Girl power... GO!
STORY - 3.5/5
Yuna, Rikku and Paine go around Spira spreading love and peace, Sailor Moon style, under their team name Gullwings.
Oh wait, there was an actual story too.
Two years after the events of FFX, Yuna finds a sphere (which are video recordings) of a person who looks like someone she knows, and so she sets out to find more of those spheres to possibly discover more information. On the way, the team ends up getting involved in politics, the history of Spira, and concerts.
The story wasn't amazing and the end result (aka the ending) is only good if you get the good ending that is the REAL follow up to FFX... and even then, the good ending could have been in FFX without having to make a completely new game, but hey, seeing how Spira develops after the main events of 10 is somewhat worth a new game. Leaving FFX the way it is might have been a lot better though considering...
CHARACTERS - 4/5
Yuna's personality and style does a 180. Within two years, Yuna leaves her "good girl" behind and somehow, from somewhere learns to dress like a slut. I don't know about you, but hot pants, cleavage and belly buttonness are pretty slutty traits when put together in one outfit. But really, where does she learn to dress like that in that world? No one prior to their new appearance did people dress like that. Anyway, so about personality... okay, Yuna has gained confidence since 10 and is trying to fit in awkwardly into her missed out teenager years. She's been sheltered hasn't she? In two years time, she learns how to jump unbelievable heights, slide down chains (Tidus-style), dual wield guns,
Rikku - was she always this air-headed and ditsy? Or perhaps she's moreso now than before.
Then there's Paine. The cookie cutter cool, mysterious, darkly dressed, tough girl who's essentially the opposite of the bubbly (Rikku), tries to please everyone (Yuna) and super girly personalities.
A "new" game comes with even more new characters.
Ah there was also Leblanc's group and the not-so-secretive-anymore characters, Lenne and Shuyin. Deep? They don't know the word.
In additional to the main characters, there were plenty of returning characters. But they were there just for show, really.
SOUND 2.5/5
Nothing significant except maybe the two ballad pieces. Everything else was pretty unmemorable. Koda Kumi's vocal tracks were nice, though felt a bit unfitting with the rest of the music. 90% of the music consisted of upbeat but "silly" tunes. Just to reinforce that this game IS A JOKE. I kid. Maybe.
GRAPHICS 2.5/5
Reusing practically everything from FFX - NPCs, poses, places, monsters, animations. It felt cheap having to experience the same few places, see the same few animations, models, characters...
The FMVs are still your S-E quality and Yuna's teeth are really solid. I can't help but think they're fake. There are times when the in-game graphics are better rendered for some characters versus others on the same screen and that becomes a bit distracting.
GAMEPLAY 3/5
New game means new battle system. Well they tried and it kinda failed. So they brought back the job system in the form of "dresspheres" where the girl went through their Sailor Moon transformation when changing from job to job. Only about 3 jobs were the most useful (though a little dependent on preference too) and everything else was for looks - seriously. It was dress-up time - every time, all the time. Alchemist is your best healer as they don't cost MP, Dark Knights did massive damage, and.... wait, I can only think of two. Other jobs were easily substituted with party setups that took job abilities (e.g. stealing, buffs, debuffs) from those jobs without having to actually use the job itself.
FFX-2's overlimits came as special dresspheres which are unlocked after transforming into a certain number of jobs in battle. Useless. The girl transforms into this monsterous being and does pretty decent damage but the effort needed to transform into it isn't worth it.
They also added in this strange attempt to make the game more platform-like. Did very little to the game. You had to climb, fall, jump in certain places to get to places but there wasn't much of it. Speaking of new additions, the game mainly consisted of mini games and side stories galore. If you were to follow just the main story, I would imagine you can blaze through the game in very few hours. However, the mini games ranged from desert digging, action shooting games, monkey mating, protecting moving cargo, advertising, finding band members.... yeah you get the idea.
OVERALL 2.75~3/5
It has been enjoyable because I /did/ attempt at most sidequests (the game would've been 20 hours shorter if I didn't) and the new characters were pretty interesting though they felt like they stood out more than they should've, yet they didn't get covered as much as I would've hoped. Like Leblanc, she wears hot pink. No one noticed a blonde in flashy hot pink clothes two years ago?
The game was sidequest overload, with many of them useless and completely unrelated to the story. If there was more story-related content that was relevant, it would've made the game a lot more likable... so instead, this game felt like S-E was just trying to make some easy money by throwing in fanservice and a sequel attempt into a game that got a lot of success.
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2 comments:
I gotta agree you.
The amount of side-quests and optional stuff they threw at me so early in the game was a really big distraction, and kind of took away from the main plot. I was kind of disappointed that they didn't introduce them gradually and later on, like most of their games do; after doing so much side-stuff, I was often finding myself trying to remember what I was doing on the main storyline. It's a completionist's nightmare.
The game really didn't give you any hints on whether there WERE sidequests so early in the game to begin with. I just so happened to encounter one and then followed to look up on them. They probably wanted you to go through the game a few times and discover how to get 100%, story-wise. Definitely a ploy to make the game seem longer than it really is.
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