Thursday, January 12, 2006

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

Dear Fire Emblem:
I'm barely an hour in, and I'm already positive Shinon and Gatrie are boinking in their off duty hours. So are Rhys and Oscar. Please stop being everything I've ever wanted in a game before my head explodes.

The battle system isn't great, but it's fun when it's not being terminally frustrating. I'm enjoying the story and characters so far. (When I say "story and characters," I actually just mean "Shinon." gfzziffle. That was the sound of my brain dribbling out my ears from the sexy. Damnit, game, could you possibly tweak any more of my kinks in one character? If he gets any cooler, I may be forced to take drastic measures and...I don't even know. Every time he gets dialogue, I start squeaking at my TV.)

I- just- Shinon. Guh. It doesn't help that his character portrait both scowls and slouches, and he's a redhead and a heartless bastard. He got yelled at for looting corpses! Heart! Squee!

I dunno, I've never fangirled an archer before. I feel like I'm betraying my roots by not obsessing over the lancers. Not that the lancers aren't cool, but...man. I'm so predictable. Give me a pretty, bad tempered badass, and I'm all over him.

Ike is a pretty stock hero, all things considered, and the other characters all have stereotypical elements to them. Titania feels like a cuddly, two-eyed variation on Beatrix, and Gatrie is just like every other dumb meatshield. Rhys and Soren are potentially interesting, though Soren's coldbloodedness seems like an easy way out for his character. It would be more interesting if the healer were the cynic- but at least Rhys isn't a girl. Oscar and Boyd are adorable in that tried-and-true stock character sort of way.

I wish they'd left Titania's name as Tiamat when they translated shite. That would've been even more awesome. I'm definitely looking forward to running into the laguz later on in the game, if only because having winged people in the party would be almost unbearably hot.

Plot is all politicky and stuff, and I love that. Hopefully it won't degenerate into heroes vs big bad evil overlord; I'll take a political upheaval instead of the end of the world any day.

FFTactics is the only other tactical RPG I've ever played, really and, bad translation notwithstanding, I doubt I'll find any other tactical RPG that quite measures up. Fire Emblem does fill me with lots of squee, but that's because it's engineered to hit those buttons. Tactics never did that- it confused the hell out of me with its ridiculous plot and made me fall in love the hard way, one zodiac stone at a time. It didn't rely on stock characters or cute jokes (aside from the lounging around in Goug scenes, but those just make it even more obvious that Mustadio and Ramza are in luuuurve so we forgive them for being silly). And it let me revive my bloody party members. -__-

Ohgod, I need to stop playing and go to bed, but I can't. Must. Finish. Map. Augh. Damn you Boyd, stop dying!

*yaygamesquee*

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