and co. have selective cataracts where all sprites and objects of note (ie. chests) are in startling clarity against some blurry wasteland. I considered providing examples of the most offending maps but as this has been a subject of much controversy I'd imagine finding screenies of this shouldn't be too taxing. And secondly. not even the entirety of the cutscenes and battlebacks have been upgraded (a vast majority, but definitely not all) which at first notice provides shock and outrage followed by bitterness as not only did Square only do half a job of updating the graphics but they didn't even fully complete that half. Heck, the game still runs in 4:3 so I'm not sure if it even can be classified truly as 'HD' although in fairness it does not officially market itself as such (just in spirit ) Now, credit where its due, the character animations, in battles specifically, are wonderful. And a lot of on-map animation and design is much easier to notice, although part of that is no doubt in virtue of playing on a screen approximately three times larger than my eleven year old self was privy to. Oh and the Tetra Master cards have been touched up too which is nice.   As far as the UI design. Well, they changed the menus. Can't say they're functionally, or even asthetically any better. Square clearly felt obligated to act but I just don't see why, particularly since they don't seem to have been too interested in it themselves. The cynic in me thinks the devs just wanted something you're constantly confronted with, and in confrontation with, to say 'hey, look we did do stuff so that's why you paid money'. There are a few much bigger afronts that overwhelm that inner voice with, err, another louder inner voice. And they're all to do with the on-map exclamation mark alerts. Firstly they are everywhere. Like, for reals. For some reason Square thought it would be a good idea to provide an alert to let you know you can talk to NPCs. It actually provides you with two so that you also know which ones are available to play Tetra Master with. Both are obviously something that sounded good in principle to somebody but should have immediately been noticed in testing as a terrible idea as you wander around Treno in a swarm of irritating bubbles. Oh, and interacting with one of these bubbles now leaves a negative of it for a few frames. Sexy ¬.¬ .   The gameplay additions were actually pretty interesting, I thought; The ability to move faster, remove random encounters, and all of that. Square showed an excellent awareness of the fanbase even if they failed to understand them. See, all these features are geared towards the players who go for different kinds of perfect saves and, often, need to reach Memoria within twelve hours for Excalibur II or remain at level1 for the majority of the game. A considerable amount of the appeal of these playthroughs, ofc, being the challenge. Which these features strip away from an otherwise very easy game. In fact, Square seem to have done this compulsively, making the theatre swordfight easier to max for the first Moonstone and...a couple of other things I've forgotten in this thirtyish hour blur. You're not obligated to engage these features so there's no real harm in their addition (except that if you were to accidentally activate one you're unable to turn it back off) but its just disappointing that what is arguably the best addition with excellent intentions is inherently flawed.   I'm going to end by disregarding a rule of reviewing for me. Or adding a clause to it perhaps. I hate when people bring the price into a review of a game; its an aspect that is entirely external to the piece. However, since what I've been writing about here is the disparity between two packages of the same game and not really about the game itself I'll come out and say that this is not worth the money. It just isn't. If you don't own an existing copy of FFIX then I'd say its an incredible game and you'll enjoy the heck out of it; if the re-release is the best way of accessing the game for you then so be it. But if you do own an original copy this version brings so little to the table for the price that Square is asking for (it is also rarely on sale and, so far, never generously so) that you might as well continue enjoying Kuja Trance and Steiner x Beatrix, the Lifa Tree and Chocobo's Lagoon, on your original disks because that's what the game is about, not a couple of redone character models.    
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Entry I: UnEpic

Welcome to my inaugral post in a blog that exists for some feeble attempt at validating all this time I've been spending on my Steam backlog recently. My backlog is mostly comprised of indie games that were a part of humblebundles or some such and I'll attempt to review these games from both a consumer's and developer's perspective. I wont be using any sort of universal metric to 'judge' these games but will consider them on their own merit; what they attempt to achieve and how well they do so. If you guys like what you see then I'll try to keep these up once a week (if you're possibly thinking of purchasing a title then let me know in the comments and I'll prioritise it if its in my library).   Obligatory intro's aside, lets get on with today's game: (Image taken from unepicgame.com)   Ever had one of those day where you're just chilling with your bro's? You get up, you bro to the broilet and suddenly everything goes dark? Then you wake up and "Broah!" in awe as all these brorcs and necbromancers are all up in you're space trying to bro-fist you to death? That's pretty much the gist of this accurately titled game.   I don't really have a lot of praise for UnEpic; as a game its pretty solid but the aspect that will always stick in my mind is 'the jump was a little off' and that's a pretty big deal; horizontal movement is very broken and even vertical traversal can be quite bothersome as every platform is at the absolute apex of the jump. I feel the devs became aware of this issue at some point as they did add an extended jump accessory... but they threw it in 95% of the way through the game. This ring also becomes necessary during the final platforming sequence, utterly defeating its presumed purpose of making traversal less frustrating. This is actually a pretty good example of some of the questionable design choices plaguing this game (I think it would have been more interesting if it had been introduced early on, allowing the player the choice between mobility or statistical advantage).   The majority of the game is combat-orientated which is largely pretty dull but thats not uncharacteristic for the genre. The beginning implies the player will be using a variety of weapons to deal with different situations but this is dropped quicksmart. There is room for dedicated builds in UnEpic, absolutely, but they are of little benefit. People who dig mages will probably enjoy this game a fair bit; there's a lot more content for these than other 'classes' but I can't comment as I didn't use much other than some healing. Essence management was a nice break from traditional mp systems I suppose but did kind of just advocate grinding (although mayhaps an NPC I didn't see sold it). The same can be said of the skill bar which filled up from enemy deaths; but, hey, you can do a lot with a coat of paint, right?   The pets were kind of novel but so so broken. Returning and resummoning a pet took a matter of frames and restored them to full health (and even if they were to die the revive scroll cost tuppence). The pets weren't statistically OP but most I encountered had some pretty debilitating enemy debuff and all had a mana regen that was greater than could be spent. In short, pets are crowd-control and, like so many things in UnEpic, these felt like a band-aid added post-testing to avoid reworking the core.   The whole lighting lark is okay but gets tiresome fast since there isn't much benefit to it for many of the maps, not least of all because you carry a light source around with you. The number of achievements dedicated to this mechanic makes it seem like its supposed to be a real big deal... but I don't see why? At least some narrative purpose would have been something.   I also have a bit of a quibble with the additional challenges in the game. You see, optional challenges are cool. Hidden content is cool. But hidden challenges are bizarre. After completing the game I looked over the extra challenges online and to my chagrin I realised I had probably performed a small number of them during the course of the game and was to go unrewarded as I, essentially, had not flipped a switch at the right time. Kind of a weird decision, no? Surely a better way to implement this content and still have it be 'hidden' would be to have the activation glyphs just act as hints to alert and encourage the player toward the challenges but reward the player for meeting x criteria regardless. Whatever, mayhaps I'm being nitpicky.   Addressing the elephant in the room; the writing is utterly atrocious. What plot is present is nonsensical, contradictory even, and the dialogue? Now, I'm not against cursing for characterisation or to display extremity but its use is excessive and often needless in this game, especially since most of the dialogue is just forced stock banter. Fortunately, you can skip most of the texts and not miss anything important (that this is a positive says everything) but this misguided attempt at maturity sometimes slips into the gameplay as well, with the occassional orc orgy. I feel like the devs recognised this mistake when they implemented age settings but it also just feels like a refusal to accept that it was bad content and/or a failure to recognise that cursing is not a shortcut to maturity (if anything, I imagine most older people would play the censored 'younger' version and kids would be attracted to the gratuitous swearing of the 'adult' version).   To conclude, the game is fine but nothing special. A lot of the reviews I saw for this game really raved about it and that just baffles me. If you're starved for content and this is on sale or in a humblebundle or something then, yeah, its adequate. Huzzah! The music's fine, the graphics are fine, the animations are fine and the voiceacting is actually pretty good in spite of the content. The game took me around twenty hours to do everything and there is room for multiple playthroughs (different difficulties/builds/speedruns?/whatever) but, honestly, I was thoroughly disengaged after only a few hours and mostly kept playing to look for any redeeming value from this, mostly tedious, experience. My bad.     Well, that's that. Usual disclaimer of 'my opinion' and all that other stuff that should just be taken for granted. If you liked the post then let me know. If you didn't like the post then let me know why. If you are apathetic then you will, ofc, keep schtum =p
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