Caltrops - Reviews - AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Forum Overview :: Reviews

by FABIO 09/30/2004, 3:13pm PDT

Hour 30

Mother FUCK there is some sadisctic design at work here.

The two worst things about this game:

1. Plot starts off on potentially exciting note, then sidetracks you to an isolated planet in the middle of buttfuck nowhere where you carry out meaningless quests, then get sidetracks from THOSE meaningless quests by more quests that are even more meaningless.

2. Some of the most tedious dungeons in a recent RPG, by design, by length (far too long), and by the frequency they pop up (CONSTANTLY).

are coming out in full force now. At hour 25, the game tricks you into thinking that you'll finally get off this primative hellhole planet and back to the cool Star Trek space war (almost totally forgotten after hour 1), only to be told that first you'll have to team two factions up with each other. This could have just been done with a quick cutscene, but that wouldn't pad the game out for 5 more hours, would it? You must trek through 3 towns and 3 goddamned dungeons just to get to the negotiation between the two factions. Great, they negotiated and agreed to help, back to the space war, now. But wait, one of the factions says they need you to get something before they can help. This something is on the exact opposite end of the world. Trek all the way back through the dungeons and towns to get there. Go through another 3 dungeons. In the middle of the 3rd dungeon, you are told that you must retrieve an item in order to continue any further into the dungeon. This item is located in another dungeon all the way back at the very first town, which means trekking back through all the dungeons you just came through, for absofuckinglutely no goddamned reason whatever other than to pad the game out. WHAT...THE...FUCK?

Just get back to the space war, that's all I'm fucking asking. Make dungeons something interesting like the interiors of battleships or spacestations, anything but yet another cave or ruin. Why am I constantly backtracking and getting sidetracked from even the boring midieval fantasy quests? Why does the main character have to be an anorexic whiny waif? Why does over half my party have to have stereotypical anime haircolors blue and pink? Why did they include the cliched "stubborn strongman with a heart of gold"? Why do they all look like they were designed by Imari Stevenson? Why do I have to unlock the two player battlemode, and once I do why do I have to visit a certain town in order to play it instead of just picking it from the starting menu?

I mean, the basic framework for a good Star Ocean game (like the second) is all here, but it's like someone made a concious effort to try and fuck it up. Maybe they originally had it so the midieval planet was a short pitstop before getting back to space, but the game ended up being only 15-20 hours. Short, but enjoyable. Maybe Squaresoft figured it wouldn't be a 60+ hour EPIC like Xenosaga (forgetting their lesson with Parasite Eve that an RPG can be short but still fun) and ordered them to fill it out to 50 hours, or else they'd cut their funding and wouldn't let them use the Xenosage engine for free.

There are just enough good points to keep me from quitting this, but the writers and dungeon designers are skating the motherfucking edge.