Caltrops - Reviews





	[quote name="Mischief Maker"][quote name="Zseni"][quote name="FABIO"]Tried pushing ahead a little more, but the game aggressively tries to keep you from anything fun. It could have just let you sneak into the palace, but wouldn't it be more fun running around the desert hunting down a killer tomato and collecting rocks first? Speaking of Shakespeare, it seems the plot is built around tricking kids who don't know any better into thinking this is something DEEP and MEANINGFUL, from Mister Bad Guy's high school valedictorian speech with "slings and arrows" clumsily thrown in to Puffy Shirt guy sounding like he was written by Penny Arcade's Tycho. I know it's par the course for Jap RPGs, but what is with every reviewer spooging over this story? The setup is cookie cutter "evil empire of buckethead soldiers invade", the pacing absolutely glacial, and the characters bland to the point that most of them seem to be there as some sort of genre parody. It's not even comparatively good. FFX's story was a promising premise brought down by doofus characters. The plot was moderately original, the voice acting mostly decent, and it managed not to fall into the usual trap of incoherence by the third act. Hell, FF: Tactics' story was more nuanced than this, even with the infamously awful translation. Just like Penny Arcade's Tycho presents Puffy Shirt Guy and valedictorian speeches, the whole thing seems like a one big bag of trite bland with a thin concealer coat of thesaurus and Shakespeare cliff notes. No wonder Zseni loves it so much.[/quote] No, LK already nailed it: "math masochism" is just the thing. Ignore the plot and characters - if you don't already know how to do this for FF games, you're too young to be playing them (if you were even younger than <i>that</i>, you would be young enough to like the plot and characters.) The game is all about dicking around with gambits and watching big numbers pop out of bad guys. It's min-max porn, not an Ar Pee Gee. The other thing I like about FFXII is that it's not FFX or FFX2, both of which had plot and chacters which actively dissuaded me from dicking around with the battle system. The epitome of the Ignore Everything Because Squaresoft Is Fag games is Chrono Cross, where you are charged with ignoring not only the plot of the game you're actually playing, but also the plot of its predecessor. They give you a million characters so you wouldn't have to give a particular shit about any of them, and they all level up together. And the battle system is awesome. Second best is Legend of Mana, which was like a big min-max toy.[/quote] May I suggest this superior money-saving <A HREF="http://butanpressfight.fireandrobot.com/prof/rrrrrpg.zip" TARGET="new">alternative</A>? (Direct link, sorry.)[/quote]