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| no by FABIO 04/02/2005, 3:33pm PST | ||||
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| You had exactly the same weapons from start to finish: machinegun, missiles, shotgun, rifle, flamethrower, and 3 different types of melee. Out of those, only the machinegun, missiles, shotgun in certain semi-rare situations were useful. One melee weapon was flat out superior to the others, and melee only became worth it once you got a bunch of melee skills, at which point you automatically destroyed everything in one hit. Don't think the skills added anything though. You got them at pretty much complete random (unless you wanted to pour over ridiculously complicated tables in an obtuse menu and write down on paper what parts gave what skill), and the ones you brought into battle were activated at random with no input from the user. Even when they did activate, they were pretty bland stuff like "double damage" or "attack twice" or "evade some hits". The only new weapons you get are improved versions of the old ones that just do more damage. The rate at which their damage increases is the same rate that armor increases in hitpoints, so it doesn't really matter.
Combat was pretty much swapping missile shots at long range, machinegun fire at medium range, and melee hits at close range. Occasionally use a repair item. That's it. Every single battle for the next 60 hours. The equivalent in FF Tactics would be to go through the entire game with all squires and a chemist. The only choices to make would be whether to give your squires swords or bows. Now throw in a boring 10 second animation for these basic attacks. There's a customization system that gives you the illusion of a huge amount of configurations, but the only strategy is deciding between functionality (accuracy, speed) over having lots of armor/hitpoints. There are some cool huge giant mechs 4 times the size of regular ones with special energy weapons later on, but only the computer gets them. Stick with your boring machinegun and LIKE IT, loser. The plot is worse than typical jap anti-war preaching implies. Think FF7's "chasing Spehiroth all over the goddamn place but just missing him every time" for the entire game. Every single location that your group visits will be waging a civil war. After you realize that the villain has given you the slip again, you must side with either the government or rebels (predermined by arbitrary plot branch decision at the beginning) and resolve their little dispute before you can move on to the next region. There's some stupid internet side game that's about as fun as Enter the Matrix's hacking game. The last two FM games (3 & 4) have had intros showing massive, explosive filled battles with large groups of fast moving mechs, completely misrepresenting the boring gameplay to follow. I liked one site's review of FM4 showing a screenshot of the intro with a wave of mechs storming across a river into a city while firing volleys of missiles with the caption "This is a LIE!". That pretty much sums up the series right there. The past games have probably gotten such high praise for the same reason as the Fire Emblem series: import otaku gamers assume it wasn't released here because it's too good for the dirty American gaming public. In both cases they were finally proven wrong when the series finally got released here. |
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