FE8 - Screw this game, screw this series, I don't care if I'm getting paid to play it anymore, I'm going to go play something actually FUN... Which isn't hard to do; even Beyond the Beyond qualifies as more fun than FE in my opinion.
I can't say that this was unexpected...
That said... you should try it on emulator! Savestates and RNG abuse will probably make you happy if you want to break it in half.
Speaking of SRPGs that are more trouble than their worth...
Eternal POIZN! - I finished the four main chapters - Thage, Ashley, Olifen, and Rondemion. But when I started the game up, I really didn't have any intention of playing it all the way through, so I was just fucking around for most of the first chapters. Well, I fell in love with the gothic fairy tale aspect of the game, and there's a pretty decent story and fun character work going on. But the gameplay did not inspire the amount of multiple playthroughs that the game demands to get the whole story, and I'm just not willing to go through it again to unlock that last bit.
So, I youtubed the last chapter and ending. Man, that was a really cool twist that I wasn't expecting. There were a lot of twists, but I'm specifically referring to the stuff revealed in the 4th-wall breaking portions towards the end. The game just has stylish storytelling points all over, kind of a shame about the lackluster gameplay.
Mini-Review!
Thage's Chapter: Really good intro. You can conceivably start with Olifen or Ashley, too, but Thage's chapter just seems better designed for bringing the player into the gothic fairy tale with its atypical characters and teasing mystery plot. Thage herself carries the whole chapter, both in plot and gameplay, and she's very memorable and good at defying expectations. Her cohorts, with their mix of odd loyalty to Thage, animosity to eachother, and questionable motives make them a really synergistic group in plot scenes. Most of the plot scenes in the first chapter as very good at revealing key bits of information without letting on that they are key bits until much later, and mostly seem to serve as character development. Once the game realizes that if it gives any more vital information pieces away that the player is gonna figure it out, the chapter throws it all at you at once and the chapter ends suddenly, but oddly satisfactorily. Really, you could stop playing the game here and have had a good experience. It's also about the length of time that the battle system's worth can support itself.
After going through the mysterious shape-changing realm of Besek once, you've really had most of the fun that you can out of EP's gameplay, but the story is told across multiple chapters, which are all fairly entertaining in their own right, but the demands of the gameplay can make it drag.
Ashley & Olifen's chapters: Idealistic Priestess and Idealistic/Emo Soldier-engaged-to-a-Princess. You can do these in either order. I did Ashley's first. Both of these chapters are more about world-building than mystery-building (or mystery-revelation, for that matter). They do a good job developing their characters, though neither chapter has quite the chemistry that Thage's team did. But the world-building of Besek is pretty cool. Definitely a setting that I'd like to see utilized in RPGs more often, especially when given the gothic fairy tale treatment.
Gameplay was a little tougher here without Thage, who destroyed worlds. But the added challenge just made it more tedious to me. It's a fairly solid SRPG base, there's just not a lot to make it stand out. The recruitable mercenary characters are kind of fun to play with, and you -do- have the option of putting adorable, backwards-speaking Teddy Bears in your party, but... the experience is just too slow overall, even with animations turned off. And overkill system for capturing Majin gets tedious or frustrating, depending on your strategy. I've yet to find a strategy that makes it 'fun'.
Rondemion's chapter: Yes. You have to beat at least one of the other chapters to unlock this one. I played all three first, and it's good that I did. While Thage/Ashley/Olifen had to hold back some secrets due to their setup, Rondemion is the 'spoiler' chapter. Rondemion himself is pretty awesome, being a retired war hero who ends up not being so retired when he ventures into the home of the Majin, Besek. This chapter feels free to toss around bits of information the player would already know from the other chapters, as well as begins building it's own intrigue between Rondemion and his allies, one of the whom is ever-present Count Duphaston that's been showing up in every chapter to offer cryptic advice. The game is pretty genre-savvy and starts throwing Red Herrings at the player based on previous chapters to throw the player off. I have to say that it worked, as I was expecting a certain reveal, but then the game revealed just enough of something else that I abandoned my theory... only for the game to spring it on me after all. Nice.
Ronde is a beast, but this chapter is still fairly difficult compared to the previous ones, which gave the play a lot -more- overpowered units to play with. I stopped playing after finishing this chapter. The reason? Apparently you have to capture every Majin in the game, including bosses, to unlock the final chapter. Considering how not-fun this was, and how I wasn't paying much attention to this mechanic from the start... Yeah, I just can't be bothered to do that.
Final chapters: If you decide to Catch 'Em All, then you get access to a condensed chapter. You only play one-third of the full trek through Besek in this chapter, and you can -only- fight with your summoned Majin, making it fairly difficult. However, the story is finally ready to make it's revelations. Every battle is followed by a brief, often 4th-wall breaking conversation with the player about the goings-on of all 5 chapters up to this point, and things are getting tied together. In a refreshing change of pace (I just played Vandal Hearts, after all), the plot is pretty good about -not- beating the player in the face with its twists, though sometimes it can make things a bit vague (Hint: if you're confused by anything, play/watch the Thage chapter again, there's a lot of pieces of information there that's meaning becomes much clearer after the ending).
After the short 5th chapter, there is a big Final Battle sequence involving the 5 Leader PCs from each chapter. Their levels carry over, so it's worth pampering them. Final Battle looked pretty cool to me, but alas, I can't speak from experience.
Despite the battle system being lackluster, it did manage to produce some interesting duelists, so I wouldn't mind seeing this game ranked if it ever got any playership in the DL. As it stands, it makes a fun board tourney name, and Tal's stat topic is amazing.
