VVVVVV

This little indie game is a must play for all gamers. It’s a regular offering in all the indie bundles popping and often on sale for around 2$. The game is quite short but very enjoyable and the chiptune music fits perfectly.

Don’t let yourself get turned away by its simplistic graphics, it’s one good game.

Bastion

This one caught me by surprise. I had seen a couple of screenshots of the game and it looked interesting, but I was not really considering purchasing it. It’s only once I saw a gameplay video that I understood this game was special. The game features a reactive narrator who accompanies you in your adventure commenting on your actions and explaining the unfolding story. The narrator’s voice is perfect and never repetitive or annoying. Of course, the music is also excellent. It’s available on Steam for $15 and, as most indie games, will probably have deals for it every now and then.

Shadow of the Colossus

This one is probably better known than the 2 games above. Featuring excellent and unique gameplay (epic boss battles!), the game features an incredible soundtrack to help immerse the player in the action even more. The game was released a couple of years ago, but the recent HD/3D remake for the PS3 (bundled with the excellent ICO too) makes the purchase an easy decision.

Games by Square Enix

I will not list all of them because so many of their creations would fit in this list. Among the most noteworthy are Final Fantasy (IV, VI, VII, IX are my favorites), Kingdom Hearts (the main games) and, last but not least, Chrono Trigger. I had the chance of going to a Distant Worlds concert and loved the experience.

Zelda

Blue Magic, also referred to as Enemy Skill or Lores, is a skillset consisting of abilities used by monsters. Most of the time, a character who can use it is known as a Blue Mage.

source

It was first introduced in Final Fantasy V and has since reappeared in most games from the series since then. The most common way of obtaining those skills or spells is to have the blue mage get attacked by the spell and survive it. There have been other variants, but they all require the player to fight the enemy with the wanted skill.

Why do I hate it?

Blue Magic is a pain to build, if you want to have a decent blue mage, you’ll have to spend a ton of time hunting enemies and grinding until the enemy finally decides to use the spell, then hope it hits your blue mage (if that’s the way to learn it in that particular game) and hope that the character survives. Of course, the best spells are usually the hardest to learn, some of them are friendly spells, making it unlikely the enemy will use it against you (you’ll have to either control the monster or use a reflective barrier on the enemy and hope the reflection hits your mage). Other spells will obliterate your character or even your party, forcing you to make use of some auto-life ability.

Fortunately, learning blue magic has always been optional, it just annoys me that in most games, there will often be one class or character that won’t be of much use because I can’t bring myself to grind the spells.

Famous blue mages

In Final Fantasy V, any character could be a blue mage, but in other games, a specific character usually has the ability.

Strago in Final Fantasy VI was able to learn spells simply by seeing them being used in battle, making it a bit easier and faster. Furthermore, Relm could take control of monsters to force them to use certain skills. Gau could also be considered as some sort of blue mage since his ability was to mimic monsters.

Quistis in VIII could learn blue magic by using items dropped by the enemies. Quina in IX had to eat the enemies and could only use the spells as a limit break. Finally, Kimahri in X simply had to use his Lancet ability on an enemy to learn a skill, much simpler.

Final Fantasy II and III

These are the most known examples of this strategy. The Final Fantasy II and III games as we know them in North America are actually the 4th and 6th installments in the series. Square had no plans to release the games between the first game and FFIV so they whacked the number so that consumers wouldn’t be confused. Fortunately, they rectified the numbering with Final Fantasy VII, but that left people wondering where Final Fantasy IV through VI had gone until fans learned that FFII (us) meant FFIV (jp) and FFIII (us) meant FFVI (jp).

Final Fantasy Adventure

A lesser known title, Final Fantasy Adventure, is actually the first game in the Mana series. The game was re-released by Square Enix with a name closer to its original name as “Sword of Mana” on the Gameboy Advance. Just to make things still more confusing, the game was named “Mystic Quest” in Europe. Even though the game is a sort of Zelda-esque spin-off of Final Fantasy, it shares only the basic RPG elements with the main series.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

While we’re on the subject of Mystic Quest, since Square had burned the name in Europe, it had to be released as “Mystic Quest Legend” over there.

Final Fantasy Legend

The Final Fantasy Legend games have nothing to do with Final Fantasy, they are actually the first games of the SaGa series. Their names were completely changed for marketing purposes.

Final Fantasy XI and XIV

Two more recent examples of Square, actually Squaresoft and Square Enix, messing up with names are the two online games, Final Fantasy XI and XIV. The games were not actually renamed, but their inclusion as games of the main series can hardly be seen as anything else than a marketing tactic to improve the sales of the game. Up until FFXI, all games had shared the same concepts: a single player RPG game where a party of characters embark on an epic quest to save the world from evil. FFXI threw all of this away. Why not name the game “Final Fantasy Online”, or “Final Fantasy World”, or “Gaia”?

Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario 2 is a rebranding of the Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic game. That’s why there’s no Bowser, no princess to save and not much in common with the original Mario game except the basic platforming elements (i.e. jumping and stomping on enemies). The four characters were originally siblings trying to save kidnapped kids in a fantasy world.

Impact

The game was nonetheless important for the series, introducing a number of concepts and characters that are still key to the franchise. The shape of the characters were more clearly defined, making Luigi slim and tall and making Mario a bit rounder and smaller. The character’s movements were also set by this game. Luigi is harder to control, but he can run faster and jump higher, while Mario has tighter controls but can’t jump as high. Peach also gained her floating ability. The gender-confused Birdo, the Shy Guys and Bob-ombs are the better known characters that first appeared in this game (source). The Mario series could’ve been very different without the modifications made to Doki Doki.

Pokemon Snap

A lesser known rebranding by Nintendo is Pokemon Snap which wasn’t supposed to have any Pokemon in it. There wasn’t anything in particular to photograph which prompt the developers of the game to reconsider the goal of the game. They wondered what people would be interested in taking pictures of and using the Pokemon franchise sounded like a good idea.

Impact

Nothing new came out of this title, at best it strengthened the popularity of the franchise with a solid spin-off of the Pokemon games.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Originally called Fluff’s Yarn, Kirby appeared in the game a few months after the development had started. The main protagonist was Fluff which was changed into the secondary character providing the opportunity for a 2 players Kirby game. The designers of the original didn’t seem to be mad when Nintendo asked them to use Kirby.

Impact

It’s difficult to judge what would have been different without Kirby. The game would still have been gorgeous and the game would most likely have received similar reviews. Putting Kirby on the cover probably helped with the sales and Nintendo backing up the title can’t hurt. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Prince Fluff in a future Kirby game. However, Nintendo might have lost the opportunity for a new franchise, though they can probably do a spin-off with Fluff alone with the right concept.

Nintendo has been really successful with its rebranding, bringing obscure games with great gameplay in the spotlight. The changes were good decisions financially as well as for the fans.

Final Fantasy Adventure

Not wanting to be outdone by Zelda, Square decided to create the Final Fantasy Adventure game which really is the first game of the Mana series. There are no Final Fantasy concepts in the game except the basic RPG elements (experience, stats, hit points, magic spells). The game plays like Zelda, but has its own story and tweaks that make it unique.

Impact

Play this

The game didn’t do much for the Final Fantasy series, but its sequel, Secret of Mana, is still regarded as one of the best cooperative games ever made. Final Fantasy Adventure is also the first RPG game that allowed the player to kill townspeople.

The Final Fantasy Legend

Just like Final Fantasy Adventure, The Final Fantasy Legend is not actually a Final Fantasy game and is the first game of its own series, the SaGa series. The title of the game was changed in North America to improve marketing. To its defense, the game shares more features with the Final Fantasy games than Adventure did. The player takes control of a party of 4 characters with classes chosen at the beginning of the game and features turn-based random battles.

Impact

Beside the series that spawned from the game, the game has had an immense impact on the gaming world. Satoshi Tajiri, creator of the Pokemon series, mentioned in an interview that the Legend game gave him the inspiration for the Pokemon games.

I would argue that Square has been far less successful with its rebrandings, in North America at least. Neither the Mana and SaGa series are very popular outside of Japan, except for a few titles such as Secret of Mana. In my opinion, the modifications made to the games were more about selling more copies than about helping obscure games that deserved the spotlight. However, both games have had a tremendous impact on the gaming industry.

The Mognet is simply a mailing system run by moogles. When it was first introduced to the series, in Final Fantasy 9, the player could only receive letters from various NPCs. In Final Fantasy 3, however, the player can now also send mail to other players via WiFi. While the entire Mognet feature was optional for the game, a particular quest required the user to actively use it to complete the quest. The quest in question is the ultimate achievement in the game, it’s the Onion Knight quest which gives you access to the most powerful job class and equipment.

So, how does one use the Mognet to unlock this quest?

1. First, you must send at least 7 letters to your friends over Wi-Fi, note that you can send 7 to one person or many.
2. Receive 4 letters from Topapa. This is attainable by sending 4 letters to him, on his fourth reply, he will tell you to go back to Ur, so do so.

Source: GameFAQs

That doesn’t sound so bad right? Wrong! It’s not that it’s difficult, it’s just annoying to do.

Using the Mognet

To use the Mognet, all you have to do is find a moogle in one of the towns. Then, you can choose to either mail an NPC or a friend who also owns the game. To send mail to a friend, you first have to acknowledge each other separately by confirming the friend codes of each other so you have to find your friend code, send it to him, get his own friend code, enter it in your game and then wait for him to do the same. Alright, that’s already annoying, but nothing new for people accustomed to the stupid Friend Codes system made mandatory by Nintendo.

Now that you can send mail to your friend, you just have to do it seven times. Easy right? Wrong again. First of all, to count towards the 7 letters, the mail has to be received by your friend, that means that he has to read it in his own game. Furthermore, the mail is not stored indefinitely on the real-life network used to transmit mails from Nintendo DS to Nintendo DS, it only stays there for a couple of days (3 I think). That means that every time you send a letter to your friend, you also have to notify him in real life to make sure he gets it. That’s more work than what was needed.

If you manage to send the 7 letters, you now have to communicate with NPCs. The developers wouldn’t let you have it that easily though, you can only send 1 mail per hour. So that’s four more hours of waiting (at least you can play or do something else, but since that quest usually happens near the end of the game, there’s not a whole lot to do while waiting to send more letters). Once you have sent the 4 letters to Topapa, congratulations you can now do the quest that unlocks the Onion Knight. Oh, did I mention that the job sucks? It really does, at least until you reach levels near the maximum (99) and you manage to gather the ultimate onion equipment.

The Onion equipment

The Onion equipment consists of a single blade, the Onion blade, and as many helmets, armors, shields, gauntlets and swords (the Onion swords are only slightly better than the blade) as you can get. The blade is easy to get, you just have to reach level 99 with one character in the Onion job (which sucks until around level 95 as stated earlier) and find the master smith in the game (which isn’t too hard). Now, you’ll have to hunt for the rest of the equipment.

Each of the pieces can only be found by killing dragons. There are three types of dragons and they’re the strongest three enemies in the game. Each of the dragons has 1.5% chance of dropping a sword and 8% chance of dropping the shield. Then each of them has 4.5% chance of dropping either a helmet, a gauntlet or the armor (each one drops only one type of these) (source). So on average, you’ll have to fight a little over 260 dragons.

This is probably one of the most tedious optional sidequest I have ever done; sometimes it sucks to be a completionist.

Highlights

The vast quantity of songs played and the skill of the orchestra should please everyone. There are plenty of classic pieces for everyone as well as a couple of songs from the latest games. Each video is accompanied by a video showing either a CG movie, some in-game footage or concept art. The conductor was also quite entertaining and the way he speaks about the music clear shows that he’s also a fan.

Weak points

Apart from being a little sad that some of my favorites were not played, there are a few arrangements with which I was not entirely satisfied. Sometimes the original is simply better than the orchestrated version (maybe that’s just nostalgia speaking though). There were also quite a few songs from XIII and XIV, two games that I haven’t had the chance to play yet (I’m quite late for XIII and XIV is online and that’s not the kind of game I like). I don’t mind music from the later games, but there were a bit too many since so many classic songs were missing from the program. I was also annoyed a few times by the audience laughing at the video for no apparent reason (a chuckle maybe, but nothing else).

However, despite those shortcomings, the night was very enjoyable and hearing the music live from an orchestra really was a different experience than hearing the electronic version.

A nice surprise

We were treated to a very nice surprise last night with the presence of legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu (wearing white socks in flip-flops). Obviously, a huge cheer from the crowd welcomed him on the stage at the end of the concert and he even sang with the choir for the last song.

So, if you’re a long-time fan of the series and enjoy listening to the music while you’re not gaming, chances are good that you will enjoy Distant Worlds, so do yourself a favor and book a ticket.

Note: Be careful if you’re planning on bringing someone who’s not familiar with the series, my girlfriend liked it, but not that much and some songs are definitely harder to like for non-gamers.

A few examples

The Final Fantasy series is very guilty of this (as are most RPG games made by SquareEnix). While FF doesn’t ask you to collect too much, it makes you want to level-up and max out stuff even though it has nothing to do with the main plot. It usually gives you a near impossible goal to reach and always rewards you greatly if you can get there (if not, there’s always the bragging rights). All the optional bosses are just made up goals that FF fans expect game after game. It’s the little something that distinguishes hardcore players from the rest.

The Final Fantasy series gets an OCD rating of 8/10

I hardly need to explain this one to players who have played this game, but Diablo 2 has a pretty high OCD rating. Diablo 2 had players grinding and doing whatever-runs countless times to get a special unique/rare/set piece of equipment or just leveling up for hours to try to reach level 99 which was hardly better than level 90. Reaching level 99 was hardly worth it (except for bragging rights) and the time you had to invest was crazy: it takes as many experience points to get from 91 to 99 as it takes from 0 to 91. While Torchlight had similar mechanics it didn’t manage to get a similar OCD rating and I give my thanks to Runic Games for this. I don’t really know why there’s such a big difference in their respective OCD ratings though.

Diablo 2’s OCD rating: 9/10 (I haven’t played World of Warcraft because I’m afraid of what it could do to me but it most likely has a similar OCD rating)
Torchlight’s OCD rating: 6/10

OMG I need that to live!

The biggest perpetrator of all are all Korean RPGs. They just require so much grinding it’s not even funny. Korean’s must love it, but the only experience I had (MapleStory) was too much for me (although it did made me waste quite a lot of my time).

Final word

Games with a high OCD rating consume your life and are very addictive. You should be cautious when approaching such games as you may not come back before long.

First of all, coming from E3:

Final Fantasy XIV

• FFXIV is the sequel to FFXI in the sense that it is a MMO
• They currently want to make it a global game, meaning no separate servers depending on the region: Japanese players will be able to play with American players
• They are aiming for a release in 2010

Final Fantasy XIII

• Summons are once again a central part of the story. Characters will be attached to one summon (not selectable by players). It is not known if more than one summon will be attached to characters or if all characters will have a summon (or more). The attached summons seem to be fixed by the story.

Final Fantasy VII

• It’s a direct port of the PlayStation game.
• It costs 9.99 US$
• Available for download now (1.32GB required)

And finally, news coming from Nintendo:

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years

• The sequel to the excellent Final Fantasy IV (also known as Final Fantasy II in North America)
• Released on WiiWare at the beginning of the week
• Contains all the episodes (9) from the cellular game from Japan
• Costs 800 Wii points

Sony has just announced that Final Fantasy VII will be available for download over the PlayStation Network today. This is great news for people who have been waiting for a port/remake for so long. So if you have a PSP, you’ll be able to play this classic that changed the role playing genre anywhere you want.