Video Games

Review – Final Fantasy I (Dawn of Souls) (GBA)

SquareEnix – GBA – 1 Player

I has been brought to my attention that December 18^th was the 19 year anniversay of the original Final Fantasy. I suppose a review for Final Fantasy, even if it is the Game Boy Advance remake, should start with the story of the Origin of the Final Fantasy Title. You see, 19 years ago, Square was a failing game company. Previous hits such as “King’s Knight” and “Rad Racer” just weren’t cutting it so Square put all of it’s development power into an RPG. A Fantasy RPG. If this game failed, which they apparently expected it to, it would be the Final game that they would produce.

Hence Final Fantasy.

The game was a hit. At the time it was a revolutionary was of doing a console RPG. Games such as Dragon Quest had players controlling a single character. The had few “Boss” type enemies and little story. Final Fantasy changed all of that. While it still had little real story, it jumped ahead of Dragon Quest’s game play by leaps and bounds. Players could choose classes for their party of 4 playable characters, pick names, outfit them with a slew of weapons, magic, and armor. Each of these classes was highly distinct in nature with limitations on each.

There have since been 12 games released in the main-line Final Fantasy Series with a 13^th on its way. Each one has kept with the same basic principles of its predecessors while still innovating on the concept. Up until FFXI, the battles were always the same basic “Line up on one side against a line of enemies”. The menu commands in these battles have always been the same basic commands, Fight, Magic, Items, Flee. Other commands have popped up over time but players can almost always use these basics. On top of these 12 core games, there have been numerous spin off games such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Legend, one shots like FF: Crystal Chronicles and FF: Mystic Quest, movies such as Advent Children and that Legend of the Crystals Anime, even direct sequels to several of the main line games.

Not to mention influence on pretty much every RPG following and remakes of every game before FFVII. Basically, Final Fantasy turned into Square’s cash cow. In fact they pretty much don’t make anything that isn’t directly related to Final Fantasy in some way.

Of all the games in the series, the first has been remade the most. Other than the initial release for the NES, a game I played many years ago way more than one should, it’s been remade for Cell Phones, the Wonderswan, the Playstation and now the Game Boy Advance. This latest revamp features updated graphics and sound as well. Gone are the old 8 Bit Sprites, replaced with beefy updated 16 bit graphics. Ok, yeah, 16 Bit is only one step up an it’s pretty paltry by today’s 3D standards, but it still looks really nice.

While the plot remains identical, find the four elemental crystals to unlock the gate to defeat Chaos 2000 years in the past thus creating the series’ first time paradox, the gameplay is altered quite a bit. In addition to updated 16bit style graphics comes updated 16bit style game play. Inventory is no longer limited to potions and tents and key items all on one screen, they are separated like later games. Weapons and armor are carried by everyone instead of just 4 items per character. This helps a LOT in keeping specialized weapons such as the Ruin Blade or Ogre Sword. Each character only equips items they need in the appropriate slots (Head, Armor, Accessory, Weapons.)

The most drastic change comes with the magic system. While spells are still purchased at shops, they now consume MP instead of the limited Spell Point system. This means you’re able to cast more powerful spells more frequently and sooner in the game. You no longer have to wait on that one level 9 Spell Point to pop up before casting Nuke, simple consume the necessary MP whenever you want. This actually tends to make things a lot easier. Previously you would have to carefully ration out magic points as you traveled through the various dungeons, now you can just suck down a few Ethers when needed.

These two changes not only make the game easier, they make it pass a lot faster. The game in general seems toned down a bit with less flat out enemy grinding needed in order to gain the necessary levels to traverse the next area. This makes the game less “pure” but actually helps make it more enjoyable.

Overall, this sort of RPG is still not for everyone. There is a severe lack of story and “purty movies”. Still, it’s a good classic that old school fans of the series should enjoy. The Dawn of Souls game pack also includes a copy of Final Fantasy II, which is a much better game that has seen very little light on US shores.

The game also includes several elemental themed bonus dungeons. Traveling through these dungeons will net you additional powerful weapons and armors. I do not however have the time or will to travel these dungeons as they are very long and randomly presented. If I do embark on this quest I’ll cover it in a separate review coupled with Final Fantasy II’s bonus content.

Review – Metal Gear Solid 2 (PS2)

Aug 7th, 2006

by Ramen Junkie.

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Metal Gear Solid 2

Konami – PS2 – 1 Player

I’ll just start by being courteous. There may be evil story spoilers in this article, though at the same times things that seem like evil story spoilers may just be exaggerations or even just made up to confuse you. With that said, It seems a recent trend in video games anymore is to simply rehash some old classic. 90% of games today are remakes or sequels to sequels. Sometimes a game comes along and tries something new and fresh though. A game with such neat innovative features the moment you play it you realize that one day this will be the stuff 2nr rate cash in remakes are made of. Then there are games like MGS2. Which go to great lengths to create “Perfectly Re-orchestrated” rehashes of their predecessors and make sure to point out in the plot itself that the game is nothing more then a cheap knockoff of it’s own brand name.

Actually there is a pretty nice point behind the game, “Anyone can be Solid Snake given the right circumstances”. It’s such an appropriate quote given the great lengths that Konami seems to have gone to in concealing the fact that you don’t really play as Solid Snake. Isn’t Konami really clever?

I mean how many people have really watched Escape From New York much less know the meaning of the word ‘Iroquois’. Anyway, other than all the blatant plot rip offs from it’s predecessor this is a really fun game. Its a bit short though I’d say. I mean I’ve played FFX for probably 120 hours counting both my save games (100 of those in one) and GTA3, Last I checked on my main save file, It was at about 120, but that was probably 80 or so hours ago. MGS2 just doesn’t have quite the same staying power I guess. Probably a good thing though, after a while I was really wondering when it would end.

Putting Seagulls to sleep is only fun for just so long you know.

The plot isn’t the only thing that makes this game similar to MGS1. For the most part if plays the same in game play. There are a few nice changes. The most subtle but possibly the hardest to get used to is that this game takes place mostly during the day. MGS1 was so dark it sometimes seems strange to be able to see for so far off to the horizon. The most useful change is the addition of first person aiming. Making shots to various parts of the body or even at certain things in the environment is a sinch with this new aiming system. Then there is the hang over the edge grip move. Which is pretty much just as useless as it sounds. Half the time the guards will see you hanging there and shoot you anyway, except instead of being in a position that allows you to act you are hanging there like a goon waiting for the bullets to hit your body.

But enough about gameplay. The gameplay is just repetetive boring filler for the even more boring hour long cut scenes. The meat of this game’s entertainment value is in the underlying comedy. I honestly think there is some huge massive parody going on here about video games. I can’t be sure though.

Anyway, first we have the lovely posters strewn pretty much everywhere in the game. You can’t stuff a dead body in a locker without finding a poster of some half naked Japanese chick hanging nearby. Or if you prefer you can always join the Russian Soldiers and look up internet porn.

Also the designers seemed to have decided Meryl was a little to butch and a bit old so they replaced her with a 12 year old girl who has no business being anywhere near this setting of this game.

Although, I’ll give her this, she is a hell of a lot more fun to fuck with than Meryl ever was. Or you can call snake pretty much anytime for lots of hilariously hokey information about the horrible twisted pasts of the villains. Let’s not forget the hours of fun you can spend listening to the CODEC near the end of the game. You people know what I’m talking about. Ohhh yeah, that’s some good stuff there. If all else fails you can see how many crazy or immature laughs you can get by fucking with the dog tags.

Oh right, Dog Tags. The game’s replay element. I suppose I’ll close with that point. Instead of just finishing the game repeatedly for bonuses like stealth and infinite ammo as per MGS1. You get to spend even MORE time holding up guards for Dog Tags. Now let me explain this a bit as before I played the game I had no idea what this entailed exactly. Basically, you walk up behind a guy enter FPS mode, and aim your gun at him. Then he stops and holds up his arms in terror. Then you circle around and jab your gun to his head (or crotch) and the guy will drop his dog tags for you to take. This is a really neat idea actually, and it’s a lot of fun…. the first several hundred times you do it.

By the time you start working on getting anything useful like Stealth, you’ll be so sick of hold ups you’ll want to toss the game in the trash and never play it again. The worst part is missing say, one guard in a certain dificulty and having to completely replay that mission to get ONE TAG. But for now I’m out of screen shots, so I’ll just say, this is indeed a pretty decent game, it was certainly hyped out the ass, so it should be at least worth a rental to even the most die hard MGS hater.

Review – Final Fantasy XI Beta (PC)

Jun 3rd, 2002

by Ramen Junkie.

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NOTE: This review was originally written for the PC Beta of FF11. I have no intention on ever purchasing the full version of the game as I do not like MMORPGs. (Additional Note, original date is approximate)

Apparently Final Fantasy is a lot like Star Trek. Both are only good when they end in an even number. Also both have the one exception to this rule in slot 7. Guess 7 really is a lucky number. That isn’t to stay Star Trek 1/FF1 are bad really, just really long and boring.

With the creation of Final Fantasy 11, Square has decided that the entire system needed an overhaul. Considering it hadn’t changed in 10 incarnations, all of which have done extremely well, messing with things in any excessive manner comes off as a bad idea. So are things better or worse? Well instead of keeping cliche suspense, I’ll just say it’s not worse, it’s fucking horrible.

There are to types of RPGs in the world. Well at least as far as electronics world is concerned. The basic categories are “console RPGs” and “Computer RPGs”. Computer RPGs hark from the days of DnD, with excessive leveling and stat building where the player is in more or less complete control of the hero’s actions and thoughts. These are generally slower paced and focus less on story. Console RPGs started as simplified DnD games, they have become increasingly more simple as years have progressed, which only helped to widen the gap since the days of yore. Consoles are generally limited by their method of input and inability to store lots of changing variables (stats) for long periods. Final Fantasy 1 had a large array of different weapons and armor for each character, Final Fantasy 10 has 1 type of weapon and 1 “shield” for each character. To make up however Console RPGs are generally much more character and story driven.

This has lead to a split with electronic RPG players, while some will play both, many computer RPG players find console RPGs to be too simple and linear while many console RPG players find computer RPGs to be excessively complicated and tedious. What does any of this have to do with FF11? Well for the uneducated, Final Fantasy 11 is a Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game” or “MMORPG”. This means it’s about as Computer RPG like as you can get. It also means 50 dollars down and 10+ bucks a month to play. Have you seen or heard of Everquest? Ultima Online? If so, you’ve seen FF11.

After going through roughly 348 menus of Play Online garbage, you’ll finally be able to start playing the game. You’re greeted by the standard FMV opening. It seems some little kid’s city is attacked by a bunch of ogres or something. There is a huge battle and the kid’s sister is killed while leading him to safety. The kid returns later with a huge army of people, which turns out to be useful since the city has long been deserted and overgrown. I have no idea what this means regarding anything in the game, but it looks pretty impressive. The CG is very nice. Too bad it’s probably the only bit of CG in the entire game. FF10 had excessive CG, FF11 doesn’t have any main characters, so it likely has none.

Now you get to create your character. You can chose from 5 races, two of which are gender specific. Why the two gender specific races are not considered one race is beyond me as both of them are cat based. Anyway, you can chose from a big hulking cat guy, an anime cat-girl, male or female Elves, Male and Female Humans, or Male and Female retarded midgets. According to the FMV opening the midget things are the Black and White ages of past games, except they have “adorable” faces instead of menacing black holes. After picking a race you can select from a vaeriety of heads with selections like Squall with Brown Hair” or “Rinoa”. For the most part the heads resemble characters of old games, too bad the clothes will never match, I could go for making “Squall”. Sadly, This game is all medieval in a horribly FF9 way.

After choosing your look, you get to pick a class and start location. Start location doesn’t much matter, though you’ll probably want to Synchronize this with any friends also playing. I did not take notes, but I’m pretty sure the starting classes were just the old Final Fantasy 1 classes of Fighter, Thief, Monk, Black Mage, Red Mage, White Mage. For the record, I picked a human female with black ponytail head and Red Mage Class. At the time I figured everyone would be picking elves or stupid midgets and Female Human would be one of the least popular. Turns out Female Humans are all over. At least she has a NICE ASS. Red Mage seemed like a good idea since they generally start strong but end weak and I’m not likely to be playing too far into this garbage.

So the game starts off, I’m in the middle of a huge town and a bit of story flashed by as my character walks along. Finally I am instructed to visit Reet who has nothing better to do than stand around all day helping NOOBEEs like myself. Reet didn’t seem all that interesting though and I had a friend in the same room to help out anyway. That same friend went and bought me a bunch of good armor then told me “Don’t fight anything that’s not a bee or a worm” before leaving to places unknown in the world of FF11. So I spent the next two hours fighting giant Hornets and Tunnel Worms and attained the almighty status of level 4. Unfortunately that’s pretty much all I accomplished. The enemies hadn’t dropped a single piece of gil and I hadn’t completed any sort of quests. Instead I had a large collection of Elemental Crystals and Insect Wings which I sold and bought a sword with. At that point it was getting pretty late so I decided to give it up for a while.

This seems like a good place to talk about the battles. In previous Final fantasy games, your party of characters would wander the world map until attacked at random. The screen then does some sort of crazy transition effect as battle music starts playing. Everyone lines up on one side of the screen while the monsters line up opposite. Each round you pick a command for your characters to execute such as magic or fight. In FF11 you wander the map, all the enemies are clearly visible, none of them attack without provocation (NOTE Some later enemies will attack). To initiate a battle you click on the enemy and select “Attack”. If you’re in range, the battle will start and all you are required to do is stand there until either the enemy dies, or you die. You can move your character around during the battle but it has no impact on the battle itself. I found myself running back and forth around the enemy in hopes that because the bee didn’t actually hit me with its attack animation I would not take damage. This never actually occurred though, you take damage anyway, even if you are 20 feet behind the enemy when it strikes.

After learning some magic you can interact with battle a little more, however the spells all seem to do damage equal to roughly half a regular attack so chances are you’ll just end up standing there staring at the enemy anyway. Cure is just as bad as you’ll take damage equivalent to whatever you heal in the time it takes to cast the spell.

After the battle you’ll find some items probably and gain a bit of experience. Like most computer RPGs experience levels are increasingly difficult to obtain. For example, to get to level 2 you’ll need like 500 exp, but level 3 will take 750 exp. By the time you are going from level 98-99, you’ll need approximately 1 octillion experience. In layman’s terms, at 50 exp a monster, that is “A Whole Fucking Lot”.

Both during battles and while wandering the map you’ll have a choice between 3rd person or 1st person views. While it’s slightly easier to navigate in first person view, I find it frustratingly limited. After playing so many First Person Shooters, I feel like I should be able to easily leap over those pesky fences and rocks as I navigate the world or I should be furiously clicking away with my sword and wailing on the enemy during battles. Everything is menu based. You can easily walk around the world while navigating your status and item menus.

Well, easily depends on location. So far I’ve found that during the daytime hours, while trying to fight off hornets in the desert, my course disappears completely. The sand is both blindingly bright and the same color as the courser. I’ve encountered a similar problem in another area where you enter a dark cave. The entrance is full of black pillars that are more or less invisible, it’s easy to get hung up on them.

Speaking of navigating the world. The areas are HUGE. You’ll want a powerful graphics card to run this game on your PC. You can see for miles with little to no fog and full frame rates. Unfortunately it’s a little too huge. The massive areas are just another aspect that makes this game so frustratingly boring (aside from excessive level requirements and boring missions). It takes like 5 minutes to get anywhere in the city and the dungeons are confusingly shaped (I got lost in one cave) and they really should have a map function. The town could easily have been one screen in size with everything closer together. The town could have easily been only one “screen” in size with everything more compacted. I’m sure they were trying for “realism” but frankly, I can only take so many trips across town to sell off my useless crystals before I get tired and leave to play something else. I guess the other alternative motivation was to give players plenty of room to walk around. Presumably if you had a couple of thousand people wandering around the town it would get pretty crowded. I can’t see that situation ever occurring though.

So a few days later I decided to return to the game. People are claiming there actually is a plot buried in here somewhere and I still haven’t done any missions anyway. After returning to Reet to learn where I can pick up missions (Reet wasn’t helpful here either and I still had to wander around looking for the guardhouse). My mission (which I chose to accept) was to find the foreman of the mine and pick up a report, then deliver it to some guy at the Presidential Office. After a 5 minute jog to the nearby mines, I proceeded to search the area for the foreman. Lucky for me the guard handing out missions neglected to give me any clue as to where to find this foreman other than “At the Mines”. After talking to every NPC in the area for some hope of a clue I decided to enter the mine itself. I was fairly well armed and leveled after all, I should have nothing to worry about. It turns out the mine is just as large as the city and just as populated. After wandering aimlessly for a half hour talking to all the NPCs, I finally found a foreman. NOTE: A foreman. This foreman informed me I must go “deeper in the mines” to find the person I wanted. At least I had finally found a helpful NPC. So I proceeded into the deeper undeveloped part of the mine, which turned out to be full of bats or various types, I finally found the foreman and picked up my orders.

I’d like to take a moment to pause here and discuss the item system. During my initial search for the foreman, I was offered a reward for killing monsters in the mines. All I had to do was bring him 3 “Pinches of Soot” to prove I was there. During my wandering, I fought many monsters and did indeed win my three Pinches. Unfortunately I also discovered I have an item cap of 30 items, half of which was already tied up in equipment it wouldn’t let me sell (Apparently you can’t sell starting equipment). So I had to drop a bunch of worthless sounding items and fight even more monsters to win back what I already had won. I should also point out that items don’t seem to “stack”, meaning my inventory would have say two “Wind Crystal x 1” instead of one “Wind Crystal x 2”. In the end I couldn’t find the guy offering the reward once I had left the cave so I only ende up feeling ripped off and pissed.

Back to the subject of huge worlds and leaving the cave. I actually managed to find the foreman pretty quick once I got down in the cave. It took me another hour to find my way back out. While I have a map of the town and the nearby desert, I don’t seem to start with a map of the cave. Eventually I ran into another player who escorted me to the exit.

Report in hand I made my way to the President’s office, hoping for some sort of payment or reward, after all, I wasn’t getting much gil from these hornets and worms. Of course I ended up with an all too familiar feeling. You see there is a reoccurring theme in this game. Basically you, as the player are given some sort of quest or order. This order is accompanied by zero clue as to where the end location actually is or what you’re actually supposed to do when you get there. Basically what I’m saying here is, like the Mission Giving Guard, The Foreman, and the Mine Exit, the President’s office was not on the map. This of course lead to another bout of boring wandering talking to NPCs with nothing useful to say. For future reference to anyone reading this. The President’s office is in the Metalworks. Eventually I managed to get this bit of info out of a guard on the other side of the town from the mine. Once again though, I got to wander around the Metalworks with no clue as to where to go. This time however the problem stems from that reoccurring texture problem. You see the Metalworks had two levels to it, but the elevator is the same shade of brown as everything else in the game, so it completely blends in until you see someone riding on it.

After even more wandering talking to NPCs looking for a clue the mission was completed. No reward though, and I imagine this same mission is given to all the players. Why this guard needs reports delivered to him ever few minutes by whichever sap adventurer happens by next is beyond be but hey, I’m just glad to be done with this boring fetch quest. Now maybe I’ll get a real quest. Infiltrate the Shinra headquarters maybe while getting detailed plot information regarding Ancients. Oh wait, MMORPGS don’t have real plots. Back to the Mission Guard. Job two is to meet up with Cid to do some geological surveying. Maybe that mine job isn’t looking so bad after all. After going back to the President’s office, (NOTE: the guard is literally on the other side of the town from the Metalworks), I talk to Cid who wants me to take an Acidity tester out to… somewhere… and see if it changes color. I would like to point out that testing the acidity level of an area is not Surveying. Not wanting to argue I set off to complete my task. This time I felt a bit more confident as Cid had actually told me “It’s near South Gustaberg”, meaning “the desert”. Well of course when I get to the desert there is nothing labeled on my map anything remotely similar to where I’m supposed to take his acidity tester, so I finally decided the game was shit and gave up.

So, if you like having nails driven into your skull, I’d suggest picking this game up when it’s released! I mean repeated fetch quests where you’re given no clue where to go are such awesome fun! Here is hoping that Final Fantasy 12 doesn’t such this much ass. In the mean time, I’ll be giving my money to Valve (Half Life 2) and Bungi (Halo PC) over Square.

Just one final note. I’ve consulted with some people farther along in the game than I managed. It’s more of the same garbage for the rest of the trip.

Review – Digimon World (PS1)

Feb 22nd, 2002

by Ramen Junkie.

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I think it is best to start out by saying that I like Digimon in general. I like it a lot really. Season 2 was stupid, but Season 1 and 3 are great. In the whole Pokemon vs Digimon thing I pick Digimon hands down. The monsters are much more bad ass, the story is ten times better than “Let’s train our monsters to kill eachother for prizes!”. Anyway, I really like Digimon. So hey, a Digimon Playstation game! Neat. And it’s an RPG. How can you lose?

Well apparently pretty fucking easily. Digimon World, is one of the worst game I have ever played. And I have played a LOT of games. Off the top of my head I’d say it’s the worst Playstation game I have played for sure. This is probably the only game of the many I own I regret buying, at full fucking price no less. I think I bought this game the day it came out for 40 dollars. What a rip off. I would have gotten more entertainment (both quality and time wise) out of burning fourty one dollar bills in my backyard. I think I played this game for like an hour before becoming completely pissed at it and never played it again.
Let’s start with the good I suppose. The graphics are nice. The people look really stupid, but the monsters all look pretty cool. The environments are pretty detailed as well. That’s it I think.
Now what we are all here for, the bad parts. Gameplay. This game has as much gameplay as a dead slug. No wait, that’s an overstatement, a dead slug would still have some fun parts, like pouring salt on it or splatting it on a wall or some shit. Anyway, don’t go into this game expecting a game like Pokémon only with Digimon characters. Its nothing like that. Pokémon the game is pretty fun. Maybe you are instead expecting some sort of RPG that follows the story of the show. Don’t go for that either. None of the show kids appears in this game. Why they didn’t just make an RPG based on ths how is beyond me.

What DO you get for your hard earned money? A really pretty looking Tomagotchi that isn’t portable unless you have one of those LCD deals and a battery pack of some sort for your Playstation. You will spend more time cleaning up your monster’s shit and feeding it than you will actually battling other monsters. I swear this thing is worse than having a real fucking pet. It is always hungry or tired or needing to shit. Well ok, raising a Tomagotchi isn’t that bad really. Here is the kicker. You get like 1 piece of food or per day for your monster. That will last it like 3 hours then it’ll be hungry again. Also unless you want your Monster to turn into something crappy when it evolves, you have to take it to one of the 2 toilets on the whole island. Did I mention you’ll never make it to these toilets in time and it’ll shit itself all over the place anyway.

But wait! That’s not all folks! Yes battles. Well its more like “Sit and watch two monsters wander aimlessly for an hour while you scream and pound the controller hoping something happens” than a battle. You don’t control the monster in the battle. The battles are really slow, the monsters will wander around and hit each other every few minutes.In the meantime you provide moral support by cheering the monster on. You can also train in a training ground to make your monster stronger. Which is a necessity if you want your monster to actually win any battles.

Let me describe the several games I played of this now for you. So you can get the big picture. In the begening I picked Augumon to start with. I don’t know what Gabumon is supposed to be but it looks kind of lame next to the Dinosaurlike Augumon, so I picked Augumon. Plus Augumon is supposed to turn into the big kick ass War Greymon. After loosing several battles. Or maybe it was winning. Anyway, battles give shitty stat increases, I found the training grounds. After lots of hard training generally I could finally win battles pretty easily and start working on the story. Actually I’m not sure what the story is exactly, something to do with bringing Digimon back to the Digimon village. Finally my Monster Digivolves. Ok, I went through like TWENTY Digimon in my time playing this game, each time, no matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried to raise it right, it would end up trning into the SHIT EATING SHIT MONSTER. This thing is weak as fucking hell and looks completely retarded. I think once I ended up with “Tentacle Rape Mon” and another time I had a Seadramon. The funny thing is, I once saw a post on a message board of somone who was TRYING to get the shitty shit monster. Aparently they had gotten all the other monsters and that was the last one they needed. HEY GUY LET ME PLAY YOUR GAME THAT THING IS THE ONLY ONE I CAN EVER GET.

Well there are slight advantages to having the shit monster. You don’t have to feed it. Just let it crap on the ground it will feed itself. That’s right, it eats it’s own fucking feces. Actually now I’m wondering why I hated this game. Not too many games let you own a monster that eats it’s own shit. Anyway, after getting the shit monster it would eventually die for no apparent reason then the leader of the village would bitch to be about taking better care next time ad he would give me a fresh monster to corrupt. I suppose there is a good chance my monsters kept dying due to thier diet of shit but I’d like to think otherwise. Anyway, After a good time of playing I got tired of trainign my monster up to a good level only to have it die or scat poisoning, plus I had only managed to do one quest, at least I think it was a quest, anyway, I finally got sick of this piece of shit game and decided to hate it forever. I think if I had my shit monster here it would probably really enjoy eating this one.

Review – River City Ransom EX (GBA)

Jan 7th, 2001

by Ramen Junkie.

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River City Ransom is a favorite game among many “old school” gamers. It’s fast paced combination of action and RPG coupled with a first rate two player set up make this a game everyone loves to play.

So, like its NES bother Super Dodge Ball, River City Ransom gets a GBA revamp. This game gets not just a complete facelift to 16 bit style graphics, but also many new features. The best new feature, and probably the worst, is the save system. No longer will gamers be plagues by extremely long strings of random symbols and letters. Now you can simply create a data file on the game pack with your character’s abilities.

The new save system unfortunately is extremely flawed. It’s not that it doesn’t work; it’s more that it’s extremely unintuitive. Loading the game lets you pick options such as difficulty, number of enemies, if you want the other character to follow you around (computer controlled). It also lets you load data for each character. However, it requires you to load for both Ryan and Alex; whether you want the other character with you or not. You can circumvent this however by simply entering the game and loading from in game.

Saving also works a bit strangely, as far as I can tell, it automatically creates a new file no matter what, so you’ll likely end up doing a lot of file deleting. This can lead to frustration as there’s nothing to differentiate a file other than player name. This of course can lead to accidentally deleting the new file.

Save system aside, the game also introduces player partners. In the original, two players could pair up as Ryan and Alex to trek across River City. This game allows you to let the computer to control the other hero. The computer isn’t really helpful for much more than absorbing damage though. He’ll take down a few enemies but he won’t really come rescue you too much if you’re starting to take a beating.

Ryan and Alex aren’t the only heroes anymore either. You can get up to 3 followers ranging from new characters to Zombies (the bosses). You’ll have to satisfy certain story based requirements to get these different partners.

Unfortunately, the game is not without its flaws. Firstly, I’ve played around with this game several times and I can’t get Thor to appear in the warehouse like he should. I’m not sure if there is some new story sequence I have to find or if my copy is buggy but this prevents Ivan from appearing to unlock the gates of River City High. Unfortunately the save file doesn’t save your progress, just your stats, so in order to try again I have to go through the whole game again.

Second, The cost of special moves has been increased dramatically. There are MANY new special abilities to learn and each character starts with one already learned (Alex gets Dragon Kick, Ryan gets Stone Hands), but the skills are now in the $150-$300 dollars. When you couple this with the enemies, who seem to be stronger and more numerous in this version, it means you’ll be hard pressed to actually save money when you have to spend it all refilling your life.

It’s not impossibly difficult, but this artificial increase in difficulty removes a lot of the fast paced fun of the original game. The new features and story make things a lot more complicated and as a result this remake loses almost all of the fun charm of the original. Honestly I find myself bored and frustrated more than enjoying playing the game.

The Game Boy is the kind of portable gaming. My portable gaming goals are likely different than others, but when I play my game boy I am looking for something I can either complete in 10-15 minutes or less (even if it’s one mission or quest) and something I can save and come back to in 5-10 minute spurts of game play. The save system not keeping story progress and the excessive time needed to raise money remove these aspects from the game. It’s a nice looking remake but it just isn’t as fun as the original game.