FFXII ER : The First Encounter

So, today was the big day! The day when I finally started playing my first ever FINAL FANTASY game! Boy was a good experience! Played for 6 hours straight!

First let me tell you the reason for my poorly drawn images I was actually looking for some wallapers and screens so that I could use them in the blog posts so that things would be more colourful and interesting for people to read, but rather than finding correct images, I found a lot of.. SPOILERs. So I decided that rather than using my PS skills I would use my (long forgotten) drawing skills and try and make the things interesting. Hope these things dont have a negative effect Thats the best I can do right now

*Lets get it started!

I started the game and there was this like HEAVENLY harp music and pegions flying.. first time I saw pegions like that in a non John Woo thing.. or did he some hand in this? I dont know, it wasnt a buildup for a fight so I guess not   After seeing the nice intro I started the game and it started with another.. cutscene! Good thing I am a MGS type of person.. these things are no problem for me and I acutally like cutscenes building up the story.

After all the Happiness to sadness thing and with the young dude dieing (the first scene where the couple is parading itself implied that someone is going to die ) there was now a text based narrated thing going on.

I could make no sense at first, “Dalmasca” “Archadia” “Rabanester” etc etc.. so many names and everything was greek and latin (literally too I guess ). After readign through the thing slowly and carefully I was read the last line “The Lady killed herself” I was like “Whaaaa?!?” I didnt see that coming.. I never saw such a character (beautiful young female character) commit suicide before.. its usually “She suffered torcher after the death” etc etc and she is like this really sad character… well, I guess they’ve done that in one of those other 11 FFs

*The Sword slashing begins!

Basch: “How old are you boy?”
Reks:  “Seventeen Sir”

Well, that was pretty young for someone fighting a war, and the way Basch says “Huh… so YOUNG” felt kinda creepy

This part turned out to be a tutorial level, I didnt quite get the system at first, because I was under the impression that it is turn based type and not live action type.. but it seems it added some movement freedom to the combat.

I dont get it though.. I mean, when I know someone is “readying an attack” I try to run away but even from a long distance, something like “ram” and other which dont actually CONNECT , damage me. I wonder whats the use of allowing me to run around when I am going to get hit anyways. Can someone clarify? Does it reduce the HP taken out when we are far away?

Also, the character randomly blocks the attack, there is no technique to it, not like Mario RPG style button timing.(btw my bro played that not me :P) From my observations I am able to tell that it only blocks if the other attacks when your attack meter is full? Not sure though.

*The REAL Story beings

In a somewhat KH2 way (but not 6hours long) the thing ended with it being nothing but a training level. Some new characters were introduced. Obviously VAAN is the hero of the story (now he is also 17! I guess 17 is the new 18 or something), there are a bunch of other kids also introduced, most of them with very confusing voice and names which dont tell if its a he or a she.

Also, the character is not “Teenage EMO Dude with a huge sword” I was like :O So.. all those people in the comments(of various news blogs)  actually EXXAGERATE the fact when they show hate on something? Wow!

I spent most of the time in the first 2hours just talking to all those NPCs. I have this crazy stupid habit of tallking to EACH and EVERYBODY I can talk to and exhausting all dialogue options ,if they exist. Thats why most of the time was just randomly walking around talking to people, giving a KID 1 gil for some random info (who I guess, if the story spans N years will turn out to have some important role in some not so important part of the game)

Then I get out of the place to do some Rogue tomato hunting (reference to some other FF?) I see that I FORGOT to talk to somedude that actually mattered! There was this person asking me someone from the inside gave me something.. but I was like Whaaaa??

All this talking and one small miss to make it all.. worthless I cant go back or anything either, as the first save was after coming out, and even if I started the game again, I would take care that I talk to EVERYONE, because theres a small thing inside me that tells “Something super secret will happen if you talk to everyone!”

So, I just left it like that and then went on with my business.

*The Parade and Underground

A nice turn of events when that Vayne dude talked like an awesome person, I too was surprised hearing it.. but how Penelo was talking really made me feel how much hatred the kids have in their head.

So many of the questions all the kids were asking in the underground location felt so obvious to me but they were going on thinking in the negative direction.. well, I guess thats a good representation of war orphans.

I spent another two or so hours just roaming around and talking to everyone I found and then purposefully NOT going to the old dudes house so that I could see and find a secret before leaving that will help me maybe.

Nope.. there was none.. none that I remember.. but one thing is for sure.. They’ve got a lot of “Tresure” just lying around everywhere in the underground location. Wonder how no one before me even thought of opening those baskets

The old dude was NOT what I thought he would look like..I thought he would be a cuddly…. rotund, talking creature or something (seeing that he is a hit among kids) but he turned out to some really creepy old dude, with creepy expressions and spoken in YODISH (the language of YODAH)

He told me to go throught South Gate, but soemone told me to get the map from the Clan Moogle in central plaza. So I searched for the nearest staris, went to the southern plaza, found the dude and took the map.. and then went back down the stairs and THEN took the south gate.. only to realize IT’S A FRIGGIN SHORTCUT!!

Ahh.. when will I learn

*This is NOT MGS!

There was this part where I had to sneak past guard and holla at them so that I can do this small puzzle thing.. I spent around 15 minutes before even trying to holla at them, thinking that I would get a game over if something was done wrong and had to start all over again.

I felt like being in MGS again and was trying to be as careful as possible.. but WOW, the guards are so stupid that some of them dont even move if I am two feet away from them and shout like a madman I dont know how those people didnt see me running around like a 9 year old, shouting at guards all the while making this really crazy tappity tap sound when I walk (crazy armours!)

I will still play like this though.. dont know when it will turn into MGS and have to be extra careful..

*GAMBIT!! (Cards not included)

Fast forward a bit and then I meet one of the awesomest character I’ve seen in recent times! its BALTHIER! His dialogues and voice are just awesome.. it makes you play with a relaxed mind when he is ar0und (same effects that changing from Nero to Dante has in DMC4)

Oh, and then I was introduced to the Gambit system, which I felt was really nice and was very detailed! Those stupid people even added a dimension of difficulty by making those ACTIONS as collectibles.. talking about “breaking the fourth wall“. The game does a lot of it actually. “Dont forget to press X to do that!”  “We will keep attacking unless you say otherwise!” lol.

The best thing I learnt in my 80 hours of Kingdom hearts experience is that “Curaga Aeraga combo is the answer to life” I practically NEVER died in the game just because I had shortcuts for them. Similarly, the first thing I did was give that Rabbit Lady (Fran?) the first priority action to “cure <70%” and “attack leader target” She was basically running around curing everyone  and shooting with her almost useless bow and arrow when everyone was fine (When her MP was low, I would cure anyone thats critical, manually, then her MP comes back.. its like… MAGIC!)

This came in really hany, because I completed the whole dungeon thing, till the FireHorse thing without using a single potion! (or an elixir for magic or any item as a matter of fact, other than eye drops (that I got for free ))

The License Points thing is also pretty good, I went out to the easterland and killed lots of cactus just so that I could have LP to use cure and a better sword.. which came in VERY VERY handy. Talk about being prepared I feel  like I’ve already done this

Also, the Gambit system made me say to myself

“This is going from a turn based thing to something like a dungeon crawler with some added features”

Gameplay wise, I dont see much difference between this japanese RPG and the Western RPGs/ Dungeon crawlers.. although I am VERY thankful  that it doesnt have some nonsense like “item carrying limit” and other things  that… Fallout 3 has. (just played a few hours of that thing) I mean if you want to be cool and all by saying “I limit things because its REALISTIC” first see that you are being quite unrealistic with me having to carry these many guns, armour the size of a machine and all this huge amount of monnies and still be a walking talking man. Stupid hypocrytics xP But yeah, I do get how some people like being realistic atleast to SOME degree rather than no degree (OMGz How can you carry more than 2 guns?! thats so unrealisticz)

*Pirates! Bounty Hunters? JUDGES?…. ONE PIECE? :O

I literally pooped in my pants seeing all these similarities to One piece in the thing.. I mean first of all.. I LOVE pirates (MI, one piece and what not) and seeing that this game just doesnt use pirates as a throw off, really got me excited. I mean it has the same structure as one piece!

You’ve got your Pirates, the Marines (Imperials), the Shichibukai/high order marines (Judges?), the Bounty hunters and everything! I didnt get to see anything more though.. I wonder how the main conflict of Pirates and Imperials is handled… Hope its as exciting and deep as One piece is! (You dont know it if you thinks its only superficial!)

Also, this thing has Archadia and that other place which are fighting for supremacy.. so this is going have more complications in it.. rather than just Marines and Pirates. Also, it feels a bit like “Nausicca and the Valley of the Wind” you know.. with the “A peaceful nation trapped between two waring super powers”

Ah..thats a lot of expectations! I wonder how this turns out.

End of.. ENTRY 1!

Phew! That was really something eh? the word count says its crossed 2000.. I wonder how huge it actually is when you read it.. Haha…I told you have this habit of writing without knowing how huge things are… well I wonder if anyone actually read the whole thing.. or maybe skims through it If  try harder, maybe I can throw in a few easter eggs in between, in the next entry.