I'm in a ranty mood today, be warned~
MK2 - Finished up classes in Chapter 7. Not much new to say. BUFFOPRESSOR was awesome as advertised, Flay's insanity never gets old ("I have kidnapped some of your classmates and stranded them on a mountain in a blizzard! Better go rescue them quickly if you want an A!"). The Kamil Rider or whatever the fuck he was in Chapter 7 (MK1 Chimera redux) was likely the hardest boss in the game so far and nearly killed me, most competent MK non-chapter boss ever? That caught me totally by surprise. Fun fight though, although as usual, fuck combat classes. (Okay game please give me another bad mid-battle tutorial and grade me on the first time I have ever used a mechanic, that makes sense. If I tried to test students on something I (badly) taught them 15 seconds previously I'd find myself out of work. Yes, MK school = PW law, but at least the latter doesn't make for annoyance.) The school simulator continues to be an unimpressive distraction but I guess complaining about that in a MK game is like complaining about cuteness and a nonsensical crime gang in Pokemon.
Barring the game totally screwing up the second and united paths (which it may) the game is going to end up slightly better than MK1, though, I think? Want to say the gameplay is overall better (earlier switching, better synthing, randoms which are at least a bit more competent, no stupid Day/Night issues), the trainwreck-style character stuff makes for much more fun than MK's anime tropes (and two of the three best characters from MK1 carry over). I like MK1's creativity with its lategame plot but don't think it's enough. MK2 seems headed for 7/10 territory.
Wait did I just get through an entire MK2 post without hyping Lily? Oops. Lily is awesome. CQ4 soon~
WA4 - In Wunderweltraum~ This game rules, but we already knew this. Not really doing much that is especially creative with this playthrough, the game is just a joy to play through regardless with its tight gameplay and quick-moving narrative.
Endless Frontier - I just beat the mermaid pirate captain and the Phantom. First fights against both if that makes a difference. EF really needs to be talked about in terms of gameplay and plot separately, so...
Gameplay: While I kinda dislike the fact that there's no in-battle party switching in this game (it intuitively feels designed for it), aside from that omission the gameplay has been improving. Enemies are nasty bastards. Hell, there was a random in the last dungeon who had near-OHKO damage. Gameplay is very engaging as you have to pay serious attention to your combos, and react to the different enemy weights. I mentioned this before but I am impressed by the game's challenge curve; it starts out giving you plenty of time to learn comboing without any real repercussions for screwing up but increasingly enemies are guarding or evading to make them actually matter, good stuff. On the one hand I do miss VP's ability to combo with multiple people (though EF gets a touch of this through the supports) but on the other hand the one-person comboing is just so much more engaging than VP's. The non-combo parts of the battle system are also reasonably interesting, spirit commands are always an interesting idea and do work well here, and I think the game handles free items better than BoF5 because of the inventory limit (and a non-annoying one, more akin to VP's than something pesky like BoF5's or FF2's) and because the better ones cost COM. COM in general also adds some depth; how much of your combo you use, chaining to get COM bonuses, item use, etc.
Is it "omg best gameplay ever"? Nah. The XS3-style turn order does the game no favours at all and as mentioned, I do think it would like some switching. But it's... probably an improvement on the VP style and that's something I've been wanting to see for a while.
Plot: Is abhorrent. I can't stress this enough. The game wishes it could begin to compare to G3 in quality. It's a run of immature, often sexist jokes, and the offensively fanservicy outfits and cutouts (which the majority of both PCs and bosses have) means there's no way in hell this is simply the fault of the translators. The serious plot behind it makes little sense and is uninteresting anyway, in true SRW style, so the window-dressing ends up that much more prominent in my mind. It's a crying shame. I understand that the SRW fanbase is by nature one of the most male out of all RPG fanbases (something about GIANT ROBOTS I guess) but this is a bad joke. At least it avoids pissing on religion and doesn't dismiss rape as trivial so it can slap lategame XS3 plot in a cripple fight, but graaaaaahhhhh. It's crap like this that keeps video games from being taken seriously by large segments of the public. How can you see EF and not be tempted to dismiss it as trash for hormonal teenage boys? There's a clever, creative combat system in there but to many viewers it'd simply be buried. At least ordinary bad plots like Grandia and Shining Force and SO2 and CC are, at the end of the day, inoffensive. Maybe it's the feminist in me but I can not in clear conscience ignore this. I apologise to the SRW fans who are probably going to feel that I am being too harsh on the game, but I do feel this rant is necessary.
I have no idea what rating the game will end up getting. Maybe the good and bad will cancel out and I'll get something around the middle? At least I definitely intend to continue playing it.
