Episode 25: Final Fantasy VI: Part II – Atma Ponders on the Toilet

Episode 25: Final Fantasy VI: Part II—Atma Ponders on the Toilet

Platform: SNES, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, Wii/Wii U, and Android and iOS.

Release Date: 

Japan: 4/2/1994

NA: 10/11/1994 (As Final Fantasy III)

Difficulty: Moderate

Pricing: Play Store: $7.99 (during 50% off sale), Wii: 800 Wii Points/$8

Podcast: Download, iTunes, PodOmatic

Terra’s Review

Kefka’s Tower: At least there’s a place to take a shit!

The Good

• I don’t even know where to start with the good, I love this game so much.
• The sense of scale. The world is large, the story is epic. The places in the storyline that require you to split up the party to deal with simultaneous enemies adds to the feeling that you’re dealing with a threat that is truly world spanning. It also gives you a reason to care about leveling up and using all of your characters instead of letting all but your favorite four fall by the wayside. You’re going to need almost all of your characters by the time you get to Kefka’s tower!
• Speaking of…Kefka is one of my favorite villains. No sob story, no angst and whining, just pure joy of destruction and making people’s lives hell.
• You fight a train. And an octopus. And mini bosses named after the Three Stooges. For a game that’s dealing in some very heavy subjects—Terra and Celes have basically been raised to be weapons, the deaths of almost everyone in Doma, the Empire’s experiments on Espers, and THE END OF THE WORLD—FF6 doesn’t lose its sense of humor or sense of the absurd.
• There’s a strong emphasis on character development and giving each character a time in the spotlight and a backstory. The only ones that don’t get some focus are the optional secret characters. The second half of the game is especially focused on backstory and character motivations. With the world basically destroyed and Kefka in charge, what motivates these characters to keep fighting?
• The Opera House sequence.

The Bad

• Even though I was just praising the character development, there are some things I wish the game had done differently. Relm and Strago showed up too late in the game to have much of an impact. I also would have liked to see more of the characters interacting with each other. Imagine the conversations Terra and Celes could have had!
• The battle menus could be unwieldly, especially once you’re further along in the game and have accumulated more spells and items. Scrolling through those, trying to find what you want can take valuable time, especially if you’re using the Active Battle System.
• PlayStation only: The long load times.

The Ugly

 

 

 

 

[No comment.]

The lowdown:  I love this game and everyone should play it!

Music Credits

FF6 OST

RPG Roundup Theme Song: "Video Game Theme," J. Arthur Keenes Band. Creative Commons Attribution License.

Episode 20: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – Creature of Chaos

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 
Platform: PlayStation

Japanese Release Date: March 20, 1997

U.S. Release Date: October 2, 1997

PAL Release Date: November 1, 1997

Difficulty: Easy

Current Amazon Price: $149.99 new (ouch), $30.67 used, PSN: $9.99, Xbox Live Arcade: $9.99

Note: there is another (Japanese) version on the Sega Saturn, but this is not being reviewed.   

Podcast: Download, iTunes, PodOmatic

Lightning's Review: 

Someone must have played too much Donkey Kong in their youth.

The Good

• A nice game to sink your teeth into (pun totally intended) if you are an RPGgoer but also are interested in games with platforming elements. Symphony of the Night does a good job incorporating RPG elements with some relatively easy side-scrolling that should be a pleaser for fans of both genres.
• The soundtrack will blow you away! Some parts of it are strange (such as songs that would seem to come out of a cult ‘80s hair band rather than a game about Dracula’s son), but it’s all in good fun. Other songs are appropriately dramatic and have a more classical feel.
• The game also greatly encourages exploration rather than mindless leaping from one side of the screen to the next. New abilities that unlock as you play – such as higher jumps, the ability to turn into a bat or a cloud of mist, and the use of helpful familiars further promotes looking for hidden passages and breakable walls.

The Bad

• The menus are extremely clunky, which is not a good thing when you’ve got, say, a ball of writhing corpses attacking you. To be able to use a potion, for example, you’ve got to drop your shield (or whatever you had in your one of your hands) to be able to use it. Since this is primarily a platformer, I can understand why they didn’t have a battle menu like in most RPGs, but wouldn’t an “item” button have been awesome?

The Ugly

• If you thought Shining Force III had bad voice acting, then this gives it a run for its money. You might want to wear earplugs during the cutscenes.
• Hundred year old pot roast…which you then eat. Being free of food poisoning is actually one of Alucard’s greatest powers.    

 Wasn’t New York New Amsterdam around this time period? Argh – maybe I’m thinking too hard.

The Lowdown

A fun first title to play in the long-running Castlevania series, as well as one of the more highly regarded. Since we had an easy time picking up the platforming elements, I would even suggest that RPG fans who are interested in the series should try this one first. I definitely suggest this game as something to hit up in your retro backlog, especially since it approaches RPG elements in a non-conventional way and doesn’t require much prior knowledge of Castlevania lore to pick up and play.

I finally remembered what Castlevania game I want to play next. Not Aria of Sorrow, or Harmony of Dissonance. LAMENT OF INNOCENCE.

Music Credits:
Castlevania: SotN OST
RPG Roundup Theme Song: "Video Game Theme," J. Arthur Keenes Band. Creative Commons Attribution License.