Caltrops - Reviews - jesus christ it just got worse (OPINION CHANGE)

Forum Overview :: Reviews

by FABIO 10/11/2004, 5:26am PDT

That horrible plot twist was just a fake out for an even WORSE plot twist. MUCH MUCH WORSE^*. At this rate it's going to turn out to all be a dream and the main character wakes up to find that all the last boss fight was really just his mother trying to shake him awake.

PACING!

Not only are you locked on a linear path after the planet, not only are you not given any chance to level up, but the enemies immediately jump up tremendously in difficult at that point. You HAVE to level up to have a chance against them, but you CAN'T level up. You get no warning on the planet that you won't be able to move around or come back after a certain point (do everything BEFORE going back to the lava cave with the disintegration ring).

The dungeon right after the planet has no means of healing except for shops that sell healing items more expensive than the money you'll make in battles, so you can't afford to waste supplies levelling up. The dungeon after that has a healing panel at the start, but no means of aquiring healing supplies and you can't leave. The enemies kick your ass (the enemy that was a boss just 20 minutes ago now shows up in pairs as RANDOM enemies, nice difficulty curve you fuckers) so you better hope you get your newly aquired healer from level 1 to 30 so you can finally get the ressurection spell before you run out of ressurection items or else you're completely fucked. Hope you have an earlier save.

I don't think I can recommend this game anymore, so much retarded bullshit has finally that possibility. Now I think the only people who'll get enjoyment out of it are diehard Star Ocean 2 fans (even that's iffy), or the people who thought all the extra bonus stuf in Disgaea was fun. There's a lot of theoretically neat stuff in here, but it's tacked on to the worst RPG plot, the worst pacing, worst dialog, and the worst characters in recent memory. It's more enjoyable than the bonus stuff in Disgaea, and right now I'm just pretty much playing it as something to do an hour before bed when I'm too tired to do anything else but not tired enough to fall asleep and don't want to play anything too exciting.

Here's pretty much any conversation in the game:

Whiny Skinny Hero- "Hello" *nods head*

Strongman with a heart of gold- - "Yo" *smacks fists together*

Pushy Broad #1- - *nods head* "We should get going"

WSH- - "huh? where to?"

Pushy Broad #1- - "We must determine whether or not the information we have received is correct"

SwHoG- - "Then what are we waiting for?" *smacks fists together*

PB#1- - *shakes head* "It's not that simple. We have to run a bunch of filler quests first before we can accomplish this seemingly straightfoward task"

WSH- - "That's probably a good idea"

Pushy Broad #2- - "What you say seems correct"

PB#1- - "Yes, based on our current information that does appear to be true"

SwHoG- - "Yeah I guess that sounds about right"

WSH- - "Yeah, you're right"

SwHoG- - "So let's go pound 'em!" *smacks fists together*

Fuck it, I swear to god Imari Stevenson designed everything about the plot and characters

SUPER SPOILERS IF YOU WANT TO SEE JUST HOW RETARDED THE PLOT REALLY IS

An entity called "The Creator" has deemed the universe he created tainted and that itmust be destroyed. Several giant monster angels begin wiping out planet after planet. You get giant demon angels, angels that look like chicks, being touched by all sorts of angels. What should be a cool cutscene of giant demon angels wiping out an armada and nuking earth gets gay when one character begins lamenting, "Is this our punishment for our sins?" So then you go on a quest and discover that scientists were working on a way to kill god.

BUT THAT'S NOT THE WORST PART! You find the gate that travels to the creator's dimension, go through it and come out......

....of a giant computer monitor! The entire physical universe as you know it is all just a computer simulation! People are just programs! The angels were programs "debugging" the system! The scientists were actually working on a way for people/programs to travel to and be manifested into the "real world" to stop the "debugging" on that end! "Programs creating programs to become real" as the game puts it.

I can't think of anything worse than combinging Neon Genesis Evangelion with The Matrix, two of the most yammering, prententious, faux-philisophical bits of sci-fi fiction out there. Then they went ahead and gave it all a reverse Tron.

wtf?