New Year’s Resolution 2015

Suikoden II

Beat: March 28

Time: 33 Hours

I now understand why this is such a universally praised game. Great characters and story with a lot of depth being given to both. There are side quests that expand upon each of the characters and gives players a better look into their history, personalities and general life. The game also sports multiple endings and has returning characters from the first game. I love the combat system that has all party members attacking at once. It makes it feel more like a real battle and just speeds battles up overall when compared to normal turn-based RPGs.

Grandia II

Beat: April 18

Time: 29 Hours

The game’s story is a bit clichéd, but it has fun characters that help it pull through. Combat is fun due to the active battle system and how characters move around on the field. The graphics feel a bit dated and don’t even match up to other RPGs released around the same time. Also, the PS2 version has horrible load times and frame rate issues. An anniversary addition was recently released on Steam and GOG and I might pick it up. It’s based on the Dreamcast version of Grandia II, which ran much better than the PS2 version.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Beat: April 20

Time: 16 Hours

It’s a neat adventure, but not really worth playing. The Temple of the Ocean King is the biggest waste of time and I hated having to run through it multiple times to only progress a small bit forward each visit. There were some cool uses of the DS’ dual screens in the game. Also wasn’t a big fan of the controls. It’s fine to use touch controls as a default, but let me switch back to the classic button controls from previous Zelda games.

Final Fantasy III

Beat: May 27

Time: 31 Hours

The game has a cool story where neither light nor dark is easily identified as good or bad. It’s not really a deep tale, but that’s about how all the NES Final Fantasy games are. The main characters are a bit lacking when it comes to personality. The job system and the ability to easily switch between jobs is neat. I hated that some areas kept requiring me to use Toad and Mini spells to progress forward.

Chrono Trigger

Beat: June 9

Time: 22 Hours

Duh. It’s Chrono Trigger. The best game ever made. It’s great to have the fast load times from the SNES version and animated cutscenes from the PS1 version together under one roof. Screw the Lost Sanctum and the Dimensional Vortex bonus dungeons added in the DS version. They didn’t exist in the original and are plainly just padding to stretch the game out. It’s a really scummy thing to do on Square’s part. They put a black spot on an otherwise perfect game. The new ending strengthens the Chrono Cross connections by hinting that Magus is Guile, which is something many fans of the series had already made their head canon, me included.