Games Played in 2005
Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2006 8:13 am
So, list all the games you've completed (or you think you went deep enough into the game to form a well-thought out opinion of it) in the year 2005. Not necessarily games that were released in 2005. The reason so many of these games on this list are from before 2005 is because I only got a PS2 in late 2004 (around the time Katamari Damacy was released in the States, because that and Kingdom Hearts were the first games I bought).
Beyond Good & Evil
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Gitaroo Man
Ico
Klonoa
Klonoa 2
Magna Carta: Tears of Blood
Metal Gear Solid 3
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (Puppet Princess)
Sonic Heroes
Suikoden 2
Suikoden 3
Suikoden 4
Suikoden Tactics (Rhapsodia)
And now, some thoughts on select games.
<i><b>Final Fantasy X</b></i> was alright; I really dig the battle system and the level up system and it's one of the few Final Fantasy games where I actually like and care for a majority of the cast... but wow, the story sucked, particularly in terms of timing and pacing of events.
I also played <i><b>Final Fantasy X-2</b></i>, which probably took 8 months to finish.
What happened was I borrowed it from a friend, played it, and got sick of going through the same damn environment over and over again. The last straw was the Cactuar subquest, where I was all like, "I have to go there again?!?!" Then I shelved it for about 8 months before I picked it up again because I figured I should return the game to it's original owner, but before doing that, I thought that I should just finish the game and get it over with. I managed to finish it right when I was about to get sick of it again.
I thought <i><b>Disgaea</b></i> was decent... it's funny with a great sense of humor, but I hate power levelling. Even though it's a Strategy RPG, I didn't get the impression that much strategy was involved. It felt more like the game was about being 15 levels higher than the enemy and mowing them down... I didn't feel like doing any of the extra stuff that could shave ten years of my life, so I stopped playing once I got the ending.
<i><b>Gitaroo Man</b></i>'s a cool game, but in major need of polish. It has some pretty cool game mechanics for a Rhythm game, which took me a while to completely understand. At first, I didn't know the direction of the anlogue stick was also what determined the pitch of the guitar, and when I realized that pressing up caused the guitar sound to have a high pitch and vice versa for the low pitch, I was like "Oooh, wow, so pressing a certain direction does have some kind of purpose." My favorite stage is definitely "Tainted Lovers" with that freaky Gregorio II guy. However, I feel like the visuals distract you from the actual Rhythm game taking place; that is to say, when the game is telling you to press certain buttons, there's also visuals in the background that seldom have to do with what you're doing. I think that, if the game could somehow unite the visuals and the Rhythm game more seamlessly like Space Channel 5, we could've had something really awesome here. How that could be accomplished, I have no clue.
<i><b>Ico</b></i>... I know that someone will probably quote me and reply "douched" or "banned", but I don't get Ico, especially after hearing all the praise it got. I mean, yeah, it's got nice aesthetics and attention to detail... but, well, that's all I get. Is there some kind of mindset I'm supposed to play it with? There are some moments I really like (particularly the moving bridge scene, where I subconsciously performed an action because of what's happened throughout the game so far), but for the most part, Ico doesn't seem to have a profound impression on me.
There's the <i><b>Suikoden</b></i> series... I had Suikoden 1 for a couple of years, but refused to check out Suikoden 3+ until I got myself a copy of Suikoden 2... so then I had a marathon and played Suikoden 2-4+Tactics. I loved Suikoden 2 (especially after the average-in-all-aspects Suikoden 1), but found myself disappointed in Suikoden 3. I still think Suikoden 3 is still an important title in the series and that it should've been made, but the overall execution of the game, I found poor. For one thing, the game moves at a snail's pace; I'm not referring to the pace in terms of story, but in reference to the battle system and and the walking speed. I just feel battles take way too damn long; I imagine the main reason that giving orders in battle are given in pairs (since orders are, well, given in pairs) is because the battles would feel much longer if you gave everyone individual commands. But even then, that doesn't excuse the excessively long enemy attack animations (those damn butterflies, wyverns, golden suns, songsprites, etc.). Coupled with a horrible walking speed, you get tired of walking through the same environments again.
Storywise, it's fine, but I think cutscenes are in major need of polish. I was reading the Suikoden 3 manga and noticed how much more powerful scenes were in the manga; you know, I actually gave a fuck about [spoilers]Lulu's and Wyatt's death[/spoilers] in the manga, yet found myself untouched during the game (I played the game before reading the manga volumes that have been localized so far). The scene between Chris and Wyatt felt much more personal in the manga, whereas in the game, the event between them... just happened. There're more scenes I could probably recollect, but then, well, this post would feel too long and be very spoilerific. I kinda wish Aki Shimizu (artist the manga adaptation) was Suikoden 3's storyboard artist.
<i><b>Suikoden 4</b></i> addresses all the problems I had with Suikoden 3, but pretty much degrades every other elements that made the Suikoden series a good one in the first place. Examples of what I didn't like in Suikoden 3 were the average music, the unpolished animation, and the horrid walking speed, and scenes feel much more personal (I like the scene where Elenor pokes people with her wine bottle); all of these were improved in 4 (except maybe some animation). However, story-wise and maybe battle-wise (compared to Suiko 3), it degrades. The story, for the most part, was mediocre. Suikoden 4 starts out strong and stays strong until about the time you get exiled, and deteriorates to a pile of mediocrity after you get your base. The 108 Stars of Destiny barely have any presence; It suffers from the same problem as Suikoden 1 where the Stars of Destiny just feel like they're there just to fill the 108 Stars of Destiny requirement. Suikoden 1 had the excuse for being the first Suikoden. This is 10 years after the first Suikoden was made, so Suikoden 4 has no excuse to be like this. I could talk about Suikoden Tactics now, but I already did in another thread, so, uh, yeah.
<i><b>Magna Carta: Tears of Blood</b></i> (Magna Carta: Crimson Stigmata) sucks. I cannot recommend this game to anyone. First, what I like: I actually like the battle system, the visuals are nice, and the story's decent enough. However, there are a couple of glaring flaws that keep this title from being anything more than decent.
For one thing, the loading times suck. 15 seconds is way too long for loading times. They really grated on my nerves, and I'm willing to bet that if I were to add up all the time it took just to load after finishing this game (which took about 70 hours), it would be about 1 hour worth of loading.
The camera sucks, in battle and out. Inside of battle, the camera is fixed with a bird eye's view of the current active party member. Since battles are real-time, this can pose an annoyance, because enemies aren't always in view. You have to run around the battlefield hoping you run to where they are before they can do anything to you.
The camera on the maps sucks too. Camera angles are fixed, so you have no control over it. This poses a problem when you want to sneak up on a monster in order to ambush them. The camera might not give the most desirable view, so you end up risking being caught. Sometimes, the camera might suddenly jump into another view while you're being all stealthy, which may screw up your concentration and cause you to lose a couple of seconds to recoordinate yourself to the new camera angle.
Another problem is the fact you repeat 9/10 of the maps in the game. This doesn't happen until about 20 hours into the game, but eventually you'll find yourself repeating dungeons you've already been to, just to proceed. This feels like a poor way to artificially increase the hours you put into playing this game. The game may make you repeat some maps up to four times (god I hate trudging through the Astine Marshs)! If the environments didn't look as good as they did, I would've stopped playing about halfway through.
The battle system is good enough; it's nice to know it's not a cookie-cutter battle system, and not a bad one at that. It does have a steep learning curve, which may turn off a lot of people. Once I did learn all the bells and whistles, I started liking the battle system. In order to attack, you have to put in a timed button combination (kinda like Space Channel 5). If you miss one button, you don't get to attack, but if you manage to press all the buttons, you get to attack. I like this method, because if you miss, it's because it's your fault. All attacks use up a certain chi; when a certain chi runs out, you can't use that attack anymore. But chi rejivenates during the course of battle, and how fast it rejuvenates depends on the territory. Some maps have more ice chi than fire chi, and vice versa. You must utilize characters and styles in order to make the most of chi. The more chi of a particular element there is, the stronger your attack, so it's not so much choose-your-three favorite characters. You need to choose a good party for specific maps to be effective, or else battles may last longer than you'd want it to. If played efficently, you can take out the enemy before you even get hit!
The story, for the most part, is decent. Basically, there's a war between the Yason and the humans, mainly because of land issues. The two races start pillaging and killing eachother because of their differences, and the main character is a victim of his hometown being burned by the Yason. Calintz holds a deep hatred for the Yason, and pretty much wants revenge/end the war. He becomes the Captain of the Tears of Blood, a mercenery group who performs front-line operations. Eventually, you get separated from your group and meet a chick named Reith, who happens to suffer from amnesia. And we all know what <i>that</i> means.
Basically, it takes a couple of videogame cliches, but the end result of the cliche doesn't turn out to be so cliche. For example, you might predict the Yason and the humans will finally reconcile their differences, but this doesn't really happen. But even then, the story is extremely predictable, and you can pretty much see any story event coming a mile away.
So, uh, yeah.
Beyond Good & Evil
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Gitaroo Man
Ico
Klonoa
Klonoa 2
Magna Carta: Tears of Blood
Metal Gear Solid 3
Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure (Puppet Princess)
Sonic Heroes
Suikoden 2
Suikoden 3
Suikoden 4
Suikoden Tactics (Rhapsodia)
And now, some thoughts on select games.
<i><b>Final Fantasy X</b></i> was alright; I really dig the battle system and the level up system and it's one of the few Final Fantasy games where I actually like and care for a majority of the cast... but wow, the story sucked, particularly in terms of timing and pacing of events.
I also played <i><b>Final Fantasy X-2</b></i>, which probably took 8 months to finish.
What happened was I borrowed it from a friend, played it, and got sick of going through the same damn environment over and over again. The last straw was the Cactuar subquest, where I was all like, "I have to go there again?!?!" Then I shelved it for about 8 months before I picked it up again because I figured I should return the game to it's original owner, but before doing that, I thought that I should just finish the game and get it over with. I managed to finish it right when I was about to get sick of it again.
I thought <i><b>Disgaea</b></i> was decent... it's funny with a great sense of humor, but I hate power levelling. Even though it's a Strategy RPG, I didn't get the impression that much strategy was involved. It felt more like the game was about being 15 levels higher than the enemy and mowing them down... I didn't feel like doing any of the extra stuff that could shave ten years of my life, so I stopped playing once I got the ending.
<i><b>Gitaroo Man</b></i>'s a cool game, but in major need of polish. It has some pretty cool game mechanics for a Rhythm game, which took me a while to completely understand. At first, I didn't know the direction of the anlogue stick was also what determined the pitch of the guitar, and when I realized that pressing up caused the guitar sound to have a high pitch and vice versa for the low pitch, I was like "Oooh, wow, so pressing a certain direction does have some kind of purpose." My favorite stage is definitely "Tainted Lovers" with that freaky Gregorio II guy. However, I feel like the visuals distract you from the actual Rhythm game taking place; that is to say, when the game is telling you to press certain buttons, there's also visuals in the background that seldom have to do with what you're doing. I think that, if the game could somehow unite the visuals and the Rhythm game more seamlessly like Space Channel 5, we could've had something really awesome here. How that could be accomplished, I have no clue.
<i><b>Ico</b></i>... I know that someone will probably quote me and reply "douched" or "banned", but I don't get Ico, especially after hearing all the praise it got. I mean, yeah, it's got nice aesthetics and attention to detail... but, well, that's all I get. Is there some kind of mindset I'm supposed to play it with? There are some moments I really like (particularly the moving bridge scene, where I subconsciously performed an action because of what's happened throughout the game so far), but for the most part, Ico doesn't seem to have a profound impression on me.
There's the <i><b>Suikoden</b></i> series... I had Suikoden 1 for a couple of years, but refused to check out Suikoden 3+ until I got myself a copy of Suikoden 2... so then I had a marathon and played Suikoden 2-4+Tactics. I loved Suikoden 2 (especially after the average-in-all-aspects Suikoden 1), but found myself disappointed in Suikoden 3. I still think Suikoden 3 is still an important title in the series and that it should've been made, but the overall execution of the game, I found poor. For one thing, the game moves at a snail's pace; I'm not referring to the pace in terms of story, but in reference to the battle system and and the walking speed. I just feel battles take way too damn long; I imagine the main reason that giving orders in battle are given in pairs (since orders are, well, given in pairs) is because the battles would feel much longer if you gave everyone individual commands. But even then, that doesn't excuse the excessively long enemy attack animations (those damn butterflies, wyverns, golden suns, songsprites, etc.). Coupled with a horrible walking speed, you get tired of walking through the same environments again.
Storywise, it's fine, but I think cutscenes are in major need of polish. I was reading the Suikoden 3 manga and noticed how much more powerful scenes were in the manga; you know, I actually gave a fuck about [spoilers]Lulu's and Wyatt's death[/spoilers] in the manga, yet found myself untouched during the game (I played the game before reading the manga volumes that have been localized so far). The scene between Chris and Wyatt felt much more personal in the manga, whereas in the game, the event between them... just happened. There're more scenes I could probably recollect, but then, well, this post would feel too long and be very spoilerific. I kinda wish Aki Shimizu (artist the manga adaptation) was Suikoden 3's storyboard artist.
<i><b>Suikoden 4</b></i> addresses all the problems I had with Suikoden 3, but pretty much degrades every other elements that made the Suikoden series a good one in the first place. Examples of what I didn't like in Suikoden 3 were the average music, the unpolished animation, and the horrid walking speed, and scenes feel much more personal (I like the scene where Elenor pokes people with her wine bottle); all of these were improved in 4 (except maybe some animation). However, story-wise and maybe battle-wise (compared to Suiko 3), it degrades. The story, for the most part, was mediocre. Suikoden 4 starts out strong and stays strong until about the time you get exiled, and deteriorates to a pile of mediocrity after you get your base. The 108 Stars of Destiny barely have any presence; It suffers from the same problem as Suikoden 1 where the Stars of Destiny just feel like they're there just to fill the 108 Stars of Destiny requirement. Suikoden 1 had the excuse for being the first Suikoden. This is 10 years after the first Suikoden was made, so Suikoden 4 has no excuse to be like this. I could talk about Suikoden Tactics now, but I already did in another thread, so, uh, yeah.
<i><b>Magna Carta: Tears of Blood</b></i> (Magna Carta: Crimson Stigmata) sucks. I cannot recommend this game to anyone. First, what I like: I actually like the battle system, the visuals are nice, and the story's decent enough. However, there are a couple of glaring flaws that keep this title from being anything more than decent.
For one thing, the loading times suck. 15 seconds is way too long for loading times. They really grated on my nerves, and I'm willing to bet that if I were to add up all the time it took just to load after finishing this game (which took about 70 hours), it would be about 1 hour worth of loading.
The camera sucks, in battle and out. Inside of battle, the camera is fixed with a bird eye's view of the current active party member. Since battles are real-time, this can pose an annoyance, because enemies aren't always in view. You have to run around the battlefield hoping you run to where they are before they can do anything to you.
The camera on the maps sucks too. Camera angles are fixed, so you have no control over it. This poses a problem when you want to sneak up on a monster in order to ambush them. The camera might not give the most desirable view, so you end up risking being caught. Sometimes, the camera might suddenly jump into another view while you're being all stealthy, which may screw up your concentration and cause you to lose a couple of seconds to recoordinate yourself to the new camera angle.
Another problem is the fact you repeat 9/10 of the maps in the game. This doesn't happen until about 20 hours into the game, but eventually you'll find yourself repeating dungeons you've already been to, just to proceed. This feels like a poor way to artificially increase the hours you put into playing this game. The game may make you repeat some maps up to four times (god I hate trudging through the Astine Marshs)! If the environments didn't look as good as they did, I would've stopped playing about halfway through.
The battle system is good enough; it's nice to know it's not a cookie-cutter battle system, and not a bad one at that. It does have a steep learning curve, which may turn off a lot of people. Once I did learn all the bells and whistles, I started liking the battle system. In order to attack, you have to put in a timed button combination (kinda like Space Channel 5). If you miss one button, you don't get to attack, but if you manage to press all the buttons, you get to attack. I like this method, because if you miss, it's because it's your fault. All attacks use up a certain chi; when a certain chi runs out, you can't use that attack anymore. But chi rejivenates during the course of battle, and how fast it rejuvenates depends on the territory. Some maps have more ice chi than fire chi, and vice versa. You must utilize characters and styles in order to make the most of chi. The more chi of a particular element there is, the stronger your attack, so it's not so much choose-your-three favorite characters. You need to choose a good party for specific maps to be effective, or else battles may last longer than you'd want it to. If played efficently, you can take out the enemy before you even get hit!
The story, for the most part, is decent. Basically, there's a war between the Yason and the humans, mainly because of land issues. The two races start pillaging and killing eachother because of their differences, and the main character is a victim of his hometown being burned by the Yason. Calintz holds a deep hatred for the Yason, and pretty much wants revenge/end the war. He becomes the Captain of the Tears of Blood, a mercenery group who performs front-line operations. Eventually, you get separated from your group and meet a chick named Reith, who happens to suffer from amnesia. And we all know what <i>that</i> means.
Basically, it takes a couple of videogame cliches, but the end result of the cliche doesn't turn out to be so cliche. For example, you might predict the Yason and the humans will finally reconcile their differences, but this doesn't really happen. But even then, the story is extremely predictable, and you can pretty much see any story event coming a mile away.
So, uh, yeah.