Kids with Swords

I played my first RPG, Final Fantasy VIII, when I was around twelve or thirteen. Now I'm twenty-two.

The heroes of Final Fantasy VIII were all seventeen or eighteen, and it's been very odd growing past that age. At first, the characters seemed impossibly mature to me - now they seem very young and out of their depth. I wonder how the older characters will look, in later games, as I grow past them? I've past Cloud's age (21) now. I'm the same age as Aeris (22)(I insist on calling her Aeris. Bite me, it's my blog and my playthrough). I've passed Alice Elliot (21). Soon I'll catch up to Yuri Hyuga (24).

I played Final Fantasy X and X-2 between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. That is, I started off at Rikku's age (15) and grew up through to Yuna's (19) in X-2.

I defended Yuna strenuously when her new look was criticised. I suspect that all teenager girls go through a stage like that, when their clothes become sexier and more revealing, as they realise that they're becoming women and not girls. It's not a bad thing. It can be dangerous, if they are encouraged in the wrong ways or by the wrong people in their budding sexuality, but it doesn't mean that Yuna has essentially changed as a person - no more than any teenager does during those years.

If it helps, though, think about how the monsters' hit points are represented, numerically. The characters don't see that - that's there for the player, to make things easier. Is it not possible that the revealing outfits are there purely for the player, that the in-game characters don't see them that way? After all, while people comment on her new outfit, they don't mention that it's overly revealing.

Kali's Completion Project Update - Breath of Fire and other things

So, I've finally finished Breath of Fire. I can't tell you how many hours it took me, but I started it on the 28th of July and finished on the 24th of September. Bear in mind that I was studying over this period, and didn't play every day. I must also confess that I also dabbled in browser based games like Frontierville on facebook, Alter Ego, and Dreamworld and Epic Battle Fantasy III on Kongregate.

Frontierville is heavily addictive.  It uses pretty much every trick described here. It keeps giving you goals, and items to collect.  It uses an energy bar that refills over time, making you come back and over, so you're not wasting energy.  It doesn't charge, but it tries to encourage you to buy items rather than earn them, and advertise the game to your friends by making success dependent on having lots of other people you know playing (many people circumvent this by friending strangers who are already playing, who advertise on the official fanpage for the game).  Your frontier continually grows grass, trees, wild flowers and stones, which you need to keep clearing, basically running to stay in the same place.  These and other activities give you random drops of rare items.

That last bit is what makes the game easy to quit.  Ignore it for forty-eight hours, and your frontier is so overgrown that it's just not worth it any more.

Dreamworld uses very similar techniques.  It has an energy bar that refills over time, and it encourages you to return every day.  It's not really a bad game, not fully text-based, but not really not, either.  It's a bit meh, overall.  No plot to speak of, really, just a series of repetitive missions, and some goals.

Alter-Ego is a text-based life sim.  You start off as a baby, and your character goes through various experiences as he or she grows up.  Often the game will let you choose how your character feels, and how they react.  Well, I say it lets you.  Actually, the game describes how you feel, then asks you, and rebukes you for contradicting it.

I found the game to be very sexist, in many ways.  Mostly, regarding sex.  Girls can't initiate it, or be eager for it, or feel ready for it at a young age - they always feel bad, after being pressured into it (despite the player choosing options like feeling good about it, and agreeing to it).  Your character will always feel bad if she chooses not to have children.

It's not a bad game, just quite close-minded.  The creator's opinions seem to come through very strongly, and they're not someone I would really like to spend any time with, to be honest.

 I played Epic Battle Fantasy III after someone complained about it here.  She's not wrong - the game does have all these things.  But, for some reason, it offends me much less than Alter-Ego.  I think maybe because Epic Battle Fantasy III knows it's silly and immature and sexist.  It's a very tongue-in-cheek, fourth-wall-breaking style.  I'm not saying that this makes it okay to be sexist, just that I feel it's better to know that you're immature and sexist, rather than having an overbearing opinion that this is the way people are, by some divine right.  At least that way, there's hope?  Maybe?

I may be biased though, I read Cracked for fun.

I may add the Epic Battle Fantasy series into my competition project.  I've got quite a while to consider it.  There's also a few other games I found in a friend's collection that I want to add, old psx games like Crash Bandicoot 2, and Spiderman, and so on.  We'll see.

Regarding Breath of Fire; I did manage to achieve my goals.  I finished the game, having found all of the Rod5 items, all of Puka's doors and Mogu's dig spots, and all of Karn and Ryu's transformations.  I also had everyone's best weapons, and possibly armour (I'm not sure, and don't really care).  Nina and Deis both had all of their spells learnt, unless they actually did have one left in that final slot (I really suspect they both have an odd number of spells).  I made posts listing where to find all those collectible and character-enhancing elements above, and I also wrote a post detailing the entire storyline.  It doesn't read terribly well.  I was trying not to embellish it too much.  I wanted to see how elements of the storyline show up in later games, and if I took too much artistic license, it wouldn't be an accurate representation.  That said, I wanted it to flow well.

At tricky points I referred to this guide  (to make absolutely sure I didn't miss anything), and to this one (when I got stuck in Obelisk, although it looks pretty thorough in other areas too).

I kind of feel the need to defend myself, here.  Firstly, I have defeated the game before, secondly, I used them to double-check.  Besides which, I don't think there's anything wrong with using guides.  There is a huge amount of satisfaction that comes from finishing a game yourself, but it's up to the player whether they want to use a guide on the first playthrough or not.  I generally try to get through a game once by myself, then use guides to complete it 100%.  If the level of frustration I feel at a certain part is ruining my enjoyment of a game, I will use guides to help me get through it.  Anyway.

I've also uploaded the maps I drew of the trickier areas (I wanted to be absolutely certain I didn't miss any treasure there), for future reference.  Once I'm done transcribing those into paint, I'll be ready to move on to Breath of Fire II.  For that, my goals are similar - best weapons, all dragon forms, and all unlockables/collectibles/enhancements/whatever.  I'm going to write out boss lists, but not a plot description.  I'll probably get started on that tonight or tomorrow, once I'm done with the maths coursework I need to finish.

Final Fantasy X-2 - On Yuna

Final Fantasy X-2, and the character of Yuna especially, caught a lot of flack. And I suspect that at least part of this is due to the close-mindedness of some of the fans.

In Final Fantasy X, Yuna was a shy white-mage/summoner. In X-2 Yuna's a gunner who happens to sing. It's generally the singing that gets criticised the most, and I'm not entirely sure why.

Firstly, singing and song-writing has been a well-respected profession for thousands of years. Bards were the keepers of oral history, and songs were used to incite strong emotions during battles, or to mourn the dead. Hymns are used in religious worship. The "popstars" we have today, who sing tinny canned repetitive music do not make up the majority of musical history. They are the tip of the iceberg.

Secondly, it was never really Yuna's idea to sing. In the first instance, LeBlanc stole her appearance, and in the second instance, it's highly likely that she was being strongly influenced by Lenne. At the very least, Lenne designed the style and the lyrics of the song.

Another thing which I think influences the dislike of Yuna in X-2 is the fact that...well. To explain this, I'm going to have to talk about high school cliches. The jocks, the cheerleaders, the nerds, whatever. Now, it's the nerds (or whatever term you prefer) who play RPGs, but, in X-2, Yuna is more cheerful, more active, and more popular than nerds are generally perceived to be. She's a cheerleader. And I think that at least some of the bad feeling towards her comes from the nerds feeling abandoned, or feeling that Yuna has "sold out" or "lost intelligence" by dressing and acting the way that she does - in a way that makes her happy.

Firstly, these stereotypes do not exist outside of TV-Land. Nobody's that flat and 2D, not even characters in videogames (barring some of those background characters, who repeat the same line ad infinitum). And no one says that someone has to stay one way, or else they're being disloyal to themselves. Yuna went from seventeen to nineteen, and that's a period where girls change a lot - even without losing the burden of their upcoming suicide.

And that's another thing. Yuna in X faced the fact of imminent death and sacrifice for the sake of the world. Yuna X-2 has lost her, for want of a better word, lover, but she has also lost the burden that she faced before. Yuna is easily lead, and, wanting to be happy and having lost her goal, she now follows Rikku. Perhaps she also feels that she owes it to Tidus to live her life to the fullest, and just have some fun.

I'd also like to reference the Avril Lavigne song Complicated here. That song always offended me. Listening to the lyrics, it would seem that a friend of hers wants to change, for whatever reason. She views this as them being untrue to themselves, or faking. Now, it's true that you should be true to yourself - but it's equally true that your teenage years are a time for changing and experimentation. Sometimes, being true to yourself does mean changing your actions - especially when the circumstances have changed as drastically as Yuna's have.

Finally, the other criticism I've heard levelled at Yuna is that her actions are "not becoming of a High Summoner". Firstly, it's debatable whether Yuna is a High Summoner. Yes, she's a Summoner who helped defeat Sin - but there's a key word in that sentence and it's not the word 'defeat'. She helped. She, alongside her guardians, defeated Sin, and one of their members died doing it. It's arguable whether this is the same as using the Final Summon, which would have destroyed both Guardian and Summoner. However, it's simpler to let the world of Spira believe in the story they've always understood, rather than break apart the entire religious structure of the world, so she keeps that label.

If we do consider her to be a High Summoner, then we must also acknowledge that she is the first one to get up and walk away. The only precedent for a High Summoner's actions is lying around, being stiff, and sometimes being made in a statue. Yes, it is true that Yuna's actions are not typical of a High Summoner - but, since she didn't kill herself immediately after defeating Sin, there is no way she could act like a typical High Summoner. There's also no way that Spira can have any expectations of her actions. She is the first of her kind, and she gets to make the rules. When people claim that Spira should expect religious figures to act a certain way, they're basing this on precedent from our world, and there's no reason why that should affect Spira's mindset. That precedent does not exist there.

Leave BritneyYunie alone!