This was the game that forced me to do first ever upgrade in my first PC. It required Shaders 2.0 or something like that and my GPU did not support those. I did not know that, though, so was very surprised, when I saw just black screen instead of the game. Had to ask parents for more money. Spent a lot of time in this game back in the day and decided to replay it now, thinking "it probably could use a remaster"... But no, it needs a full-blown remake.
Don't get me wrong, it's still mostly a good game. It's almost Final Fantasy XV before Final Fantasy XV. Well, kind of. Definitely did not age well, though, or maybe my standards are just higher now. While playing it, I realized, that now I would prefer to change quite a few things here:
- Camera feels too restrictive in 3rd person, which removes my desire to explore things. It is often times either completely fixed or fixed to some extent, without providing real benefit to that. Yes, it's fine for certain puzzles, but for, for example, buildings - not so much.
- Melee combat feels too sluggish now, since for combos you need to time button presses. Not like you do not need to do that for some combos in Devil May Cry, for example, but you don't need it for all combos, and you the delay you need before button presses is much smaller. Or at least I remember it being way faster and more fluid.
- Strafing and horizontal camera movement in first person fights is sluggish.
- Camera likes to spin around needless when switching between characters or transitioning from one area to another.
- Dialogues and voice acting are... Not good.
- At the same time there is barely any banter between characters, only a few dialogues in very specific places.
But the game has a very solid narrative core. There is so much potential for exploration of each of the 2 (well, 3 I guess) worlds separately and their connections, but we barely get anything. In fact, I would say that when we get to 2nd world the game starts rushing as crazy. Best example is Elko: he is "converted" to a believer, and it's clear that it was needed, but he was converted after 2 brief interactions with Tetsu blasting him with energy. Let alone the ending which was extremely abrupt after the fight.
Speaking of the last fight: why could not we select our preferable character? Or fight with all 4 of them, turn by turn? That was... Underwhelming. Although, the whole ending was, same as world building after certain point. Yes, there are some side-quests, that can tell a little bit about the world, but they are not very exciting, and if I remember correctly, a huge portion of them just force you to get through the same areas once again, and you do that even within the main questline. Which does make sense from narrative perspective, but it just could have been done better.
Yet, I guess for 2005 that was quite good. And I remember thinking that it was one of the better (if not best) looking games at the time. Gameplay for all 4 characters was somewhat unique, as well, and overall it was a good attempt at a JRPG for western audience. But it could be better. It can give more choices, that could affect some of the narrative, as well, and not just that 1 time that does not affect anything at all.
So, if you have low expectations and you do like more real-time JRPGs - you may be able to enjoy this game. And if you are a game developer - please, do play it regardless, maybe it will inspire you for a remake, so that everyone can enjoy the full potential of the original idea. We do lack those nowadays. Although, remake would probably just reenforce the trend.
