Much Ado About Everything

Whew!  For the first time in ages – no, really, years (which are effectively ages when you consider human lifespan – wait, does what I’m saying make any sense?) – I did not finish all subquests in a game.  Well, that wasn’t too difficult considering there really aren’t any as far as I can tell – unless you want to replay the game.

Anyway, the game certainly was neither here nor there.  It followed stereotypes by the book – scaringly closely – in the beginning.  Later it decided to play its own tune and created some mildly original situations.  However it seemed to have trouble dealing with certain issues such as life and death in a satisfying manner.  Or should I say, in a consistent manner.  Character reactions to certain things of such major nature were different from one scene to another and it didn’t feel real.  Voice acting – where there’s some, and really there isn’t much – varied from average to bad.  Then there’s the ending.  Fairly normal for an RPG of this type, but the epilogue was a bit puzzling.  Or should I say, there was an unnecessary “10 years later” scene after the actual epilogue, and while it felt fairly realistic, it was also unexpected in several ways – and sad too.  If the rest of the story was “realistic” in such a way, it would’ve made sense to end it like this.  But given the amount of stereotypes, it felt out of place.

It wasn’t all average or bad though – music was consistently above the quality of the rest of the game and wouldn’t be unacceptable for even a higher budget title.  It was mostly of the “wild west” type, which is the theme of the whole game (and I’m guessing the whole wild arms series).  As such, it fit well for the locales, and it did not dissapoint in key scenes either.  And the humour was generally funny too.  Or rather, some jokes were original while some were recycled, but translated in a way you haven’t seen before.  I don’t mean engrish, but it was as if someone was familiar with engrish and decided to create perfectly valid sentences, both gramatically and semantically, that correctly conveyed the meaning, yet in a way that’s not really seen in real life outside of certain British comedy TV shows.  Those were pretty good.

And the game wasn’t overly long – about 30 hours, maybe a few more – clocking at half or slightly above half of normal gameplay time for a japanese RPG.  While I don’t like when a game is too short, I feel this is appropriate length for quite a few games of this type.  Unless the story warrants it, I don’t like prolonging the game artificially by inserting protracted journeys that drag on and on due to super powerful monsters and extra (and annoying) boss battles.  Artificial walls or oceans that prevent you from going somewhere can be pretty annoying once you get to between 1/3 and 1/2 of the game as often the story slows down and there starts a long period of, I don’t know, item hunt or levelling up or subquesting or just playing delaying.  Or it’s maybe just me taking time to do so.