Akame ga Kill: Fun Ride, But Could Be Better

Here's a series that I wish that I could like more than I did. While it had great action sequences and some nice art with a premise that should have worked well, the whole thing got mired in how the story didn't spend enough time developing its characters while lining them up like bowling pins to be killed off. It's too bad because if it had put a little more effort into that, Akame ga Kill could have been a much better show.

It starts off well enough with the main character, Tatsumi, arriving in the capital hoping to find a way to help his poor village on the outskirts of the kingdom. Before long, he discovers that the place is actually quite corrupt with very bad people in high places. When taken in for the night by a noble family that turn out to be complete sadists with a taste for torture, he meets the members of Night Raid, a team of assassins with the Revolutionary Army who are tasked with hunting down particularly evil government officials and killing them. Once Tatsumi sees the nobles for the monsters they are he understands that the empire in which he lives is actually rotten, and with that joins the assassins.

From here we follow Tatsumi and Night Raid as they do their part to bring down the empire, killing off corrupt officials and potential threats as the military enlists specialists of their own to deal with the assassins. What makes this fun to watch are the weapons used by the team members and high ranking members of the empire's military called Imperial Arms. They were made 1,000 years earlier and much of the knowledge to create them has been lost, but they are very powerful. Each one is different with its own special power, so we see people running around with rifles with enough oomph to shoot down spacefaring battleships, incredibly powerful armor, teleportation devices, ice attacks, sentient organic Arms, et cetera. This leads to several huge battles as people clash, which is the high point of the show.

Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of the main characters, both heroes and villains, dying. A lot. The problem with this is that Akame ga Kill doesn't spend enough time developing its characters for the viewer to really get hit hard when one of them dies. We'll get a few minutes one episode explaining their past and an episode or two later they'll be dead. The first death or two does have a bit of shock value as the show makes it clear that this will be a thing, but after that it never gets to the point where viewers genuinely worry about who will be next to go, instead developing more of a morbid curiosity as to who will get killed off. As such, there isn't much power to the deaths. It's spectacle and little more. The only person I was sad to see go was Tatsumi since he was built up over the entire series, while everyone else to go was just cannon fodder. Bols is the only other character I feel got barely enough development to deserve some sympathy when he died. By the end of the series, there's pretty much a mountain of corpses seeing as so many characters got killed off and mostly I found myself trying to remember why I should care about them in the first place. If the show had spent more time developing people and being more selective as to who would die, it would have had a much stronger impact than going the route that it did with this.

At least the show looked pretty and had a decent soundtrack. The characters were reasonably well designed with some over the top aesthetics from time to time. Seryu stood out here with her prosthetic limbs that could be replaced with ridiculous artillery. Susanoo when he was transformed looked pretty bad ass. Esdeath got the military dominatrix thing down and I look forward to the day when someone can truly pull off some solid cosplay of her. The animation of the battles also had a nice sense of speed and seemed to get the gore to a good level with just the right amount of gratuity to match the depravity of the empire. I also liked how people's faces contorted when they let their inner demons get the better of them. Music too was well done. There's not much to say about it, but the tunes worked well with the show.

On the whole, I don't regret the time I spent watching Akame ga Kill. The action made for a fun ride and it was nice to see the empire get its comeuppance, but the way in which the show took the axe to so many of its characters felt like killing for the sake of killing and it became easy to get numb to it. This show could have been a lot more interesting if its characters were better developed. At least then, I'd care more when someone died off. As it stands, the show feels like something to watch on a stream when one has a hankering for a lot of combat with liberal amounts of gore and a relatively straightforward "fight the power" story line, which isn't all together bad, but at the same time it's hard not to feel that Akame ga Kill could have been more than that.

On the Deluge of Japanese Games Coming to PC

Growing up, I always leaned more toward what Japanese companies were releasing when it came to video games. Being about 10 when the NES came along, it was just the right age where I would be hit by one game after the next that wound up creating an affinity in me for the stuff coming out of that part of the world. Whether it was big series like Super Mario Brothers, Castlevania, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Contra, or just one-offs like Faxanadu (yes, I know it's part of a much larger series), Excitebike, or Blades of Steel, I was hooked. It just continued from one generation to the next as I migrated to the SNES and Genesis, the PlayStation and Saturn, and then the PS2 and DS.

However, when the PS3 came along, something unfortunate happened. The amount of games coming out of the region slowed down, and Japanese publishers started to hit a real funk. Interests were shifting in the West and a new generation of gamers were hungry for Gears of War, CoD, Battlefield, and the like. Sales were dropping and Japanese developers were not necessarily porting games to overseas markets with the same zeal as before. Moreover, with the rise of mobile gaming, especially in their home region, a number of them were shifting their focus to that sphere instead. So, for people like myself, options were feeling somewhat limited. It wasn't so bad for people who enjoy handheld gaming. The DS and 3DS as well as the PSP then Vita have seen a number of very good Japanese developed games come to their libraries over the years, but when you compare it to the heyday of the early 2000s, it's still not as vast.

Lately, though, with the swelling number of games that have been showing up on PC from Japanese developers and the constant uptick in announcements for more games to come, it feels like things are slowly starting to change. Sure, a considerable number of these are ports, especially stuff from the Vita and PS3, but we're also seeing it as a target platform for new releases with increasing regularity. Bandai Namco have been pumping out stuff on the PC for a while now with Dark Souls, Naruto games, and the Tales series leading the charge. Square-Enix has been porting more and more of their stuff to the platform. NIS America, XSEED, Idea Factory, Capcom, and legions of others are also bringing their games to PC.

It's feeling like a resurgence to the West to some extent as many of these games start to see a wider audience. Some of the PS3 and PS4 stuff would already get into quite a few people's hands, but with them coming to PC that's an even broader base who can and will plunk down their money on these games. Vita ports in particular are able to reap far better sales in the West by going this route because as snazzy as the handheld is, it just didn't catch on in this part of the world. Moreover, these games have the benefit of becoming relevant and easily accessible across multiple generations. They aren't shackled to a specific console, leaving fans at the mercy of publishers as to whether or not they'll add backward compatibility support for these games in future systems. Given the quite niche nature of some of these games, it can go either way in that regard.

So, it is nice that we're seeing more and more of these games come to PC and between announcements, leaks, and reliable rumors it looks like this trend will only increase in the future. However, even now, a few years after this whole practice started, we're still seeing a number of quick, down and dirty ports. A lot of companies are pretty much dumping their games on Steam without really giving them much polish. Koei Tecmo is particularly bad for this with a lot of half-assed ports of their games. Namco Bandai are still sketchy in this regard with fans like Durante often being the ones to enhance their games, getting resolution and the like up to spec for what PC gamers expect. Then there are are a number of others that could have used some tweaking before coming to Steam. A couple of examples would be Neptunia and Fairy Fencer F. I've been playing these lately, and they work fine, but they are both games that took the express train from Vita Land. Their keyboard and mouse controls feel barebones and the games handle much better with a traditional controller. Moreover, they have issues with the visuals, especially during cut scenes, that, while not overwhelming, are still noticeable enough to make me think, "Ah!" when they happen.

I'm really hoping that at some point Japanese publishers will start addressing things like this, and put a little more TLC into their PC versions. By the looks of things, I get the feeling that this will happen later rather than sooner as there are quite a few more ports coming down the pipe in the next few months that sound like quick conversions of older games. I'd love to be proven wrong, but will take a wait and see attitude for the time being.

There are a few occasions in recent months that are giving me some hope that this is slowly starting to change. The best example of this is Capcom's PC port of Dragon's Dogma. This is a game that really went above and beyond when doing this. It has a ton of graphic setting options (including an FOV slider which isn't all that necessary in third person games, but the gesture is appreciated nonetheless), giving us something that can run in very high resolutions and at 60FPS for those who want to push the game that hard. The game was ranking high on the Steam charts when it came out, so here's hoping that it does well and turns some heads not only at Capcom but also at other companies, encouraging them to take the next step and not only bring their games to the PC but also improve them for the platform.

In the end, it's great to see this shift from Japan where publishers were traditionally hesitant to put their games on PC. Now it looks like they're finally seeing that there is a demand for their games on the platform. Usually when something like Valkyrie Chronicles, Neptunia, or the like goes on sale, they see a big jump in the charts. Stuff like Tales of Zestria and Dragon's Dogma both had a fairly hefty contingent of folks who pre-ordered it. The demand is definitely there for more games from the region. It would just be nice if we could get a bit more polish and the technical options for them that most native PC games get. Hopefully, with time we'll see improvement on that front.

So, Final Fantasy IX on the PC...

A week or so ago, Square-Enix let slip that they're planning to bring Final Fantasy IX to the PC in 2016. It's a move that isn't all that surprising when you look at all of the other games in that series which they've been steadily porting to it over the years. At this point it's largely a matter of speculation as to which of the remain games in the franchise will be ported next rather than if it will be ported. (I'm honestly surprised that Tactics isn't on PC yet.)

Now that we know IX is coming our way shortly, we're also beginning to learn about some of the changes being made to the port. When the Steam page went active, one of the first things that I noticed was that the game is going to require 20GB of storage space. For a port of a game that originally released on the first PlayStation, that's a lot of real estate. As a point of reference, Final Fantasy VII only requires 3GB while VIII needs 4GBs. So, we're seeing quite the jump here which suggests a lot of changes.

I have to assume that the majority of these 20GBs comes from all of the high resolution movies that the developers are promising. Cut scenes were a big contributor to why the various iterations of XIII gobble up so much hard drive space. This move isn't exactly going to win brownie points with me, as I've come out in the past expressing my concern with the continuing bloat of game size in recent years.

For those who like their graphics extra pretty, FFIX is getting a bit of a discombobulated upgrade. As mentioned, the cut scenes are getting the HD treatment (whatever that means), and character models are getting polished up a bit as well. Unfortunately, backgrounds are not. You can thank Japanese design ethos of the 80s and 90s for this, when companies didn't make a point of keeping back-ups of all assets for that. So, for this release the most players can hope for is a bit of upscaling on the environments which, while not terrible, kinda stick out judging by the screenshots making the rounds.

Another thing we'll be seeing in this edition of the game is a number of methods by which players can speed things along. We know that there'll be a "high speed" mode that pretty much does as one would expect, speeding up actual battles, as well as a "no encounter" mode which eliminates all random encounters from the game. It sounds like there'll be more modes, but it's hard to be sure, and it is funny because they really do showcase one of the Achilles heels of traditional, old school JRPGs: random battles. They're often so tedious that revisiting them now almost necessitates accelerated modes of play like these.

Of course, there will be stuff like achievements and autosave features implemented as well, so a decent amounts of bits and bobs added for the PC release. Personally, that 20GBs of hard drive space is making the game a bit of a hard sell for me, even with all of the new stuff being added, and granted I do have the PS1 version of the game that I can play whenever I feel like it, so there isn't exactly a huge urge welling up inside of me to play this. Nonetheless, Final Fantasy IX is pretty much up there as one of the best games in the series as far as I'm concerned (alongside IV, VI, and XII), so I can see quite a few people snapping it up when the game releases. It's won't be lacking for demand at any rate.

World of Final Fantasy Trailer

Square-Enix announced that they were working on World of Final Fantasy at this year's E3, discussing how it will be aimed at younger players to introduce them to the series. It'll have a chibi art style to the main characters with quite a lot of monster collecting, as they will help the party fight in battle. It's planned for both the PS4 and Vita with cross play support to help with the monster collecting.

All things considered, it sounds like a pretty safe way of going about things. Adopt a cute, inviting visual style with simplified battles and toss in some vaguely Pokemon-esque monster hunting, and it seems like a good way to try and get the young'uns interested in the series.

With Jump Festa 2016 underway, the company has now released a lengthy trailer for the game. So far it looks pretty good in terms of environment and character designs. Now it's a matter of speculating what the full roster of characters and monsters will be. Square-Enix tends to be quite thorough with games that span the entire Final Fantasy series, so I expect quite a lot of popular choices will make the cut as well as some more unexpected ones.

With that, does it make me a bad person to be looking forward to this more than Final Fantasy XV or the Final Fantasy VII remake?

Final Fantasy VII Remake Going Episodic

It looks like people interested in snapping up the Final Fantasy VII remake will be doing so in bits and morsels, as Square-Enix is saying that it will now be a series. While I've raised an eyebrow at the decisions that the company has made regarding the game up to this point, I accepted it as a means of modernizing it for the present day while making it more appealing to a new audience that was too young to play the original FFVII when it first came out.

Tempting as it is for me to transform into some kind of hard-lined traditionalist demanding stuff like a turn-based battle system, I understand that now, almost 20 years on, that sort of thing is getting to be old hat. As someone who grew up on console RPGs in the 80s and 90s, that sort of thing was with me for over a decade, so I'll think nothing of it. People who grew up with later games had a lot more to choose from with much more robust, and not necessarily turn-based combat in their experience. If the FFVII remake was a by the numbers recreation of the original just with better graphics, that old battle system would be a kick in the teeth for many.

However, this new announcement that the remake will be a series, ie. episodic instead of one complete game, is something else entirely. This does feel like Square-Enix is taking the piss here a bit, going for a wee bit of a money grab. How many parts is this going to be and how much will it cost? These are questions that have yet to be answered, and makes me wonder if it'll wind up being much more expensive than a regular game in the long term.

Episodic content is a lot easier to swallow when it was designed as such from the onset. Telltale Games' various series are a good example of this. We know that this is how they do things, so people are far more ready to accept this business model from them. With the FFVII remake, though, we also know full well that the original was a single game, and it's going to get a lot of people questioning why it's being chopped into separately released chapters now instead. I'm sure PR folks will try to spin it, but the move sure seems slimy.

I can't help but wonder if they're doing this to rush it out the door faster and cash in on hype. Sure, they could do it all in one self-contained game, but that would take longer to release, and as I suggested already, it could wind up selling for less since it would be a single title at what would probably be a fairly traditional price point, say $50-$60. Now, since they're going episodic, they can belt out chapter one all that much quicker and worry about the rest of the development later. This is the company that decided to milk Final Fantasy XIII, giving us not one but three games with Lightning in it, so fear of similar shenanigans filtering into an episodic Final Fantasy V remake aren't completely unwarranted.

Just a cursory jaunt around the internet shows that this is causing quite a bit of heated discussion. Will folks be okay with this and buy the remake in droves, or will the switch to making FFVII a series put people off and negatively impact sales. Only time will tell, but in the meantime it is interesting to see this development split the community so much. There could be potential for this to be a good thing with staggered content that gets really fleshed out with side quests and the like, but this is Square-Enix after all, so a healthy dose of cynicism is a must.

If you haven't seen it already, here's the trailer for the remake.

Revisiting Romancing SaGa (PS2 Version): Dancing to a Better Tomorrow

There are a couple of JRPG franchises that I really wish did better in the West. One of them is Phantasy Star and the other is Squaresoft's SaGa games. It wasn't for a lack of trying. Square did make an effort to bring these games across the Pacific a few times. Unfortunately, not enough people showed interest in them.

It's a shame, because SaGa games have done a lot of things differently from your run of the mill JRPG, standing out as a very unique oasis in the sub-genre. The series did quite well in Japan, but its style of play never really caught on here. There are more RPGs that do what SaGa did now, however, so I am left wondering if maybe the series was a little ahead of its time for when entries came to the West, especially the non-linear storytelling.

With that, I've been having a hankering to revisit the series for the last while. It was a toss up between SaGa Frontier and my PS2 version of Romancing Saga. Both have their charms, but in the end I opted for the latter, as I do like some of the changes they made to the game when updating it from the Super Famicom version.

It's been 10 years since the remake came out and almost that long since I last played it, and consequently forgotten much about the game. I remember playing as Hawke, the pirate, but after that a lot of things get very fuzzy, very fast.

Found this alter early on. It's in a pentagram. It must be
important.

So, I've decided to play through the game once more, and as a different character. That's one of the things that's nice about the SaGa games, as a lot of them have multiple characters to choose from, each with their own goals. For this go around, I went with Barbara. She's an entertainer in a travelling troupe of dancers and the like. It's always been a dream of mine to save the world through the power of dance and this will finally allow me to do so vicariously through her.

I'm not entirely sure what her motivations are in the game. It never really said. Some of the characters have clear goals as to what they want from life, others not so much. So, I'm left to take her and her friend Herman as they wander around, talking with folks, and generally making the world a better place...well, hopefully anyway.

And this is one of the things that I like so much about Romancing SaGa: it's non-linear, a rarity in JRPGs. If anything, I think this is one of the things that scared away a lot of Westerners when Square tried to bring SaGa games out over here. They had expectations of a much more linear experience where adventures would go on rails from points A to B to C with NPCs explicitly telling the player what to do. Romancing SaGa doesn't have this. There's a lot more figuring things out for yourself.

You'll need to visit towns and talk to everyone to take in the local color and figure out what the situation is in a given region. Is there a conflict in the area? Is someone in town missing? How are the local deities doing? Are there any points of interest near this village? Your characters are travels in this world and they may know a bit about some of the major cities, but that's about it. They need to learn all of these things in order to have a better idea of what is going on in a given region. How are they supposed to know there's a monster-infested cave just outside of town? Of course they'll have no idea it exists. They don't live in that city. Only by talking to the locals and learning this themselves can they go there.

Shooting the breeze with townfolk.

Even after getting all of this information, there's still the question of what they plan to do with it? Will they check out those ruins, cross that desert, or explore that cave? Maybe. It's up to the player. Even the big bad guy that players will have to deal with is only hinted at early on. There's a forest inhabited by fairies early in the game that hints at them, and a travelling minstrel that you'll cross paths with many times tells a story about them. Players learn about them, and at the back of one's mind the thought, "I should probably do something about that..." comes into play.

Sometimes you don't even need to do anything about problems some town folks are having. For example, there's one village where a mother is panicking because her son has gone missing in a nearby cave crawling with monsters. I popped in there and took a look around, but noticed some of the monsters were to strong for me, so I left thinking I'd come back later. However, when later came along the kid was already back home as he'd figured out a way to escape on his own. So, to an extent it feels like a real, living, breathing world.

That's what I've been doing up to this point, just wandering the land meeting people, helping them with their problems (or not). I can have up to five people in my party and I actually managed to find Hawke, and decided to bring him along for old times sake. He has some nifty moves in his repertoire, and an entertainer and a pirate seem like a match made in heaven, or at least a seedy bar by the docks. I even managed to find his helmsman, Guella Ha, who has some pretty great stats and is an expert at pokie-pointy-stick type weapons. For a time, even the minstrel that hangs out at all of the local pubs and volunteers to boot people I don't want in my party anymore asked to join me for a bit. He actually hit quite hard, but then the guy got bored and buggered off after when we rolled into town. I have been on the search for a mage and finally found one in North Estamir. Her name is Myriam and she likes to burn stuff.

The game likes tossing much stronger enemies at players out
of the blue sometimes.

Helping my party grow is pretty neat because Romancing SaGa doesn't use a traditional leveling system. Instead, individual abilities improve after each battle, and depending on the person certain things will get better faster than others. It's usually pretty intuitive with stats that accentuate the characters play style going up much faster than others. However, enemies seem to scale with the party's strength to some extent, so these gains are quickly offset.

I've largely been making the party stronger in a more viable way by leveling their skill sets (aka professions) with trainers in town. Getting a bunch of strength or vitality pales in comparison to hitting up a trainer, spending some jewels, and getting martial arts training up an entire level, for example. That's how you get big results. Unfortunately, jewels come slowly early in the game, so getting a skill set past level two will take some time while saving these up.

You can also buy new gear for everyone, which yields big improvements very quickly. The best way to do this is by raiding treasure chests as you find them. Enemies drop a bit depending what you run into, but chests are much better. Of course, completing quests is better still. Suiting everyone up in nice equipment makes a huge difference, and it improves your standing with the various merchant associations in the game. Doing business at item or weapon shops boosts your reputation with their affiliated association and as your levels go up with them the better deals they'll have for you and the more of an item that they'll have in stock at a given time. Loyalty does have its rewards.

We even helped a grave robber.

So, there is definitely a bit of a grind in order to get jewels for leveling skill sets and to get enough gold to buy all of the goodies, but the thing that makes it feel worth it is the glimmer system. This is something that was introduced in later SaGa games and not in the original Romancing SaGa, but since this is a remake the developers decided to toss it in. This is a system where characters are struck by a moment of clarity and suddenly learn a new ability during battle. A little light bulb blinks over their head, and bam, they do the new thing. This comes from repeated use of a specific weapon type or school of magic making it feel like they're constantly learning something new. It's really satisfying to see them discover these abilities while grinding, and then you even get to figure out combos where two or more characters' special abilities synergize for an even more powerful attack. These attacks are a little bit RNG in when they get used, but if they do whip them out it usually helps a ton.

And with that, I still have no idea what I want to do next. From what I can tell, there's a demon of some sort imprisoned somewhere and some not-so-nice people are trying to free it. That's probably the big bad, and what I'll probably have to get around to eventually. There's no rush, though. I've yet to see much of this world and there's a lot of other stuff going on. For now, I'll just take Barbara and the gang for a merry romp around the world exploring everything, soaking in the sights, getting to know the local townsfolk, and maybe do some vaguely heroic stuff along the way. It really is nice to spend time with such an open-ended JRPG and I don't want to rush things.

I Still Can't Decide Whether to Be Excited about Final Fantasy XV

Since the very first game, it's been easy for me to get excited for Final Fantasy games thanks to a combination of the series generally being quite good and a borderline unconditional love for JRPGs. However, the more I see of the fifteenth installment currently in development, the more my enthusiasm falters and I find myself not sure what to think of the thing.

A big part of this is probably the protagonists, as the game looks like Pop Idols Go On An Adventure more than anything else. To a degree it smacks of a "design by committee" approach where people in high places that really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the design process looked at some consumer purchasing statistics, noticed what way the wind was blowing and went in that direction. Part of me wonders if this will devolve into Uta no Prince X Final Fantasy at some point when my cynicism gets going.

On the plus side, I suppose one could look at this as a bit of an about face in terms of character design, though. Instead of going with a cast of buxom beauties that have their tits jutting out, which is often the case in this industry, the game is going for some rather handsome men. So, now the female segment of the series fan base has some characters to oggle, and a slew of FFXV boys love fan art will surely proliferate through Google image search in the coming years. So that's something.

Questionable cast aside, combat is the big thing that makes or breaks an RPG for me, especially if it hails from Japan. There's something so charming about how developers from that part of the world put so much effort into this aspect of their games with unique systems ranging from resource management to party composition to special abilities. The fact that Final Fantasy XIII had a good combat system was one of the very few saving graces of that game, preventing me from completely hating it.

So now I'm left feeling a little bit uncertain about what's planned for this game, as the combat is very action-oriented and very simplified. It's more like something out of Elder Scrolls or Dragon's Dogma, which makes sense as Final Fantasy XV is planned to be an exploration-heavy open world game, just like those two. As such, this action RPG approach seems more logical in the greater context of the game. That being said, part of me can't shake my decades old expectation of a more traditional approach to combat in a JRPG that the Final Fantasy series has been known for. It's obvious bias on my part, but at the same time it leaves me wondering if this will feel like a Final Fantasy game or will it just be an open world action RPG with the Final Fantasy label slapped on the box cover. I don't think this would be such a big thing for me if this wasn't a mainline Final Fantasy, and initially it wasn't since the game was originally supposed to be Final Fantasy Versus, but with a mainline installment in this series comes certain expectations, and a much more robust battle system is one of them.

So, with that, I'm having some very mixed feelings about Final Fantasy XV based on what we know so far. XIII made me very skeptical of the series and XV isn't doing anything to change that so far. It may turn out decent, but the cast of characters look set to be more annoying than Snow, Vanille, and Hope, while the battle system comes of as anything but what I've come to expect from a Final Fantasy game. Square-Enix will have a lot of convincing to do to make me want to try this game when it comes out.

Heading Heavensward

Warning: There will be a few plot spoilers in this article. If this is a problem for you, stop reading now.

As some of you may know, I'm kind of a big fan of Final Fantasy XIV. The amount of time that I poured into A Realm Reborn is disgusting, so it was only a matter of time before I got around to playing the expansion. I wasn't there for the early bird pre-order stuff, instead opting to wait a couple of weeks and then hopping in so I could enjoy the game without it being a mad house of people running around everywhere. So far it's been a lot of fun. Square-Enix have done a lot of things with the new content that has improved on the original game, there are some massive zones, and some new features that I've been enjoying. That isn't to say it's all smiles and sunshine. There are a few elements of the game that have me concerned, but those have been far outweighed by all of the good stuff.

Players need to take their characters through the main scenario quests via a combat job if they want to get anywhere in the game. A big reason for this is that all of the new zones allow for flying mounts but in order to do so you need to unlock aether currents. Some of these can be found via a compass that you're given early on, but each zone has five currents that can only be unlocked through completing quests, some of which are part of the main quest line. I was a tad disappointed by this, as I was hoping to level my crafting and gathering jobs first, but at the same time this approach does make sense. It's just like what Blizzard has been doing with many of their expansions for World of Warcraft where players are forced to use land mounts when first questing through the new content before being granted flight at or near the new level cap.

Thankfully, the story has been pretty good so far. One thing that I didn't like about the main quest line in A Realm Reborn was that there was a lot of filler in it resulting in several quests that felt like a chore. A lot of the fluff has been removed in Heavensward with the story marching along at a much better pace. I was pleasantly surprised to see Ysayle play a big role in the first half of the adventure. She was by my side for much of the ride from level 50 to 55. I'd thought she would just be around for the Shiva arch earlier in the game, but apparently not. I actually don't mind that there isn't much in the way of Scions in the expansion either. None of them really appealed to me except maybe Yda. I'm assuming that they'll be back at some point as I get closer to level 60, but thus far they haven't been missed.

It is a bit worrisome, though, that new players will be forced to play through all of the content from A Realm Reborn before they can touch Heavensward. The only exception to this is the ability to make an Au Ra in the character creation. If you want to go straight to Ishgard or play as an Astrologian, Dark Knight, or Machinist, too bad. You'll have to get through all of the other content first. There has been a lot of debate about this already, as this can be a very daunting task that becomes all the more annoying for a new player trying to catch up so that they can play with friends in the new areas. A new player is probably looking at about a month of solid play to get through everything from A Realm Reborn and that's a pretty tall order. If this sort of gating continues into future expansions, I could see it being a huge turn off for potential new players and it could well cause subscription numbers to suffer.

For my first job that I'm taking to 60 I've stuck with warrior. In every other MMORPG that I've ever played, healer was the role that I gravitated to. However, with FFXIV I decided to change things up and go with a tank. It was a nice change of pace and something that I want to continue in Heavensward. Going through dungeons, the mechanics haven't been too hard thus far. I'm about five dungeons in so far having cleared The Vault the other day and they don't really throw too many curve balls.

One thing that has bothered me is that I seem to have terrible luck in finding decent healers. In FFXIV, a lot of healers try to pump out DPS when they have time. This I have no problem with. However, when one is not up to the task and people start dying as a result, I begin to get annoyed. I've probably done about 30-40 dungeon runs in the new areas so far and maybe 10-20% of the healers I've gotten have been competent. The rest just toss a HoT on me as I run into a pack of mobs to scoop them up, then expect it to be enough while they switch to Cleric Stance and DPS. First of all, don't toss a HoT on a tank when they're running in to grab a pack. Once that thing ticks, they're going to dog pile on the healer and the tank has to go out of his or her way to scoop them up again. Second, when picking up large packs the tank is going to take a lot of incoming damage. Why not actually heal during this time? Yes, we have a good amount of cooldowns we can blow through to mitigate it, but that only goes so far. Start the pull focusing on heals, and then as things get under control start DPSing to help clean up. Third, don't DPS if you're just going to tunnel vision on that, consequently forgetting to heal, failing to notice that you're standing in bad stuff and dying as a result. It's nice if a healer can DPS while in a dungeon, but not a necessity. Pay attention to how well you're performing and be honest with yourself. If you're DPSing and as a result doing a sub par job of healing, just stop DPSing. If you want to DPS so bad, level an actual DPS job.

Horrible dungeon experiences notwithstanding, the rest of what I've seen in Heavensward has been pretty impressive. I really like the new zones. They're huge compared to A Realm Reborn. I also like seeing them from the ground and re-exploring them from the air after unlocking flight, as it gives a very different view of the area. Ishgard itself looks amazing. The buildings tower overhead and have a nice Tutor-esque feel to their architecture. I don't know if I have an actual favorite zone yet as I'm still in the process of unlocking them. Sea of Clouds is pretty nice and The Churning Mists was alright.

Music has been pretty good so far as well. The soundtrack has always been a highlight of FFXIV, and that continues here. There aren't too many songs with cheesy lyrics in them. Ravana's battle was a bit bad for this, but on the whole it's more instrumental stuff. Again, I like the songs for Ishgard here and The Sea of Clouds' music sounds like something from a 16-bit platformer. I almost expect to see Sonic the Hedgehog run by when I'm in that zone.

So yeah, it's been a lot of fun for the most part. Healers are a pain, and I'm half tempted to level my scholar after capping warrior so I can be part of the solution on that front. For now, though, I'll focus on getting warrior to 60 and spending a lot of time crafting and gathering after that. There's still a ton to do and a content patch just around the corner, so I have a feeling Heavensward will be keeping me busy for a while.

The Tired, Bastardized Practice of Exclusivity

Rise of the Tomb Raider exclusivity has ruffled
some feathers.

Last week, Microsoft and Square-Enix made some waves when it was announced that Rise of the Tomb Raider would be a timed exclusive for the Xbox One. Many a gamer cried fowl, and it's been a parade of interviews ever since by various executives and developers to paint a narrative that this is somehow a good thing.

Traditionally, when I think about exclusivity, it's more to do with a developer or publisher deciding to put a game on a specific platform because they see something special in the system whereby it makes more sense to either make it the only one it shows up on, or at least the lead platform. Be it market dominance, player-base idiosyncrasies, or specifics to the hardware, in these circumstance at least the people making the game are looking at a set of variables and choosing on their own to make a game for that system based on its merits. What we're seeing here with the whole Rise of the Tomb Raider kerfuffle reeks far more of a return to the bad old days of money hatting.

RGT: Racing Lagoon (PlayStation)

Remember the late 1990s when Squaresoft was pumping out hit after hit on the PlayStation?  Not all the games that they put out during that time were all that great, and in those cases the game usually never got released outside of Japan.  One such example of this would be Racing Lagoon, an RPG / racing game hybrid.  Join Jeff in the video below as he chats about the game.

Review: Tomb Raider (PS3)

Tomb Raider's origins date back to the original Playstation. The world was a much different place back in 1996: the Internet was in its infancy stages, the economy was booming, war was the last thing on anyone's mind and nobody had ever heard of Britney Spears.  After eighteen years, the series still maintains a presence in the video game world.

While the track record for the series over the past five or six years has been arguably dismal, the newest iteration of the series is not only the best game in the series, it's one of the best adventure games to come along in a long time. Tomb Raider provides a great and lengthy single player campaign even if it comes at the cost of a mediocre multiplayer experience.

Review: Sleeping Dogs (360)

This review is about to spoil Sleeping Dogs and this sentence is your only warning to either turn back now or scroll down to the score, ensuring your eyes remain closed until you reach the bottom of the page.

Even though the Wheels of Logic spin off the Story Bus right at the closing of Sleeping Dogs, the game sets the bar pretty high in terms of what should be expected of all future open world games.

Review: Hitman: Absolution (PC)

Hitman: Aboslution is as close to a gritty Roger Moore era James Bond reboot as you can get without infringing copyright. It has just the right amount of "whackadoodle" nonsense to qualify as a "Spy Who Loved Me" spin-off adventure.

First there's Agent 47, a manufactured hitman who will follow orders to a "T" even when it's against people he "loves." While the twist at the end of the game brings that into question, at least slightly, he's driven almost wholly by his contracts to commit murder and never distracted by anything else, just like Bond.

The Weekly Checkpoint 18

It's the end of the week, and with that it's time for another news round-up.  This week we discuss Gabe Newell and Rob Pardo's concerns regarding Windows 8, Yoichi Wada confirming that Final Fantasy XIII Versus is still in production, and Nintendo's latest batch of financials.

Retro Review: Final Fantasy I (NES)

After a bit of a hiatus, Retro Reviews are back, and Mr. Nash kicks things off with a look back at one of his favorite RPGs as a kid, Squaresoft's Final Fantasy on the NES.

News: Final Fantasy VII Coming to the PC...Again

Years and years ago Final Fantasy VII came to the PC (and so did VIII for that matter).  The game wasn't terribly well received because the thing was a terribly half-assed port, and left gamers of the time with the feeling that if they want to play a Final Fantasy game, they might as well get the console version.  Now Square-Enix is taking another kick at the can for a PC version of FFVII.