I am constantly impressed. Like Feel the Magic, this game is essentially a narrative where cutscenes are turned into interactive minigames using 'innovative' controls. Except it's made by Squareenix, and the cutscenes, writing, 'acting' (both voice and CGI faces) are all top notch. This doesn't feel like a incomprehensible melodramtic Final Fantasy game, so much as it feels like a modern comic book movie. The characters are very grounded, super powers are used symbolically and explained thoroughly. It feels a lot like the X-Men or Spiderman movies, though set in the Crystal Chronicles world.

Even though there is a main engine, it takes a back seat to the minigames. Even combat itself feels like a minigame. There aren't random battles so much as fixed set pieces with battles that happen on them. Miasma streams will fill areas with a specific mix of monsters (who are intended to react to each other, for example, skeleton monsters are paired with wolfs because they'll react to bones, etc.) and you can defeat all the monsters by the time limit and seal the Miasma portal.

If you can kill all the monsters and seal the Miasma portal before the time runs out, you'll be rewarded with a new unit on your life bar (which only comes into play during battles) and if you ignore it, you'll get nothing and be weaker at the next battle. Also, if you fail to customize yourself and make your attack stronger, you wont be able to kill all the monsters before the time limit which results in lower HP.

But, weirdly, I feel like I'm halfway through the game and have only been in maybe five battles. There has also only been one boss battle and it was pretty cool, albiet one-note. But the battles are not the focus--there have been more minigames than battles so far. I know the word "minigame" carries a stigma, but the minigames are mostly really fun.

This game is kind of like Luigi's mansion in that it's short enough to be replayed a bunch of times to get a better score. But rather than an overall score, you have individual scores for each minigame, and you have a ton of achievements to unlock. The long term replayability would be replaying the 10ish hour story maybe 3 or 4 times and try to get all of the achievements. There is no way to replay a lot of the minigames, they are all very story specific.

I say 'minigame' but they feel more like interactive cutscenes. For example, there's a scene where Layle is trying to sneak from one end of a train to the other, unnoticed by guards. The music is cool, Layle's voice acting and expressions are cool (he does the shifty eyes thing pretty convincingly) and the general ambiance of the scene is cool. As a player, you monitor the food carts and guards and flick the remote in the right direction when you want Layle to move. Layle will roll under seats and hide against the rafters while guards whistle obliviously and passengers and Moogles look at him confusedly. While this isn't innovative in a gameplay sense, it feels like something I've never done before.

HP is only ever used in battles, and your penalty for failure in minigames is either having to start over or failure to get an achievement. The win/loss state for non-minigame/non-battle portions (ie, walking around) is money and items. You can find new items and money by breaking shit, tossing NPCs around, and buying at shops. But you can also lose money if you get attacked by a guard or if you send something flying into yourself. Also, at one point I was on a museum (which featured 3D models of Crystal Chalices and gate keys and other trinkets from previous games in the series) and my little brother (co-op) broke a vase, and a librarian Moogle made my gil counter go into the negative thousands, so I panicked and reset before it could auto-save.

Everything is a minigame. Every single area has some kind of minigame element to it, even small areas. For example, there was one area where a Moogle couldn't open his store because he lost the key to his briefcase. The key was hidden in the sand, and you could pick it up, but you can't carry things with gravity magic while swimming, so you couldn't take it to him. So you had to use your powers to pick it up and then throw it at him, and it would clock him in the head and he'd be confused and then open his case and set up shop. Then you could buy items there that were so far unobtainable.

The game makes sure that Layle is a rebel, and will often only allow you to do things the "Layle way" even if there's an obvious normal way to do it. There's not really a 'talk' or 'examine' button. If you want to interact with a person, you have to pick them up and throw them. If you want to open a door, you have to tear it down. Layle doesn't give a fuck, and the game doesn't allow you to give a fuck, and that's kind of cool.

In terms of story, it's... Really good. It does everything right, and nothing wrong. The character models are surprisingly emotive (but never emo) and the voice actors are very talented. This is a story where glances and tones mean a lot. One of the recurring themes is that pretty much everyone hates Layle and is using him (and his powers) as a means to an end, and he's aware of it, but he doesn't use it as an excuse to act immature.

Crystal Bearer or otherwise, a large focus of the story is about those who live on the fringes of society--minorities, outlaws, dangerous individuals, political descentors, anyone who dares to change the existing system, etc. No one is painted as a bad guy, not even 'the system' itself. While it definitely seems unfair that the Lilties rule, the Yukes are dead, Clavats are the ruled and Selkies are outsiders, no one is whining about it. Characters either accept their role in society or are actively working to improve it, but no one is being annoying about it, which is rare and refreshing in a Square game.

The story is basically about about 7 or 8 strong-willed individuals trying to live their lives in an unfair society, even if it means clashing with each other. You're never sure who you're supposed to root for and you're basically rooting for everyone.

I had attempted (and wrote about) this game a year ago. It was on a Gamecube disc played through Wii, which is cumbersome enough, but then I didn't realize how saving worked and basically lost 2 hours worth of gameplay to the apocalypse.

But I'm trying to start it again, this time on the Virtual Console, which is much easier to deal with. I just beat the first temple.

If I could describe this game in a word, it would be: Unnecessary. This is the most unnecessary Zelda game, which is kind of why I skipped it, in terms of story--it's set in a parallel universe, within a parallel timeline. But then again, my favorite Zelda game, Link's Awakening, was also similarly detached, and I loved that one. Like Link's Awakening, Majora's Mask creates it's own little world and fills it to the brim.

But "unnecessary" seems to be a running thing throughout the game. I'm somewhat of a completionist, but not to an OCD degree. This makes Majora's Mask especially addictive, as every major endeavor comes with 20 minor offshoot endeavors that are completely optional. If you don't get all the little stuff while getting the big stuff, you'll have to do the big stuff a second time to get the little stuff. Also if you save/reset without tying up all the loose ends, you'll miss some stuff. This leads to me playing for hours on end, trying to economize time and get everything in order before I play the Song of Time and save by returning to the first day.

This game has more items than any other Zelda game (unless you count the 'rings' in the Oracle games, which function a lot like masks) and it seems maybe less than 30% of these items are needed to beat the game. But this is mostly because only items save between resets, with few exceptions. So if you put a lot of work unlocking all the rooms in a dungeon, you better make sure you picked up everything before you save/reset, or else you'll have to do that shit again.

Speaking of which, there are also these little unnecessary fairies in each dungeon. You have to collect all of them in order to get an item or skill upgrade from the Great Fairy they create. They're all pretty hard to get and well hidden, there's no way you'd find them all without intensely searching for them. It makes dungeons a lot more involved, as they're still typical Zelda dungeons, only now you have all these tiny heart piece-like things to find.

Also weirdly unnecessary, is the boss fight mechanics. I only fought the first boss, but it was... Weird. Recent Zelda games such as Twilight Princess or Spirit Tracks have bosses that are basically just minigames that test your effectiveness with a new item you just got. The bosses in Majora's Mask are more similar to the bosses from Zelda 1 and 2, Link's Awakening and Link to the Past, in that they're sort of a free roaming agent with several random attacks rather than a boss-shaped minigame.

The fairy implied I should use my bow and arrow on the boss, but I really didn't need to. He had a bunch of crazy attacks, and I had to dodge them and hit him with my sword a lot--arrows could've stunned him to make sword attacks easier, but I landed some attacks while I was out of arrows too. It felt more like a PVP battle than a boss battle. I kind of liked it that way.

Anyway, so far, so good.

Played this game for a few minutes the other day. Biggest surprise: The entire game is co-op? By "certain parts are co-op" I assumed they meant specific minigames. But nope. Like Mario Galaxy's Co-Star mode, a second player can control a second on-screen cursor for Layle's gravity attacks at all times. But, unlike Galaxy, the cursor is actually a pretty significant part of the gameplay.

Also interesting: Sometimes cutscenes transition into minigames with super minimal introduction. You'll basically see a little onscreen thing telling you "Point at the screen" or an icon indicating that you're supposed to shake the remote or use the analog stick. And as soon as you do, that icon goes away. These minigames are almost indistinguishable from cutscenes and are mostly on rails with voice acting and similar camera angles as the cutscenes that precede them. So the long intro cutscene is broken up by a few player-controlled minigames at actiony parts, that blend with the cutscenes seamlessly. Oddly though, there's a fight scene in the intro movie that the player DOESN'T control.

Interestingly, there seems to be no 'lose' state for cutscene minigames. They end with a score or a time, and the goal is to improve that (I'm sure they'll be replayable eventually) but the lack of introduction and possible failure essentially serves to make cutscenes much more engaging.

One of the intro cutscene minigames was two player (Lyle used gravity magic on his machine gun, which is floating behind him, and you us the cursor to aim and fire the gun) and the other was not (using the D-stick to steer a crashing airship while passengers scream dialog at you). There was a little bit of walking around through a mall-like area that served as somewhat of a tutorial for the gravity controls, and then another cutscene minigame happened, this time focusing on the traditional gravity controls but with a camera on rails.

Another weird thing about the game is that in the town area, it's full of NPCs who have simple Chao-like AI, you can't talk to most of them. The only NPC that gave me a "talk" command was Stiltzkin, the traveling Moogle. You can use gravity magic to toss NPCs around the room, but they don't seem to mind or respond. Also, there was a mail Moogle and you could use gravity to yank the letter from him and read it. Sometimes it was a letter intended for you, but sometimes you'll intercept mail intended for others.

I'm going to try to force Dom to play the entire game 2 player, I'm curious to see how it plays that way.

Got all the train cars--a Herculean feet. Officially out of things to do, other than finish the rabbit quest, which I'll get around to eventually.

Unlike, Mirkon, I thought the ending kind of sucked a lot. The boss fight was essentially a series of semi-clever minigames, but never once felt like a real battle. In fact, all of the boss fights have felt that way. The only boss fight that feels like a real sword fight was the optional boss at the end of the "Take On 'Em All" game in Hyrule Town.

I also hate that it didn't ask me to save after beating the boss, or acknowledge on my profile that I had beaten the game, considering how so much of the game functions like a checklist of achievements. The menu is literally just a tons of different ways of representing a checklist--not that that's a bad thing, it's fun to fill up all the checkboxes. It's just lame that there's no "beat the boss" checkbox.

I'm still playing it though. I really really like the train stuff. I got all of the Force Gems, which means I've completed the train tracks. I also got the golden train and have almost all of the train cars, I'm only missing 3 and I'm working on getting them. This is a huge feat, as the game expects you to trade with other players to get the rare resources needed to build certain cars, so doing it on your own is more difficult. Or at least, more repetitive. Getting a rare treasure of a certain class just means doing the thing to randomly get a treasure of that class more times.

Either way, I've been having fun sucking the last bits of life out of the game. Cargo-delivery quests are infinitely repeatable, and are one of the best ways to get treasure, so I've been doing those a lot. I also train around to different shops every day to see what's new, and I'm so close to getting Beedle's Diamond Club Card. I'd hate to stop playing now.

I just got to the Fire Temple, and so far, I really like it. A lot. Maybe more than Phantom Hourglass? It might be right behind Link's Awakening as one of my favorite Zelda games.

I like Zelda, and I'm happy when I complete a Zelda game, but they're often long arduous processes and much of the time spent is frustrating and annoying. I don't want to re-play Ocarina of Time because I can't even really think of a single temple that isn't exhausting. So far, this game has never felt 'exhausting', I think that's because the challenges are more broken down and linear. Rather than having to spending an hour in a dungeon, you spend 20 minutes each in 3 short dungeons. Like popcorn, each unit is easier to digest and it makes the game as a whole harder to put down.

I also like the relative linearity of it. Metroid Fusion and Metroid II were my favorite Metroid games because they were structured so that you were always directed to the next place to go, and could choose to do side-quest things if you wanted to. That format, IMO, is much more enjoyable than wandering around aimlessly trying to separate side quest stuff from the main adventure. I know many gamers disagree and are annoyed with the current shift, but it's actually working out pretty nicely for Brad.

I also like the train. I think I like it more than sailing! I like that you don't have to chart your course, which was annoying in Phantom Hourglass, and that you can just choose to switch tracks with a lever on the bottom of the screen. Which makes me wonder why they didn't just include an on-screen helm in Phantom Hourglass! The first few train segments were relatively breezy, but I've found the train portions to be the most challenging parts of the game. Transporting the Mega Ice to the Gorons was really fucking hard, and I'm intimidated by the idea of getting 10 ice cubes there (as per a side quest). Getting the keys from the flying elephant monsters was really fun, even if part of the clue was lost in translation; By "make a sound of an animal they don't like" I think they meant "choo choo" as in "chu chu" which is an onomatopoeia for the sound mice make in Japan, but not in America, because I'm pretty sure Japanese people just made that up. Because mice don't make that sound.

I'm also really looking forward to the side quests. I'm slowly recalling really getting into the side quests in Phantom Hourglass and getting 100% of everything. I like all of the side quests so far. Flagging down Beedle is always fun, and especially rewarding once I realized the bomb bag was entirely optional and that Beedle is the only way to get it. I love the treasure and the optional train upgrades and how it affect's the game's economy. Rupees were a bigger deal in Phantom Hourglass than they ever were in any other Zelda game, and it feels the same here too. The train sidequests are also fun driving people places safely and comfortably in a toy train is weirdly satisfying in a disturbingly wholesome way. Like watching reruns of The Patty Duke Show on the Christian cable network, which I do some times, for some reason.

Speaking of identical cousins (...Patty Duke reference...) I really like how characters are directly related to characters from Phantom Hourglass. The fact that Niko is the same Niko, albeit 100 years older, is awesome. I also really liked meeting Linebeck III and visiting Linebeck senior's grave; it reminded me how awesome he was. The story so far is pretty light hearted, not much plot has happened, just living out a necessary plot point in the overall Hyrule history (the founding of the new land after the flood) but I'm hoping for some sort of twist or revelation by the end.

I feel like I tore through half the game in a day (I basically just started today) but I've been loving every second of it. I'm hoping it keeps the same smooth pacing and difficulty curve near the end, and that the side quests are fun enough to merit actually doing them.

This was the most boring unsatisfying game I've ever played. I gave it way too much of a fair chance--I played it right down to a few turns away from beating the final boss before giving up. Because the final boss has a minimum level requirement that is higher than the level you would be at if you advanced through the entire story normally without grinding or doing side quests. Fuck that.

The final boss has an attack called "Big Bang" that hits the entire party at once and if anyone survives they are inflected with sap which lowers their HP and cannot be cured until he uses a different buff/debuff clearing attack called "Black Hole". The only way to survive Big Bang (without exiting the final dungeon to do side quests and coming back, which would take several hours) without leveling up is to boost my magic defense. So I equipped all the gear with the highest magic defense, got his attack pattern from an FAQ and casted 'Shell' before he attacked and set all characters to 'Defend' and my Dragoon to 'Jump'. Doing that maybe nets me 2 or 3 living but badly weakened characters and it takes several turns to repair them.

But there's a point in his attack pattern where he uses Big Bang twice, and at lower HP he just starts using Meteor over and over. There is literally no way I can win, so fuck it. I watch the ending on YouTube, and it wasn't even that good! And defeating the final boss had no baring on the story, they could've just as easily walked away and nothing would be different. The villain's only means of affecting anything on Earth is through mind controlling two specific characters that share his blood, but those characters are immune to his mind control by the end and head to his lair in space to defeat him. Why? He can't affect anything on Earth anymore and his only motivation is that he's impatient for an event that happens immediately after they defeat him. And they could just go home and they know this. It's retarded that they're even fighting him at all. And then of course he unleashes a demon that is "the evil in the hearts of all men" and when they defeat it he says "I'll always exist as long as there is evil." Okay. Great. Mission accomplished?

There are very few things I enjoyed about this game. The story was very well written, and had sort of a Shakespearean story structure and themes and whatever. The cutscenes had really good voice acting and some of them were well directed. And I really liked how Final Fantasy spells like Break, Esuna, Meteor, Slow, Cure, and Fire were frequently mentioned and acknowledged by the plot, as opposed to most FF games where the powers exhibited in battle were seemingly inaccessible in cutscenes. One of my favorite parts was Rosa's lack of story; there seemed to be some kind of past love triangle between Rosa, Kain and Cecil, but all the characters were over it and basically acted like mature adults rather than hormonal teenagers.

But basically everything outside of the story (which was likely given an injection of subtlety by the re-writing and re-translating in the remake) was awful. The story even faltered at times (the over abundance of crystals and red herrings, the meaningless final boss, the lack of conflict resolution in the ending and the characters constantly "dying" and coming back, so much so that it made me forget about the one character that really did die) but it was the only thing mildly interesting enough to make me drag myself through the unbearable gameplay. It just sucks, there's a veneer of customization but the game has a specific thing it wants you to be doing at all times and your choices really boil down to either doing the obvious effective thing or doing your own ineffective thing and struggling.

Whatever. I'm glad to be rid of this garbage.

Uhg, the gear in this game is awful. I just spent an hour going through an optional dungeon and was rewarded with a sword that only Cecil could use that was less good than an axe I got in a previous NON-optional dungeon. Also, when 'exploring' towns I bought a Boomerang because I knew someone would be able to equip it eventually. Then I meet Edge, the only character in the game who can equip boomerangs--and he already comes with two swords that are BOTH stronger than the boomerang. WHY!?

This game reminds me of Crono Trigger in that it feels a lot like a spoon-fed clever events, and not a lot of actual RPG exploration and customization, like, say, Final Fantasy III, which I can't help but compare it to. Though, obviously, the events aren't as clever as Crono Trigger's. I feel like I have no choice but to do the next thing and the next thing is usually only kind of interesting. It doesn't feel like I can do much of anything outside of the story at all, not even just in terms of walking around wherever I want, but even my *equipment* seems handed to me. I can find and buy other stuff but it's never as good as the last thing I got out of an obvious chest and it'll last maybe ten battles before being usurped by another thing found in an obvious chest.

When I first got to the point where I could freely explore the world with the airship (which I should add, doesn't have random encounters--not that that's a bad thing, but there's really no point in the game where you can 'explore' with any sort of 'risk' involved) and I visited every town and cave on the planet and they all amounted to very little. Unlike Final Fantasy III or even Pokemon, there's absolutely no excitement to entering a new town or area. Because any new interesting abilities or gear are handed to you by the story, not rewarded to you for something you did on your own. There's no 'game changers' waiting for you at the next town, like new spells or abilities or Pokemon, at best there's a shop that sells gear that's maybe one stat point better than your current gear.

Also, your gear is so quickly out dated by new gear. Everything seems to last for only 10-20 battles, then you're constantly being forced to re-arrange your party's gear and settings, not because of some new strategy you thought up, but because of some new handicap the game has decided to give you. Character have also begun to die left and right. It's starting to get silly--even though the acting and animation is very well done and dramatic, it feels silly just because you can always predict a character death by a full party. If you have a party of 5 people and then an old friend re-joins the group, someone has to die in the next cutscene. The deaths just keep getting sillier and sillier. Yang dies by kicking a computer, Cid dies by riding a bomb out of an airship a la Doctor Strangelove when he probably could've just thrown it? What kind of bomb only works when you press a button on the bomb itself? How is there even a market for a bomb like that?

Another issue is that it's hard to know what to do next. When you go into the menu, the character on the map will show a little thought bubble, which is a PERFECT place to tell me what to do next, but they never do. They're always like, "I can't believe so-and-so died, such a tragic senseless death, gosh!" I keep wandering around aimlessly hoping I'll trigger a cutscene.

For example, I was climbing this tower to steal back the crystals while Golbez was gone. I get to basement floor 7 (so, not the top) and I see the fire elemental boss (who I was told was guarding this tower--and also being spoon-fed ice weapons) talk to some scientist guy and then teleport away. Then I fight the scientist guy and he drops a key that unlocks a random room on the 9th basement floor (which is BELOW the floor I'm on) and I can't go any higher for some reason, the tower just stops on B7. So what? Do I go down and open the door on B9? When I do that Yang kicks a computer and dies. Okay. That sucks--but now I'm supposed to continue climbing the tower to look for the crystals... right? There's no clear answer or way to proceed, so I try to exit the castle which triggers a dramatic cutscene of the party outrunning a falling bridge to leave the castle. What? Why are they leaving? We never even found the crystals? That was the whole point. The scientist mentioned something about the crystals being on a higher floor, but why should that deter me? Shouldn't the tower, logically, connect by all floors? Blarg.

ALSO: The scientist guy was weak to thunder! Why the fuck did it spoon feed me ice weapons and tell me I was going to fight a fire boss if I was really going to fight a boss weak to thunder. All of the enemies in the tower leading up to it were weak to ice too. I mean, that's not really a fun clever thing to do, to just randomly lie to the player. It's not like it made the boss fight any more challenging, because you can change equipment in the items menu in-battle. It was just stupid and lame.

Anyway, my desire to complete the game is sort of more out of laziness than intrigue. The same kind of laziness that drives you to eat the other half of a gross 12 inch Subway sandwich when you actually ordered a 6 inch and they pretend to mishear you and charge you for a foot long. It's exactly like that.

I'm not really digging this so far, but I guess I'll continue and try to beat it. I'm about 7 hours in and everything is pretty :/ Especially on the heels of the excellent Final Fantasy III, this game doesn't feel too great. It sort of reminds me of the reasons why Super Mario 3 is a much better game than Super Mario World. Those reasons being: Buttons. It feels like a lot of franchises made the mistake of needlessly muddling and over complicating their gameplay in the transition from NES to SNES just because there were more buttons available at the time--something Nintendo is just now realizing is a mistake.

Maybe it's just because this is a remake, but I don't know what I'm supposed to be pushing half the time. You press X to have characters cycle between automatic and controlled, Y to flip between the menus of characters who are 'ready', A to select things (but sometimes you have to press A twice because A is also overloaded as 'rearrange' in the out-of-battle menu, which SHOULD be the select button, always), B to cancel deep menus and also resume the flow of time, hold R to run, and L does something but I don't even remember what it is, and also you use up and down to rotate through targets and left and right to rotate through targeting your enemies and your party (which is especially confusing in boss fights, where the camera angle changes and aligns your party horizontally, causing me to accidentally cast Protect on the boss one too many times). IT'S TOO MUCH.

Also ATB is bullshit. There's an option in the menu to turn it on 'wait' but that only applies to deep menus! You still have to deal with ATB when you're selecting from the main menu (attack, magic, items, etc) and there's absolutely no way to turn this off. ATB is retarded. Especially considering that I have an unruly FIVE party members most of the time, and you're basically throwing me a random character's menu every couple seconds and expecting me to navigate it quickly (because I'll be penalized if I navigate the menu at an enjoyable, thoughtful pace!) and then I have to wait for it's action to 'charge' but I don't really know how long that takes. What!? I never know what's going on in this game. Final Fantasy IX also had ATB but they worked out the kinks I guess because I was about 20 hours into the game before I realized there was even such a thing as ATB--when I went to the bathroom without pausing and came back to a game over screen. ATB is retarded.

Anyway. I also don't like the way the party works. It doesn't feel good to not know who is going to stay in your party and for how long. It adds excitement to the plot, but it adds unnecessary anxiety to purchasing and equipping of armor, because you're never sure how worth it it's going to be. To make matters worse, the remake lets you add things called "Augments" to your character, which are one time use, non-transferrable abilities. The game says you get these when someone "leaves your party" and I guess they're supposed to ease the transition of losing a character--but they make things worse, because then you lose the augment whenever the person you gave it to leaves your party! I can't just give every augment to Cecil, he doesn't even need most of them. I gave "auto-potion" to Edward to keep him from constantly dying and he apparently died (or whatever) in the shipwreck soon after. Great.

Also, a lot of the characters are lame. Palom and Porom are stupid and annoying. The monk character is also lame and weird and feels out of place. I also really didn't like the way Cecil looked in his armor for the first several hours of the game, though I'm okay with him as a paladin. Seriously though, look how weird he looks in the DS version--he looks like a lollipop!

One thing to note, having played this after Final Fantasy III is it seems pretty obvious what Square did; in the second half of Final Fantasy III, it's always trying to get you to change your job to get past a particular area. There's a point where you're trapped in a town that's taken over by a bird monster and all the NPCs talk about is how great dragoons are and how great they are at killing bird monsters. And then there's a dungeon where enemies are only weak to dark knight swords, and another boss that changes it's weakness and only a scholar can tell it's current weakness. It looks like Square thought, "instead of creating scenarios that encourage players to change their four generic guys to different jobs, we'll just make every job a unique character and have them constantly jump in and out of the party." While it makes sense in theory, it's super annoying in practice. I don't want to invest anything in you guys if you're just going to randomly leave my party for no reason!