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alon's Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
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| [January 29, 2007 03:31:44 AM]
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I played two hours and a half today on my second section. It was much more fun for me. I still fought the same hard monsters at the beginning but than I began fighting a hunt boss. This hunt boss was a wyvern with huge wings that was not an aerial creature and it seemed to have steel armor and an insane amount of health points. I think fighting it was one of the longest single battles I fought. It took me nearly 45 minutes. It was amazingly fun. The design concept of an epic battle is very intriguing to me. On the one hand, it seemingly should get boring soon and yet during the whole time of the battle I was having fun. It is the switching of tactics in attempt to kill this beast. It is the barley staying alive and the suspense the battle that you feel ecstatic after winning. All of these elements are part of the epic battle. The epic battle is what you play to reach, though this was not a plot epic battle because the monster was so buff and I was not it was very difficult and unbelievably enjoyable battle. The fact that I constantly have to react to the screen, whether trying a new spell or swapping a different character in or using an item that I usually do not, epic battles are a large part of why RPG’s are fun. They make you strain the abilities you have as a player and the abilities of your characters to their outmost. Some people may dislike them for how hard they are but I truly believe that the majority of the people enjoy those kinds of fights a lot.
How to incorporate this into a game. In my RPG, I would have to somehow balance the effect of an epic battle with strength of the heroes that is expected and stats of the thing they are fighting. If a creature is too difficult to defeat than people will simply quit the game and unless they are very hard headed they will not play the game an infinite amount of times if they believe there is no way to beat it. On the other hand making it very tricky to beat while keeping it possible is a great addition to the incorporation of an epic battle. Making the battle easy to beat is neccery in the first few epic battles, where the player has yet to master the game very well nor his abilities and so must be able to win easily while having a sort of a boss fight. Later on the bosses should be a much greater challenge and much more powerful as compared to the player and yet still not very unbeatable.
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| [January 28, 2007 10:45:55 PM]
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I played an hour and a half today on my first section. I started in Balfur port and fought my way through the crested area. It was interesting because instead of making the enemies very strong they simply made them bosses that I fought before. This is probably to make it so that they do not have to have too many different sprites. It was difficult which made it fun for me. I made it all the way through to the hunter’s camp in phon beach. I than talked to a game master who gave me a “rare hunt test” it was amazingly exiting when I saw about twenty treasure chests in front of the boss which like about 5 others was a large turtle with chains in it’s legs. I found it as somewhat of an annoying experience when the same graphical sprite was used for five different creatures, and even more when they all were very similar just growing in strength and all are bosses. I think that it is a large pet peeve of mine when the game has the same graphical representation when the game graphics allow for much more. I think I will attempt to make different voices and pictures for all my characters in my game. The test of killing yet another giant turtle was easy and except the excitement of getting many treasure chests with half actually giving me something useful. I did enjoy challenging units on the map that I had to fight instead of units that died excessively fast and easily. In the end, if I would have to rank my game play of the hour and a half I would say it was ok but certainly not exceptional in any way.
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| [January 28, 2007 10:45:40 PM]
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sorry i clicked enter before i wrote the log look above for the actual log
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 28th, 2007 at 22:46:51.
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| [January 15, 2007 10:48:47 PM]
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My next session was only 2 hours. I went to Burjahba to complete another hunt. This one was fairly simple as though there were many bugs near the boss using aeroga quickly killed them all and than I finished off the boss without too much difficulty by using decoy/reverse combo on Basch while having one mage constantly casting it and Vaan and Basch attacking the boss. I than teleported to Arcadia and started collecting sandals for no apparent reason other than to get to a place that I cannot get to otherwise. I believe that this is part of the culture aspect of RPG’s. Like most experienced RPG players, I know that any place that you cannot reach without getting something done to get there means you want to get there. It took me an hour of simply running around and talking to people in Arcadia to get enough sandals so that I may go to central. In central, I had to run after a cockatrice and talk to it. I told it that there was another cockatrice in Arcadia, and it gave me a free weapon. That again is an RPG culture aspect. You are given weapons such as a hand grade by an oversized chicken and most RPG players question not where that chicken got that hand grenade from.
Another aspect of RPG’s that is very popular is puzzles like the side quest I was doing to get my sandals that allow me entrance to central. I had to talk to people and match one person that tells me something with a person that would be interested in that information. This kind of side quests are a vital part of RPG’s. These side quests add an element of supposed freedom. It makes a person feel that they do not have to follow the actual plot but can just do whatever they wanted. In reality, these side quests add more realism to the game in a way that it makes you learn more about the game. After talking to all these people and having to match them with other people that may wish their information, 28 times I learned a lot more about the Arcadians in the way of their culture.
Gore is vital to games. I was thinking of the balance that Final Fantasy tries to achieve. FF has always been a teen rated game because a large amount of parents actually listens to the censorship advice on games. The question than is how much more people will play the game because their parents or religious beliefs allow them to play a teen rated game as comparison to the obviously more fun gory game. I am certain that had FFXII had more gore than it would be much more fun. When you currently kill a monster, it simply vanishes into a spirit/ghost. If instead you would have battlegrounds full of bloody bodies of monsters and have monsters bleed to death it would be much more popular among the more adult population as seen by games such as Dead Rising and Halo(1&2) which are rated mature. These games are though prohibited for many teenagers, kids, and people of religions like Mormons and in countries like Germany who do not allow gore. The question that I think must be the deciding factor in allowing or not allowing gore is worth it by the target people that this game is aimed towards. FFXII is ingenious in that regard for it is such an old saga that older gamers will play it without gore being present because FF saga is generally one of the best in RPG’s, and they get a large amount of people that cannot play these games otherwise play these games and therefore get a much larger audience. As game designers that may not be, designing a game as known as a FF I think the question still remains to calculate whether gore will increase the audience of a game more than not having it. Designers in the end are simply people that make a product that people want and they must figure out what would give them a greater audience.
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| [January 15, 2007 06:16:35 PM]
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TRICKSTER HUNT IS POSIBLE!
I started my first 3-hour session with a positive outlook as I have now vanquished three level 5 monsters and was ready for the next one the Trickster. It took me half an hour of searching for the trickster until I figured out how to get him to come out and I will not spoil trying to do this for others. Once I started fighting the Trickster, I used my usual strategy of having Vaan equipped with reflect armor and my mage that has an equipped item to pass through reflect spells constantly cast decoy/reverse. I took trickster to less than a quarter HP and than the nightmare began. If I have ever felt like your enemy was invincible, it was than. It was immune to all physical damage most spells heal it instead of damage it and once you finally figure out what can hurt it, the Trickster changes it weaknesses. To add to this it is also doing an attack that drops huge rocks on my whole team. Though my tank is healed by this because it has reverse on it, it forces my mages to have to heal each other and as they heal each other, they cannot continue to cast reverse and decoy on Vaan nor try spells to figure out weaknesses of the Trickster. Quickenings are useless against it for they are considered physical damage. After an hour and a half, I died thrice and tried again but with a different strategy. This time I tried to use my Espers, which failed badly as even though one of them took Trickster down to a quarter of it health once Trickster became immune to physical attacks my Espers healed it to almost half-life. I restarted at crystal. This time I planned to try to take it down with quickenings it failed. I took it down to 1/10 of his health and it went immune. I continued to attempt to take it down in this way. It took about five tries, but on the fifth try, I managed to land a 16 quickenings 32465 HP attacks that killed it before it could go immune.
It is a very interesting idea that FFXII is trying to toy with, a unit that is immune to most spells, all physical damage and changes weaknesses. It seems as if the only way to kill it is get lucky, figure out what spell is not going to heal it quickly, and have all your characters cast that type of spell many times before it changes weakness. I do not believe that the makers expected someone to manage to kill it the way that I did with an insanely strong quickening that took it down a third of its life point. This side quest was way too hard to finish as far as I am concerned. When my 13 quickenings in a row took, it down to critical HP and it went immune and with Critical HP, it still managed to not die but heal as I was trying different magic spells to try to harm it. It made me want to quit this side quest and just go to fight some monster that actually can be killed. I think that if the Trickster was immune to Physical damage I should at least know what spell can hurt it I think that as a creator they should not make someone too powerful. If such a creature exists on a side quest, the player will usually quit that side quest, if it is part of a main story tale they may quit the game. This happened to me when I was playing finial fantasy X and Sin was simply too powerful so I had to quit the game and I consider that a very bad thing. Maybe making the Trickster with just a physical immunity and an immunity to spells is fine, but having it change weaknesses is simply too much for it means that you must constantly try to figure out what is its weaknesses are.
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| [January 9, 2007 08:32:25 PM]
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I am currently a level 34-35 with all my carachters and have played many hours.
today i was doing Hunts. these sidequests are very dificult fun and interesting. the first hunt was truly a challage wich made me very happy when i managed to beat it. i had to kill a special bunny for the viaras, sounds ez right well problem is that the bunny never stops running from you. and to make it harder there are enamies in the map. i decided to kill everything on the map and than without worying anialate the bunny. but they braught a suprise for me. if i do that that much thougher skelaton mages apear. i had to run heal for the skeleton mages just kept coming and i was getting nowhere with hunting the bunny. i returned and attempted the hunt with use of spells that are supposed to make the bunny imobile. none of it worked. i than switched characters and tried to use decoy magic to get the bunny to attack my guy and that didn't work luckily i managed to hit the bunny with one blow from one of my characters dagger and that made it berserk and forced it to atack me at which point i easily killed it off. I really enjoyed that hunt because i failed at first. I find it an interesting concept that i enjoy it much more when i fail multiple times before i sucseed or when it seems i may fail than when it is easy. after killing the bunny and getting special lightning arrows as a reward, it is nice to do hunts because they give you weopons you couldn't get otherwise at tha point in the game. I think the concept of hunts having to kil random beasts is intriging because it is in no way requiered but to do well in the game it is almost a neccety. I went to the garif vilage and was givven another hunt.
The second hunt was fairly easy i used my two summoned creatures and nearly destroyed a person at which point he healed. i than just attacked him with my units and my unit with the special dagger caused him to go berserk and stop casting spells at which point i easily finished him off and got a reward. i was told by the person who gave me the reward to go talk to a person which i did that person told me i am still to weak to fight something in the middle of the mines.
I find it is fun for me to see my clan rank advance up quickly for it shows progress. I am now at a stage where i often walk through a path where the enamies are very weak and do not give me good items for killing them and it does annoy me but than again final fantasy does have teleportation crystals that work perfectly but i think are a little sparse in their locations. having to spend 5-10minutes walking through a place where i kill any enamy in 1 hit is not too fun especially when the enamy barly levels you up, this is also a way the makers use to get you to advance in the main plot. if you advance in the plot the enamies become much more difficult than they are currently. i think if they had a quick map movement option through the areas where your level is much stronger than that of your enamies so that the polayer can save time on non fun things.
stealing as a concept. it is interesting how final fantasy games often have the main charachter be a thief.l with the new item i have i can steal items from units that are often as good as the items i get killing them. but some things with stealing make no sense. for example how can you steal money from a bat or a mace from a beast or many other things that beeasts do not actually ever carry. still stealing in a game is easy, but than again it is a small side technique that you have.
freedom of control i find that having this kind of freedom is great, using boring weak enamies and only a limited abilaty to upgrade without moving along with the plotline. i think it is wise for it allows people to feel in controll while still forfced passively to follow a plotline and not just stay in one spot.
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alon's Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 9 January, 2007
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