Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Finished this.
This was my third Castlevania game completed (after SotN and Dracula X) and I daresay it was my favourite overall. The game is very similar to SotN but feels like it makes a couple notable improvements. The biggest, certainly, is that the game isn't piss easy. I actually died two or three times to most bosses in the second half of the game (everything from Death onwards, basically), and sometimes to randoms too, and generally felt like I needed to learn how enemies fought in a way that I... really didn't for any previous Castlevania games. This helps the game's enjoyability a fair deal. The game also generally felt more polished than SotN as well (item menu was organised and far less cluttered, souls felt better executed than spells).
Otherwise it's a solid experience but falls notably short of exceptional. Dracula's castle is, as always, fun enough to explore and combat is... decent, but still a bit clunky at points (as usual, hitstun time is too large). It was fun to tinker with the soul setup although some of them being random drops was a little questionable. Weapons... had some variety but usually there was only two or three choices at any point, max. While the pistol is hilariously weak, I did enjoy using it as a way to get some chippy regen in when combined with the Succubus soul, which is cute. Otherwise that Ascalon sword you can buy midgame is brutally powerful and I mainly used it for the rest of the game unless I wanted something with more reach.
The plot barely exists and the game has sceneskip which is a mercy, but the one plot twist the game goes for is executed well enough and that's really all I can ask for. (I knew it ahead of time. It's still kinda cool.) I'm not sure why Yoko even exists and Soma's girlfriend is predictably boring but have no problem with the rest of the small cast in their limited roles. I liked the touch on the bad ending where Soma turns into Dracula, is confronted by Julius, and does an EPIC WINEGLASS TOSS but I am easily amused by such things.
Music is the game's only real main step back from previous Castlevania games I've played. Not that there aren't still some solid tracks but overall it's certainly less impressive. GBA sound system as always never helps here.
Not much else to say I think? Game isn't too long which is fine. Got about 94% of the map uncovered, there were a couple notable things I never found my way past. So it goes. 7/10, 7.5/10 region or something. Not likely to replay any time soon but not something I regret playing even for a moment.
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Final Fantasy XIII - Reached Chapter 11, which feels a good enough point for a midgame rant on the subject. Short form: the game feels poised to be my favourite RPG I've played in the last couple years. It's pretty much exactly what I've been looking for from the genre.
Gameplay is... interesting. I'll say right off it's not necessarily playing to my personal biases, so I don't think it'll quite reach the uppermost tier of RPG gameplay to me. Still, it doesn't fall too far from it, and darned if it doesn't feel completely different from anything previous, which is pretty great. I really enjoy the paradigm system and all the on-the-fly job switching. The game is obviously very caringly designed since most fights are tough; you have to stay constantly on your toes and failing to pay attention certainly can kill you. While there are probably highly defensive strategies which will beat all but the toughest fights fairly effortlessly, the game's ranking system strongly beats you not to do that, and to walk a tightrope to get past all your challenges with the highest rewards possible. I love when games expect me to play efficiently so this is great.
Role- and character-balance is generally good stuff. All the PCs feel quite distinct and you can accomplish pretty different things by assembling different parties once you have that option. Even before then, though, there's a lot to enjoy in how each team plays and feels differently. All the roles feel like they have a clear purpose which is pretty great; there isn't really a scrub job. I like sentinel the least on average given my offensive approach but there are times when it is incredibly important.
Much is often made of the game's slow start. To break it down... yes, the first two chapters' gameplay (which lasts around two hours) is pretty bad. There's some plot justification for it but I definitely felt there could have been more effort here to keep things moving along; giving Lightning some of her AMP powers in battle might have been a help. That said, ultimately, FF13 gameplay minus paradigm shifts isn't going to be especially intoxicating regardless. For me, the writing of this part of the game made up for this flaw but it certainly is there.
But once chapter 3 comes along? Gloves very much come off and by getting paradigm shifting you're quickly expected to use the system to fight back. From here on the game pretty quickly assumes the fun it has kept until my point in the game. There are still periodic tutorials but they're on less fundamental things (eidolon battles, three-way fights, weapon upgrading, etc.). The only thing the game "holds your hand" in from here on is forcing a party leader and party (though the latter is forced by plot concerns and you tend to have 2-3 parties so you do get to see everyone) which doesn't particularly bother me since it does change who that leader is to give you a taste of controlling all the roles. One can argue the ability to fully choose your own party should have come a bit earlier but... I'm not sure I particularly agree. In general, outside those first two chapters, I found the gameplay progression has been paced quite well.
Oh yeah, and lest I forget, how this game handles resets is probably the best thing ever. While the game poses a challenge, it will never undo lots of your work, will save your setup, and even has sceneskip for when said reset is a boss. There's even a "restart battle" option like XF, for all that I've only actually used that once.
Writing is, in general, very solid. I really enjoy FF13's cast. They're quite a flawed bunch (largely because they're all going through some very emotionally trying times) and this leads to some very fun interactions. I pretty much like them all to varying degrees - Lightning puts on a callous, violent mask to deal with her anguish and has to grow out of this; Snow is a hopeless romantic and a fun deconstruction of an overly optimistic "hero" (the scene where his facade cracks in chapter 7 is great fun though); Hope is driven by understandable circumstances to abominable intentions and generally acts the way a confused and somewhat bratty 14-year old would; Sazh has a very fun plotline surrounding his own fate and that of his son and how this leaves him without hope compared to even the other party members. I've enjoyed Vanille quite well too so far although there's clearly still some key stuff left to come with her. Fang is probably the weakest PC (which... makes sense, she generally has had things better than them) and she still has her moments and is quite likable, so yeah, very good cast.
The overarching story is told well enough for quite a while, giving the characters plenty of situations to bounce off each other in fun and deliciously antagonistic ways. Their struggle against the world's delightfully Orwellian government is also quite entertaining. I'm still digesting the chapter 9-10 plot twists, and am... generally okay with them, although I thought Dysley was a bit too over-the-top evil. Not my favourite scene.
The writing isn't perfect - I generally feel most of the eidolon scenes have tended towards overly melodramatic or questionably paced (e.g. why does Sazh decide to turn his guns first on Vanille and then himself AFTER the two talk it out and then have the Brynhildr fight?). But it's gutsy, and certainly far above the RPG norm. Even if it screws everything up from this point on (and the possibilities are very clearly there for the last parts to not live up to the early parts' promise) it has still done its job on this front.
Pacing is exactly what I want in an RPG. Good plot, good gameplay, and fuck everything else. Ohnoes it is highly linear, like all my other favourite games. This just lets it be very focused on what it does well. I can't even imagine this game if it wasted lots of time in towns or something like that; it'd completely lose the atmosphere it has of you being hunted enemies of the state. The only "complaint" and it's not much of one is it does limit how much I can play at one time since the gameplay is pretty heavy in terms of being actually mentally demanding, and the game gives you little rest from it, unless it's for some rather heavy writing. I am fine with this.
Other comments can probably wait! Oh yes, visuals are extremely pretty, but we all knew to expect that, I hope.
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Star Ocean 4 - So I saw the first scene of this (someone else was playing) and it is terrible. No other impression of the game yet (so don't take this as larger criticism than it is), but dang; that is exactly the kind of tropy nonsense that makes me appreciate when games like FF13 come along.
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FF5 Four Job Fiesta - Gilabot seems intent to make me a Gate clone. Just got the black chocobo, team so far is Knight/Time Mage/Ranger. Knight mocks the wind-only section of the game pretty badly and generally is the preferred job even after that, although TM brings some nice utility especially against bosses (who so far can all either be slowed, stopped, or demi'd... usually two of the above). I died a bunch in the Library because I was Level 15 and was too lazy to grind up to 16 before doing the dungeon so if a Page 64 struck first and opted to use L5 Death, I was sadfaced. THIEF would help here clearly! Fortunately it's easy enough to avoid giving Page 64s turns outside the ones who show up to start off battles. No resets or even any especially close calls otherwise; Karnak escape was perhaps the easiest I'd had it since Two-Hands attack spam uses almost no time.
