Star Ocean 3 - Five hours in or so, just reached Arias.
To some extent this is a tale of two games so far. The first couple hours are terrible. Awful. Bad game is bad. First of all, there's hardly any gameplay, and what little there is is confusing. I really hated it on my first playthrough because I had no idea what I was doing. Now it's just boring as heck. But whatever, it's not the first game to start light on gameplay, and/or what gameplay there is to be boring or simplistic. That's just Tri-Ace being Tri-Ace or whatever. No, the bigger problems are definitely related to writing.
Looking back on Star Ocean 3 a decade later, one thing I respect a lot about it is its treatment of gender issues. Most games fall into a trap of stocking their NPC casts of primarily men; that is, even games whose core cast is roughly balanced gender-wise usually break down if you expand the circle to say, the twenty most important characters. SO3 is a rare game which bucks this, chiefly due to the nation of Aquaria. And quite apart from number, most of the female cast can hold their own just fine in terms of competence. Maria is the leader of Quark; Mirage a capable operative; Nel and Clair are the de facto leaders of Aquaria's military, overseen by a queen and a female chief military engineer. Of course there are plenty of male NPCs too (patriarchal Airyglyph answers right back to Aquaria on this front), but in both quantity and competence the female cast acquits itself just fine, and better than most games.
Why this tangent? Because early SO3 is pretty damn embarrassing on this front. Sophia is, like, every problematic stereotype of JRPG female characters rolled into one. She needles Fayt passive-aggressively, but of course secretly likes him. She gets exhausted easily. When the crisis hits, Fayt generally keeps a cool head while she gets all panicky. She exists partially to give Fayt someone to protect. Most of her scenes are cringe-worthy. Peppita, the only other female character worth mentioning from early in the game, spends her first scene and only particularly memorable scene desperately hoping for the male player avatar to lavish attention on her and validate her. It's all rather uncomfortable.
So the earlygame features two bad female characters for Fayt to bounce off, and Fayt isn't really a strong enough personality to overcome this and be worthwhile. Also after a long exploration of a boring hotel setting which literally is irrelevant for the rest of the game, you get shunted from one crisis to the next in a way which is kind of tiring and ineffective. It's a relief once the inevitable Star Ocean "get stranded on a lower-tech planet" kicks in even though you know the game has kinda just been one long excuse setting this up until now.
But despite all that negativity? Once this arc ends the game gets legitimately good. I was honestly starting to wonder if the game just had worse writing than I remembered. I'm glad to say those worries weren't really necessary. Cliff shows up, and is generally great. He bounces off other characters very well. He has his share of character flaws, but the game isn't afraid to call him on them. His interplay with Fayt, Mirage, and Nel is always a lot of fun. And Nel is pretty wonderful. She is coldly pragmatic in a way which is somewhat unusual for a JRPG character (even moreso a female one). Her relationship with Fayt reverses the cliched "overly emotional woman / rational man" dynamic fiction is over-fond of. The game sets up a situation where all three of the major characters have sympathetic, understandable viewpoints and encourages the player to look at it from each of their sides, and the resulting scenes are a lot of fun. They're long, but I never begrudge the game this. And when I died to some Airyglyph soldiers after one particularly long scene, I was very glad the game had sceneskip.
Gameplaywise the game still feels positively restricted compared to what I know is still to come; the first few techs are pretty weak and you can't combo them effectively and/or at all due to CP limitations. But the core gameplay is still pretty fun (although I do wish there was a way to control the camera, and after playing SO4 a bunch I now really miss enemy HP gauges).
That ended up longer than I intended. tl;dr: SO3 before Vanguard = crap. SO3 once Cliff shows up = outstanding. It's a game I remember as inconsistent, certainly, but damned if it isn't the best writing Tri-Ace has ever done when it's on its game.
Fire Emblem 8 - Up to Eirika chapter 11. Not much to say about this replay, game is still thoroughly enjoyable as always.
