finished the resonance of fate. what a strange game. it's not really GREAT EXPERIENCE exactly, but it's a game that really has its own rhythm and doesn't really waste time doing what you'd expect it to do. i don't even know how to summarize this game. it's an rpg, but goes in a pretty radically different gameplay direction than any rpg i've ever played. it gets slightly boring after a while, but never really laborious, and on the whole keeps the game pretty fresh. probably the most exciting rpg i've ever played, and it carries the rest of the game, which would have been pretty boring and inconsequential most of the game.
in retrospect the story is not particularly well-presented, but it rather quickly becomes secondary to just fucking around the world so it didn't really bother me. it revolves exclusively around the characters, which are really just absurd caricatures. if nothing else it unashamedly does its own thing rather than just retell the same idiotic rpg story, so i could tolerate it and occasionally chuckle at it. there's not really much of a GRAND EVIL SCHEME and the major conflicts of the game come when the main characters just get pissed off at somebody, or they have to go around fixing something that some idiot broke. while not really an example of good storytelling, i could kinda get behind the spirit of the game a lot more than i can in other games because what you're doing is never really supposed to be this PROFOUNDLY DRAMATIC THING. and ironically the translation is fairly well-written. it kinda gets dumbed down by an unspectacular story, but the literal quality of the writing is definitely a bit better than i would have expected it to be. it's clear somebody at tri-ace has SOME idea of what they're doing, which is not something i'd ever say about that company.
the game is pretty nice visually and does have one of the better original game soundtracks in recent memory. one of the few game soundtracks that i'm actually rather enthusiastic to pick up and listen to.
i have no idea who to suggest this game to, though. probably the target demographic for this game are people who ENJOY JRPGS but ARE SICK OF THE JRPG BULLSHIT. to its core this game is a jrpg, but it's without the typical idiocy and sappiness of other games under that categorization. it's not really GREAT, and doesn't make much of an effort to be, but it's pretty fun and generally has its heart in the right place. it does some things RIGHT, and not a lot of things WRONG. i hope this is a step in the right direction for tri-ace, as the games of all other japanese companies that create rpgs make me physically sick. i wouldn't be interested in playing a direct sequel to this thing unless they beefed it up a little bit more, but i'd be interested in seeing them experiment with other things like this.
in other news, i started the first mass effect game. people who know me told me not to play it, but i had my brother literally leave it at my house so i started playing it.
i don't understand!!! is mass effect supposed to be some BIG DEAL in gaming??!? it's really one of the most staggeringly mediocre games i've ever played. it is kotor, minus george lucas. that's it. nothing else worthwhile put into the game. i don't hate it, because i generally find games like this amusing, but it's really nothing special. i thought i had heard that it was some GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENT IN STORYTELLING, and it's really not at all!! it's just another stupid bioware kotor game, and bioware's kotor games aren't that great. i guess i generally appreciate the fact that shepard speaks, since that always kinda annoys me about wrpgs, but shepard is so phenomenally boring that it doesn't really matter. the writing itself is really bad. not SMACK YOURSELF ON THE HEAD bad, but bad in the way that the people who wrote the game very clearly are unaware that they have substandard writing abilities.
like there is this section you are doing some stupid, worthless quest for some alien and when you do it she rewards you by telling you something that's supposed to be WISE AND INTELLIGENT but ACTUALLY IS NOT AT ALL. i forget what it is but i remember them making some big deal about THE POWER OF WORDS after that and everyone around you saying RANDOM ALIEN WITH FUNKY HEAD IS VERY WISE. i am left to assume that it is a commentary on the societal degradation of language, exemplifying that as long as you can SOUND PROPHETIC, YOU CLEARLY ARE. an unintentional commentary, if nothing else.
the only reason why i'm playing this is because i'm generally in the mood for something like kotor, and this fits the bill since it basically IS kotor and i'm too goddamn lazy to find my copy of kotor 2. actually i should just play kotor 2, not this mass space piece of junk.
oh no wait, there is one thing i am curious about. i think the map in mass effect is fucking cool and i'm holding out hope that it's neat exploring the galaxy that way. i have always wanted to play a SPACE GAME set up like fallout or oblivion was, where you have your ship and are just wandering the galaxy. i'm pretty sure i'm going to be disappointed in this in mass effect, since it doesn't seem to be what i'm looking for at all, but i guess i want to see first-hand before giving up on it.
ok this is the longest post but i guess i wanted to write stuff like this
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