17 hours into
Fates, and ennui is slowly but surely creeping in.
I'd like to keep my initial
warm feelings for
Fates intact, but the game is not exactly accommodating me. The story is just as nonsensical and asinine as in the early stages, if not more; at that point, I've been force-fed a couple of "plot twists" that could be foreseen from miles and only served to increase my foul disposition towards that mediocre mess of a storyline. The whole narrative is so simplistic and predictable that I'm seriously starting to believe that it was written with 14-years-old players in mind. To make matters worse, I fought so many free battles that I actually forgot what my force was supposed to achieve in the first place. We're now marching towards Nohr, but I don't have the slightest idea of
why, which is deeply embarrassing. I feel like a kid who's been drifting out during class and is anxiously waiting for the teacher to find out—except that there is no teacher, and the only punishment I face is to be at a loss regarding the goals of my force until the end of the game. I can live with that, especially since I didn't care that much about the story in the first place.
Then there is the
moe overdose, which is getting worse by the chapter. I'm now married to Azura and I have to endure some
moe antics of the worst sort, such as needing to blow in the mic to refresh her face, to wake her up with the stylus and, last but *shudder* not least, witnessing her mimicking a kiss to me—and I mean the real-life me, not Corrin. Although I knew this kind of thing existed in romance games, I had never been confronted to it myself and I found the whole scene deeply cringing. As though lovestruck Azura were not enough, my whole force is behaving like giggling schoolgirls and begging me to give them accessories.
Accessories! Erm, do you people realise we're supposed to be at war? And don't even get me started on the bath house, because I could become vulgar. I swear a piece of my soul died when I saw that this optional building was nothing more than a way to squeeze your obligatory piece of bath fan-service into what's supposed to be a serious and mature game. But maybe
FEF is not supposed to be mature and serious after all, but rather yet another fan-servicy game pandering to teenagers with inferiority complexes: that would certainly explain why every damn unit in this army is so smitten with Corrin, asking him for gifts and visiting him all day long to tell him how great he is with coy blushes.
The huge number of characters to manage at that point in the game is also unfortunately spoiling my pleasure. I cannot keep track of them all, let alone use them all in battle and keep them all properly leveled-up; and to my dismay, I have to ditch a good number of them on the side of the road as I march on. I also noticed a modicum of planned obsolescence, with older units being considerably weaker and less efficient than newly recruited ones. Maybe these are
FE staples, for all I know: maybe I'm supposed to toss overpowered units without mercy as I progress, and maybe I'm supposed to cherry-pick my favourite characters like I would choose dishes from a buffet. If this is the case, I won't bother keeping everyone evenly leveled-up during my next
FE playthrough, thank you very much. Oh, and maybe that will allow me to actually see romance blossom between my units; because so far, love has not exactly been in the air. Apart from Azura and Corrin, my only other couple are Setsuna and Hayato, and no one else is making much progress towards marriage. I have to admit that I have other fish to fry on the battlefield than pairing units according to matchmaking plans, so I decided to leave the whole marriage matter to chance; however, since I've been switching so much between units, relationships are not exactly blooming. Kaze and Rinkah ended up married a couple of battles ago, only to be separated as (SPOILERS) Kaze fell to his doom saving Corrin. (I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out to be still alive
and the resident traitor to boot, though.) (END OF SPOILERS) This kind of event doesn't quite encourage me to put some work into raising my units' support ranks, let me tell you that. Also, I wonder what was the point of all the fuss about homosexual relationships being possible in
Fates; because as far as I've seen, it's not the case at all. A bit of research seemed to indicate that the gigantic number of
two characters were potentially bisexual; that, in my book, amounts to an Easter Egg and certainly didn't deserve any mention, let alone a full-blown announcement by Nintendo.
I could list plenty of other minor gripes, such as the fact that ever-hungry Lilith is virtually useless since there are nearly no invasions, the fact that the gameplay of the headquarters sessions is too reminiscent of a browser game for my taste, or the fact that the support conversations are totally uninspired and certainly don't feel like the first steps of a solid friendship, let alone an intense love; but let's admit it, that would be boring and disheartening. I think I took a bit of a wrong turn when starting the game: by playing too many free battles, spending too much time toiling in the base camp and wanting to lavish an equal amount of TLC on each unit, I diluted the intensity of the whole experience and drove myself into a slog. But I'll steer my quagmired playthrough back on track by focusing more on story battles and on my favourite characters from now on, and hopefully the second half of the game will be more thrilling than this uneventful first half. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!
Kinda sad you're not enjoying fates. I don't think I'll have a problem with any this, I've grown to accept these kind of games like I do the other flavours of fan service (namely the one found in games like Senran Kagura and Dragon's Crown) and just enjoy the gameplay. And I just loved the gameplay in Awakening, so I'm certain I'll love this.
ReplyDeleteBut I do have some news to cheer you up: Adventures of Mana is now available on the vita. Yes, right now! Square Enix stealth released it today. Couple that with them also bringing over Dragon Quest Builders and World of Final Fantasy to the vita in the west and they're rising in my favour. I just hope they also stealth release I am Setsuna to the vita too, since it was so disappointing that they are going to go through the trouble of porting it to the PC but not translating it to the vita (especially when it's on the PS4 as well! we know it's relatively easy to work between the two platforms).
To be honest, it's not that bad!^^ A lot of my current issues with Fates are due to my way of playing and can easily be fixed. As for the fan-service, well... While it's true that I favour brazen, campy, in-your-face fan-service à la Senran Kagura, I think I can learn to accept Fates' romantic and pandering brand of fan-service over time. I just have a hard time reconciling what I see on a regular basis on my 3DS screen with the venerable, serious aura of the series. But well, gaming fashions change! :P
DeleteGee, I can't believe this is happening!!!! I jumped on the PSN and purchased the game, like, right now. Thank you so much for letting me know, this really made my day!^^ Now if Square could indeed release the Vita version of I am Setsuna, I would be a most happy gamer... Fingers crossed!!^^
Given that Setsuna also got tons of people requesting it, I am hopeful for it. Especially since it's easier to do it since they have an English PS4 version, whereas with Mana they only had the IOS/Android ports. But we shall see. Glad I was able to make your day. :)
ReplyDeleteAs for the fan service, I actually prefer the romance flavour over the campy over the top one. This is a combination of the romance flavour being way rarer than the other, and the fact that I am girl and the romance fan service games are way more likely to include some males for me to romance. Although I am very much hoping that XSeed brings over Uppers, who does have some campy fan service for girls (and tons for guys as well).
Oh and as far as I know, no one else from your side dies besides Kaze, so you can marry your units freely. Plus, Kaze's death can be avoided by having a high support between him and Corrin.
Uppers looks absolutely awesome, and I'd love to see it localized too! It seems that Kenichiro Takaki teased a possible future localization of Uppers AND Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni, which would make me delirious with joy!!
DeleteThanks for the heads-up regarding Kaze! That will be most useful, and very soon at that... More on that in a couple of days!^^
"A bit of research seemed to indicate that the gigantic number of two characters were potentially bisexual; that, in my book, amounts to an Easter Egg and certainly didn't deserve any mention, let alone a full-blown announcement by Nintendo."
ReplyDeleteThe internet feeds on this now, Isleif. Any major point about sexually in video games nowadays is always overblown. Like millions asking (read: demanding) that Nintendo should always make homosexual characters in every game and Link should be a transsexual girl (wat). Any bit of fanservice is also "hyperbolized" and censor runs rampant. Good times we live in.
You should focus on 7~9 units, tops. Any more and you'll spend a gigantic amount of time grinding them all to balanced levels and acquiring up-to-date equipment. The story you can ignore but the gameplay is pretty fun, however, you're wearing yourself down with so much grinding. Remember that you still have Conquest and Revelation to play through!
I also chime in on the Uppers/Valkyrie Drive hope for localization! They sound like really fun games.
Oh, and that Legend of Mana release was a really weird move on SE's part. On one hand it's cool that we get the game quickly and they get to celebrate the original release date (28th June, 1991), on the other hand, being so quiet about it almost guarantees it'll sell poorly. Specially since it's the same day God Eater R releases in the US PSN.
"Any bit of fanservice is also "hyperbolized" and censor runs rampant"
Delete"Nintendo should always make homosexual characters in every game and Link should be a transsexual girl"
Oh, am I gonna go into a rant....
One needs to look no further than Demon Gaze to prove the point about fanservice. An excellent game that really had barely any more fan service than your average JRPG (only 1 or 2 CGs from the story and the Venus demon crossed over that average), with a genuinely sweet romance to boot and what do you see on the media? How the game is sexist and nothing but a harem of fanservice. What a shame. And while Isleif might be glad for the change, what exactly was so bad with the petting mini game in this Fire Emblem that warranted its complete removal?
As for Link becoming a girl, I love female protagonists and wish games where you can choose the gender of your character were the norm. But, if a developer wants one gender only, it's their right to do so. Especially when it's for story related reasons, like it was in GTA5. Yeah, a female in GTA would have been cool, but it was not the story they wanted to tell. Neither is it the story FFXV wants to tell, and complaints about that are uniquely bull, given the fact that FF already has a female only game and several games with females as main characters or even lead ones.
As for changing the gender of characters it's completely bullshit. Especially with such a long lived series as Zelda. Link has always been a boy, and that's how it should stay. Instead, they could make a game where you could play as Zelda (I disagree with Nintendo when they say there would be nothing for Link to do in that case. It's not that hard to make a story working around that, or one where you could play as both characters). But Link changing genders? Hell no!
And yet, try applying that same logic to Tomb Raider. Suddenly, almost everyone complaining about Link would have a shitstorm over Lara Croft being a man. How sexist is that? As a female, I do think we need more options to play as a female. But this is done with new IPs and adding gender options. Not changing long standing characters or pissing and moaning when a game wants to tell a story with men.
And for fuck's sake, just because a game shows boobs or has characters dressed skimpy doesn't mean it's bad. Just like adding the sexy does not make a game good, it doesn't make the game's reaming elements like story and gameplay automatically meaningless or terrible. Nor do characters that dress fanservicey are automatically vapid and/or stupid. It's like saying that because Sephiroth is handsome and doesn't fit the traditionally ugly designs a villain has, he can't possibly be a good villain. Kyoko from Digimon Cyber Sleuth shows boob, but she's still a good character, with not a hint of stupid her.
And yes, stupid fanservice characters do exist. Some of the fanservice can ruin emotional stories if used at the wrong moment. Some games are bad and only use the fan service to garter sales. So? They still deserve to exist, just like the 1 millionth first person militarily game deserves to exist. Let the people who like them buy and enjoy them, while others ignore it and support other games instead.
*sorry for the rant, but the sorry state this industry is in right now is depressing. It's good to vent about it without causing a flame war.*
Well, it's good to see we're all on the same page here. I also abhor the current state of the gaming industry for the exact same reasons you listed, Elisa. Brilliant rant, by the way.^^ You've summed it all up and I can only shout a giant "amen". :D
Delete(Please, don't misunderstand my stance regarding the petting in Fates: I was relieved solely because it would have been too much moe to swallow at a time. I didn't expect to find moe in a FE game, and that was quite a rude shock for me... But I'm getting used to it, slowly but surely.)
Thanks for the advice regarding units, Sieg. I'm going to focus on my favourite ones from now on and stop trying to keep everyone evenly leveled-up. Not only will this make my playthrough much more compact and enjoyable, but it's also gonna be an excellent training for the Nohr path, which doesn't allow free battles!
Oh, I didn't misunderstand your stance at all, and it's fine if you don't think it fits a FE game. Technically, if we go by the older games, this new direction doesn't fit the series old tone at all. But I am personally okay with this new shift. And casual mode is a god sender for completionists like me who had to reset over and over in the old games to save a unit.
DeleteI just don't see why the heck Nintendo would remove it since it's basically a weaker down version of pokémon amie. An optional one at that. Like, seriously, petting someone's face is too pervy now? And yet having characters die permanently is better morals? gesh, what double standards.
(thank goodness games on the Vita don't get this censored. I actually enjoyed the touching stuff in Ar nosurge for example)
Speaking of characters dying, the support level you need to be at with Kaze to save him is A. And in revelations there is a character on your side who dies and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm a bit reluctant to tell you who it is though, you might not want such spoilers.
To be fair, letting characters wounded to death on the battlefield die is just cold, hard logic, while introducing the option to pet every single unit in your army in close quarters is just plain pandering fan-service fare. Which is totally fine, by the way. ^^ I am fully in favour of not censoring and maintaining every form of fan-service in games, not in the name of "artistic integrity" (a weak argument if there ever was one, used mostly by people who don't have the guts to admit they're enraged by censorship because it removes eye-candy from them) but simply because it pleases some players, which is the whole point of videogames in the first place.
DeleteTake a game like DOAX3, for instance. While I would certainly not play it, mostly because of its lack of depth and casual quality, I'm delighted to see some players rejoice and claim their love for that game. This makes that release a celebratory event and generates positive vibes, and I'm glad this game exists even if I won't ever play it.
But yes, casual mode is awesome, and its inclusion is not that much of a betrayal of the series' spirit given that it can be enabled and disabled at will. The same thing could easily have been done for the petting, but I guess SJW would still have raged and fumed about the inappropriateness of the whole thing. Oh, well. While I do think that being able to pet every single unit even at low levels of intimacy is a trifle overindulgent and exaggerated, I'm pretty sure the younger me would have lapped up that feature, so it's really just a matter of perception and expectations.
Please, don't tell me who dies in Revelations. I'll find it out myself soon enough!^^ At least, it's good to know that this death is unavoidable so I won't regret not having max support with the involved character and won't wrack my brain thinking about ways to save them.
Oh, wow, Elise. I never expected such a gigantic wall of text! O_o I'm sorry if I struck a nerve, I had no intention.
DeleteBut, yeah. I absolutely agree with all you said, Elise. I have nothing against feminist, fighting for gender equally and all that, actually I kinda agree on some points (but abhor the american feminism fanatics's postition), but what does attacking videogames accomplish? What does boycotting Pokémon games because same gender Pokémon can't produce an egg accomplish? What does bitch about the game having bikinis accomplish? What the hell does NATO intended to accomplish by sending a letter to the Japanese government "asking" to forbid lolis and hentai manga/anime/games? I mean, what the hell? Is everyone completely out of their mind? It's like fanservice on a couple of niche games will corrupt the minds of gamers and society as an whole.
I personally like fanservice, but each case is a different case, they can't simply lump everything into one single variable? For instance, Senran Kagura games actually have some fun gameplay and actual interesting characters. Why condemn these from the get-go? Why demand XSeed to stop localizing these games?
And the whole female main characters thing is completely stupid. I'm a guy and I enjoy female main characters, they don't detract from my experience with the games (heck, I even play Otomes), but saying that games only have male protagonists is completely stupid. There's been female characters since ever. Putting female characters just because, really isn't a smart move and sometimes really doesn't make sense. For instance, when Atlus added the female MC to Persona 3 Portable it was a nice move and felt 0% forced. That's how you do it.
And the whole gender "inclusion" thing is completely bonkers. First, they have no right to demand companies to cater to their opinions (and most of the time the ones demanding aren't even potential buyers of said games) and second, how can they achieve that inclusion if there's like 20 or more different genders now?
And the petting thing in Fates was completely overblown too. I mean, Nintendo can allow semi naked titty ninjas on the 3DS, but can't allow an optional petting feature? Why?
Anyway, Isleif is a nice and chill guy so we better just put a lid over this, lest we cause his blog to become a bait for all the feminists out there. Truth be told, I'm really happy we're all on the same page here! I swear, sometimes I feel like the most of the internet users are completely insane.
Oh, and that character death in Revelations is so goddamn stupid. It really came out of nowhere. They just wanted to create some pseudo drama. Intelligent Systems really did a weak job with the story.
This "inclusion" thing that's all the rage on the internet irritates me to no end. Why is every single minority so hell-bent on being representated in popular media nowadays? Heck, I'm in the minority regarding several aspects of my average behaviour, yet I never felt that heart-wrenching desire to see my own inclination mirrored in movies and games. And yes, internet sometimes seems to be full of oversensitive lunatics.
DeleteDon't worry Sieg, I doubt my modest little blog will ever be a feminist target! And I case I get unpleasant comments, there is always that magical option of erasing them entirely. :p But I appreciate your concern, so thank you for that.^^ Let's indeed put a lid over that matter, especially since we are all on the same page and since everything has been summed up in such a brilliant and eloquent way by you and Elisa. :) Time's up!
Now I'm curious to know which otome games you've played, Sieg. Names, please! ^^
I'm betting on Azura dying in Revelations. But please, no spoilers yet!^^
Let me see if I can remember them... Sweet Fuse (PSP), Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side (PSP; unofficially translated), one of those Hakuoki games on the PSP and I recently started Amnesia on the Vita. Not a whole lot, but it's something! :p
DeleteWell, that's definitely something, and I'm pretty sure that it's more than most male gamers can claim!:p My own otome game résumé is still pretty bare, with only Amnesia:Memories under my belt; but I will certainly dabble in the genre again sooner or later!
DeleteTrue that! It's pretty fun in a way, getting to chose like if I was a girl. :p Kina plays tons of Otomes I wished I could play but my Japanese isn't refined enough for me to tackle on a 100% JP Otome.
DeleteTo slip into the skin of a character and act as if you were that character is definitely one of the main attractions of videogaming, if you ask me. I see games as glorious pieces of fantasy that offer a thrilling escape from one's usual circumstances and give players the opportunity to indulge in bouts of make-believe. Alas, some people we shall not name again totally failed to perceive that fantasy dimension of videogames and are taking them WAY too seriously... :p
DeleteOh, don't worry Sieg, you didn't make me mad at all. I just had all of these feelings bottled up due to people insulting Digimon because of two characters without even knowing anything about them, and the endless arguments inclusion that never ever seem to stop. So I just let them all up when I had the first opportunity in a space I feel safe in. Sorry guys.
ReplyDelete"boycotting Pokémon games because same gender Pokémon can't produce an egg"
Whoa, that one is new to me. And it sounds completely hilarious. Ah, the wonders of the internet.
But let's us stop the topic. Not telling who it is then Isleif, can't wait to see your reaction to it ;) Oh, and on awesome news, Experience Inc is making a Stranger of Sword City 2, and will keep focusing on the Vita. Praise be Experience Inc, I just hope Nisa brings over the expansion for the first game.
Also, Gal*Gun: Double Peace has just gotten its first english trailer, and it looks as campy and fun as I ever wished it would. Doesn't seem like Pqube censored it all. Buying that one on day one.
Nah, don't worry, I could feel that you had that rage all pent up. I absolutely understand you in that regard.
DeleteEh, Digimon was the tip of the iceberg. Just showing a tad of skin is enough to warrant, at least, two petitions for the game to be censored/cancelled and maybe 5 articles on how sexism is destroying the world. Can't wait until they start criticizing the girls in God Eater.
That whole egg thing came from one of those crazy feminists's twitter or something, then she actually made an article on it and trying to rationalize it. The reasoning was that despite a Pokémon being female it could have a penis and vice versa, so, "naturally", two female or two male could produce an egg! Logic at its finest.
Just heard about SoSC2! And we're also getting Demon Gaze 2 one day. Dungeon crawling sure is going strong these days.
Don't fret, Elisa; it's healthy to release the steam and rant once in a while. :) And I'm glad to hear that the comment section of my modest blog feels like a safe space to you.^^
DeleteOh dear, exciting releases keep piling up!! My, it sure looks like my collecting days are going to stretch further than expected. Oh well, who I am to resist awesome games?^^
Gal*Gun is definitely going to be a must-buy purchase for me too! A shooter will be a nice change from the genres I usually favour, especially if it comes packed with tons of camp!