i have accumulated a decent collection of games over the years that i enjoy. most i have played/beaten. i think this would be interesting.
as a lot of people know, i've been playing final fantasy 10 (ffx). i have this one and the sequel that i bought for $18 sometime last year. there hasn't been a lot of games currently that causes me to play for upwards of 4 hours. typically, i play for an hour and a half but this game is something else honestly.
before playing this, i wasn't very fond of turn based games with the exception of earthbound. in fact, when i started playing, i didn't know it was turn based and was losing interest after the tutorial for the fight system. i gave it some time before dropping it just before the blitzball tutorial, feeling like the game was boring. i wasn't a fan of tidus, the voice acting or the way the game was structured and didn't want anything to do with it.
earlier this year, i want to say february, i decided to pick the game up again. i was playing this along side forever kingdom (i will yap about this too oh god) and would play this whenever i got stuck. this is when i started taking the game more seriously and begab enjoying myself. i believe its very important to mention that i'm playing on original hardware and i don't have anything that could emulate it. makes the game more difficult but that's okay.
over 43 hours later, i can attest that this game is easily one of my favorites. the use of music, the slow realization that yevon isn't what everyone believes it to be, and everything has made it so enjoyable. i still cant believe i managed to do so many battles in this game severly underleveled. i was able to do the sinspawn gui without the proper upgrades of lulu. same goes with the evrae fight but that one was bit easier after finding out i could use haste. seeing wakka in real time realize that the al bhed aren't terrible people after rikku joins the party and seeing the devastation that would happen to their home.
i'm not finished with the game yet, i just reached mount gagazet and i'm finding the ronso just so interesting. honestly everything is so interesting. i don't have the words to fully articulate my love for this game.
because i can't help myself, here's my tidus reaction images i use to harass my friends:
personal favorite themes from this game:
hurry!!!
the summoning
the wedding
wandering flame
spirian scenery
evergrace is a complicated game for me. as much as i love the sequel/prequel, i didn't have the same feelings toward this game. evergrace takes place in rheubane, a universe thats stuck in time. 15 years before this game takes place, sharline finds herself here, leaving darius believing that she is dead. he finds this tree that takes him to rheubane. thats how the story begins....but you wouldn't know this unless you read the mangas which never left japan. the only piece that can be infered is the tree section in the fmv that plays before the game begins. also in the game, darius has the mark of the beast which strikes fear into any of the remaining humans in the area. i wish i was joking, an npc falls off a cliff and dies after seeing the mark in his hand. it was very funny.
though i didn't like this game as much as other people do, theres quite a lot of things that i love about this game. for starters, sharline and darius's designs are perfect. sharline's design is dominated by orange and red with more neutral colors accenting her outfit. the uses of purple contrasts nicely against the gold trim of her huntress uniform. darius's design is mostly cool tones with the majority of the colors coming from the scarves that are haphazardly draped on his shoulders. the base of his outfit being black and warmer shades of gray while the scarves have shades of red, gold, orange, and brown. i also like that his hair is white since, again, there's quite a lot of warm colors in his pallet. aside from the character designs being really good, i also liked the voices too. sharline has a valley girl accent with vocal fry and it's so endearing to hear. i can't think of a lot of games where a character has a voice like that. it genuinely made me wish there was more dialog in the game.
the biggest thing i didn't like about the game is just how barren everything is. i know this is somewhere where people get whisked away to but it genuinely didn't feel like anyone actually lived there. there's delapidated houses and collapsed castles but with how the game is designed, it's jarring. i'm aware that both games were intended for the ps1 and was rushed for the ps2 but i really wish there was more time alloted to making the world feel lived in. it's a similar critique i have for forever kingdom. like i said in the last paragragh, i wished there was more dialog. i really wanted to hear, from their own words, what this world was like and by extension what the actual fuck was happening. now i do like games that have minimal dialog like ico but the difference between ico and evergrace is that there is a clear goal. i was fine being placed in the world with no direction but i wasn't a fan of being completely left in the dark.
this is one of the few games i've given up on. i reached half way in both character's scenarios and couldn't bring myself to finish it. ai crest and the folus section was too much for me since i kept getting lost over and over again. the only good part is that i tracked down the only map of the shrine section that was uploaded sometime after the game was released in the us. though it was archived through ign, something i didn't know at the time, i ended up looking through forums and clicking on links in the hopes i could find it. i genuinely thought it was lost for good because all the links for it was under the uploaders aol which is no longer active. here is the map i used for the section before i gave up:
