Kingdom Hearts 2's Villain Problem

I'm sorry I've only been updating twice a month, fellas and fella-ettes. I work at Men's Wearhouse, and this time of year is absolute madness there, what with prom kids and wedding parties launching full-on invasions of our rental areas. Just bear with me for another month, and I'll get back to updating thrice each month, on the 5s. If I can actually keep thinking up things to yammer about, of course.


I very much liked Kingdom Hearts 2. In fact, up to and including 2, I've thought the series is pretty great. They're creative, their plots are executed well, several have neat ideas, and KH: Chain of Memories might have been tortuous to actually play, but it was certainly interesting in many regards to the power of memories and so on. I have not gone any further with the series than KH2, though, so I can't say for sure whether it's still good overall or not. I can only work with knowledge of the first 3 in the series.

If there's one problem I have with the series, though, KH2 in particular, it's with half of the original characters. Kingdom Hearts does fine with most of its characters taken from Final Fantasy (as long as you're not looking at Nomura's clumsy, careless mishandling of any character he didn't personally invent), and it does a terrific job with its interpretations for most of its characters of Disney origins. But when it comes to the characters whose origins are Kingdom Hearts alone, it's pretty split.

On the one side, you have the main characters, Sora, Kairi, Riku, Namine, and Roxas. These ones are pretty good. Riku's an annoying ass in KH1, but his character gets much better in KHCoM, and he stays decent in KH2. Sora's an engaging hero who has a fresh feel to him, and you can see him grow in many ways throughout the games, while staying himself overall. Kairi's more appealing as an ideal than a character thanks to her essential part of the games' plots yet extremely small involvement in them, but what little we see of her seems alright. And I liked Namine, though she's woefully underdeveloped as a character. Roxas is...pretty bland, honestly, but not bad, I guess. It's not HIS fault he's stuck in the 5 most boring and pointless hours of KH2, and that his deepest character development is done mostly while he's off-screen. So the main characters are good overall. And the few supporting original characters aren't bad...Ansem's kind of just there as a plot point, but it's not in any bad capacity, and Pence, Olette, and that other kid that Roxas makes friends with are all okay, for minor NPCs.

But on the other side, you have all the original villains of the Kingdom Hearts series. Not the Heartless, mind--I mean the important individuals, not the legions of goons. These are the Heartless Ansem-Mimic whose proper name I forget, Dark Riku, and Organization 13. Now, Dark Riku is the exception here, because he's actually a pretty decent villain once he starts getting all existential and such. But the Ansem-wannabe is pretty generic. And almost all of Organization 13's members are irrelevant, worthless, utterly empty characters with no significance beyond their membership, and the members that DO have something resembling characterization are worse, a collection of generic anime villains whose oppressively convoluted plans are stupid and motivated by selfish and dumb reasons that barely make any sense.

Of course, SquareEnix having a host of lousy villains is nothing new. Even in Square's heyday, they couldn't seem to make a good villain to save their corporate life. "Classic" Final Fantasy villains included a megalomaniac tree that made Snidely Whiplash look like a deep and thoughtful villain, a moon man that had to have other people do everything for him to enact a plan to destroy people that he hated for no adequately-explored reason, a future sorceress that did the same thing as the moon man only for even more vague reasons and with less sensible methods, and a lame rip-off of The Joker that had none of his depth, just going for an "I'm evil for evil's sake! ...Because I'm CRAZY!" mentality. And don't even get me started on Sephiroth and the Turks.

The real problem I have with KH2's set of pathetic, empty villains is that the game didn't HAVE to be stuck with them, at least not in such a prominent role. You get a game like, say, Final Fantasy 12, and, well, you're stuck with the lame, poorly-imagined villain that you've got. Vayne is the best villain they've got because he's the ONLY villain they've got, the only one that's been written for the game that can properly take his role. He may suck, but there's no real alternative because they didn't make one.

But with Kingdom Hearts, the company has literally dozens of great villains available to choose from. Each Disney location visited, each set of characters met, has a villain to offer. Once they'd added the Heartless into the mix, Square was all set. They didn't NEED to do any more, because with a mindless horde of baddies in place to provide power for the bad guys and EXP-fodder for the good guys, Square had many villains they could put into the spotlight that came from Disney. Who can deny the villainous charisma of grand schemers like Ursula, Jafar, Scar, Hades, and Maleficent? The petty darknesses that make individuals like Gaston, Cruella, the queen of Snow White, Tremaine, and Barbarossa such interesting and personal nemeses?

Square has access to these great villains. And Square proves throughout the series that they can not only accurately represent Disney characters, they can actually sometimes make them BETTER. Yet rather than take this opportunity to use an already great villain and make them the spotlight, Square disregards this resource and relegates it to a lesser, even unimportant role. With the exception of Maleficent and Pete, every Disney villain is confined to their single part of the game, a small-time villain rather than anything of huge significance to the plot. And while Maleficent seems for most of KH1 to be the grand villain behind everything, she's eventually one-upped by the KH-original Ansem-wannabe. Then she's made a tiny support villain KHCoM (though to be fair, the setup of the plot to that game necessitates this), and, worst of all, finally relegated to a role of lesser opposition in KH2, a mere afterthought to Organization 13 that is shown through both the story's structure and through actual events in the game not to have nearly the power or importance of these idiotic Nobodies.

I mean, are you KIDDING me? This is freaking MALEFICENT! The only Disney villain so steeped in power that the hero can only beat her by CHEATING. Had the prince in Sleeping Beauty not had the little fairies setting him free, giving him equipment, and finally enchanting the sword to basically be a 1-Hit KO Homing Missile, Maleficent would have won with EASE. You're telling me that Square thought a collection of generic pretty-boys with stupid ambitions that amount to them crying into a pillow "WHY ME WHY CAN'T I FEEEEEEL STUFF THE RIGHT WAY SNRRRK I'M SO GONNA WRITE A BAD SONG ABOUT THIS SOB" would make more compelling and powerful antagonists than the mistress of evil, a wrathful wielder of magics as dark and wicked as her vengeful spite?

And how about some of the other villains I mentioned? I'll grant you that the takeover plans of Scar, Ursula, and Hades are personal enough that they could indeed be content with just ruling their own lands and not attempting to conquer all the Disney worlds and thus become major game villains, but what about Jafar? That boy was ambitious enough that he could easily fill the role of a villain out to threaten everything. And the queen from Snow White would make a fine secondary villain; you could have her attempting to kill off the Princesses of Heart, determined to be the fairest of ALL worlds, not just her own. And how about a villain from a Disney franchise not already in the KH games? I mean, imagine what interesting motives and methods you could give Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame to be the main villain of a game with such a set-up. The guy's already a fascinating villain, hung up on his own inner demons, seeing his hatred for gypsies and his lust for Esmerelda as an internal battle between God and the Devil instead of just 2 different sides of ugly, twisted evil. Imagine all the neat stuff you could do with him in a setting like Kingdom Hearts, with small, dark demon-type things (the Heartless) spreading to every world, preying on people's emotional weaknesses...the reactions he would have, the motivations he might acquire to take control of all worlds or of the Heartless, the reasons he might have for seeking out the fabled Kingdom Hearts, and so on.

At any rate, Square had a lot of options for who could be each KH game's major villain, options that spanned every level of diabolical intent and every kind of negative emotion and desire. They've no excuse for having lackluster, annoying evil-doers as the top opposition to the heroes in these games, and frankly, restricting the villains with serious potential to tiny roles is stupid.

Dragon Age 2's The Exiled Prince Downloadable Content

When I do a rant on an RPG's add-ons, I typically list all the ones of significance out and look at them all at once, then judge the game's extra content as a whole afterwards. That was the plan with Dragon Age 2 at first, but as I wrote this out, it shaped up to be a rant in and of itself. Since it's so long, and since DA2 is still relatively new and relevant, and finally since I feel that there's a message worth conveying here, I decided I'd make this its own post. I'll probably refer back to it come the day I've finished my add-on rant for Dragon Age 2, but for now, The Exiled Prince DLC warrants some attention.

The Exiled Prince is a downloadable set of extra content for Dragon Age 2. This add-on was available for free with the DA2 Signature Edition, which was basically a premium edition of the game available to anyone who pre-ordered it before a certain date. If you didn't pre-order it in time, it costs $7.

Judging this one is hard. On its merits alone, it's a good add-on. The Exiled Prince basically adds a new character to your party, Sebastian, along with several quests and scenes pertinent to him. They don't really skimp on Sebastian at all as an addition to the party; he has roughly the same amount of character development and interaction with the plot as most of the other party members, and is a romantic interest for female protagonists. He's a long ways off from being a great character, but he's decent enough (and "decent" is as good as any DA2 character gets). So based just on that, I'd say the add-on's worth the price.

Yet I nonetheless have issues with this DLC's circumstances. Like Zaeed Massani of Mass Effect 2 and Shale of Dragon Age 1, Sebastian's package was available the day the game was, which begs the question of why it isn't just part of the game, period. If Bioware's planning to have this character be a part of their game, and have the time and resources available to do all the programming for him, then he should BE IN THE GAME. An add-on should be an ADD-ON, an extra part you can add to the game later, NOT a piece of the game that was MISSING. Look at it this way: if you buy a 100-piece jigsaw picture with a picture of a fish on the box, then when you correctly place all 100 pieces of that puzzle, you had better damn well have a complete picture of that fish. If, after you finish the puzzle, you discover that the picture of the fish is actually incomplete, and requires a separate 3 pieces sold separately from the 100 that come in the box, you have EVERY REASON to be angry, because you were RIPPED OFF. You paid for a product with the understanding that it was complete, and it wasn't. And that's not fair.

Now, I can forgive Mass Effect 2's character Zaeed (and later Kasumi). And I can forgive DA1's Shale. The reason for this forgiveness is that these characters, though seamlessly worked into the game as companions, are additions, not missing parts. Even though they can all take part in the plot and have scenes during the games' finales, the overall game's events and plot--the overall picture of the fish in the puzzle metaphor--does not require them. ME2's final mission can go as well or poorly with or without Zaeed and Kasumi, and what additions they have for the game are pretty much all strictly related to them. DA1's Shale has content to add to the game that is much the same--it's good to have, but not significant or vital to the plot proper. Basically, if you don't get Zaeed, Kasumi, or Shale, all you will really miss out on are Zaeed, Kasumi, or Shale, and a few side quests directly pertaining to them.

But here's the problem with Sebastian. Up until the game's finale, Sebastian gives every appearance of being like these previous 3 add-on characters I've mentioned. But at the game's finale's beginning, Sebastian suddenly has a very strong impact on the plot. Basically, he will force upon the protagonist the choice of either killing Anders for his fucktarded and hypocritical murderous magical warmongering, or losing Sebastian's respect and help forever. The determination of what to do with Anders is a pivotal decision for the plot's course, and having Sebastian force the issue with a threat of consequences either way increases the dramatic nature of the scene. This one scene makes Sebastian significantly engaged with Dragon Age 2's core storyline--more so even than Fenris and Merrill, 2 non-add-on party members! The presence of Sebastian adds an important aspect to the events of one of the most important moments of Dragon Age 2's plot--which means that if you don't have The Exiled Prince add-on, your DA2 experience will be incomplete. You will not just be missing out on a character and things involving him--you'll be missing out on part of the actual plot of the game.

THIS is why I am VERY angry with The Exiled Prince. The finished product of Dragon Age 2 was created with the intention that he should be part of it. Removing him and selling him separately is CHEATING THE CUSTOMER. It may be fine and dandy for me and anyone else who pre-ordered the game to get him for free, but there ARE gamers, and plenty of them, who did not pre-order and thus will have to pay extra to get a complete experience of the story of Dragon Age 2. That is NOT acceptable, and SHAME on Bioware for such dirty business.

General RPGs' Animal Characters

Faithful reader Ecclesiastes brought up a subject for conversation the other day that arose from my SMT Persona Social Link Comparison rant: dogs in RPGs. I noted in that rant that Persona 3's Koromaru's character was inadequately developed, and that dogs in RPGs generally get a bad deal like this, which I have also mentioned more than once in the past. So you can thank or blame Ecc for this one.

Animal characters. In RPGs' never-ending mission to create the most bizarre and colorful diversity in their casts possible, they often make use of non-humanoid characters to fill out the playable character list. And hey, in theory, it's a good idea--adding in the personality and pathos of a different species to the cast could be refreshing and reflect well on the other characters' development. But in practice, it's pretty much always a severe disappointment.

Now, before I go any further, I should probably explain what I mean by an "animal character." Because when Ecclesiastes was talking to me about it, he wondered what I thought of Red XIII, from Final Fantasy 7, who, while not nearly as well-developed as several others of the game's cast, seemed to be a character of decent depth. And this would be a good example...if I counted Red XIII as an animal character. But he's not.

Look. It's like this. If it talks like a human and it thinks like a human, it's a human character. If Red XIII had been humanoid in FF7 instead of a red dog-lion thing, absolutely nothing significant would have needed to be changed for his development. His personality, his issues, his concerns, his approach to situations, his responses to and relationships with others, his thoughts, his speech, every major mental aspect to him is sentient in a human capacity. He is a human character that happens to have been placed in a non-human body. His physical differences from the others can be considered, in terms of the audience's perspective, at most to be a cultural difference. He is not an animal character. As far as I'm concerned, if it talks the talk of a human character, it IS one.*

Now, Koromaru in SMTP3? Dogmeat in the Fallout series? Puffy in Grandia 1? These are animal characters. They generally exhibit a level of intelligence that animals do, they act as animals do, their concerns and interests are bestial (though in a tamed way). They don't talk, they don't ponder their family's past, they just do animal stuff.

Unfortunately, actual animal characters rarely get adequate character development. Now I DO understand that there are limitations of what I can expect from an animal character. And I am not expecting much, I honestly am not. But I do know that there can be SOMETHING beyond what I see all the time. Koromaru's actually on the higher side of RPG animal characters, in that we have an actual, understandable reason for him to be with the team, and he does express emotions, within the capacity you'd expect for a smart and devoted dog. But they still could have developed his canine personality more than they did, and given his development stronger consideration--the loss a dog can feel after the death of their owner can be a remarkably powerful and touching thing, and we didn't get very much on that from Koromaru. A little, yes, but only enough to cement his place, not enough to explore it.

And it IS possible to make a good animal character; I've seen it before more than once. Maybe not in RPGs yet, but that means nothing. Off the top of my head, Kaw, the crow from Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books, fits the bill. Kaw is a character throughout the books that is lively, curious, and continually mischievous, yet also noble and brave. He does talk, yes, but only in as much capacity as any crow might, no more intelligent than you would expect a crow to be (as long as you ARE aware that they're very, very smart birds). It's through his actions, not his dialogue, that you get a feel for his character, and while he doesn't grapple with self-doubts and coming of age and so on like the characters around him, he DOES exhibit playfulness, pride, loyalty, bravery, and other traits and emotions that a pet raven might. Alexander gives Kaw a personality that distinguishes what kind of crow Kaw is, but not one that distinguishes him from being a crow altogether.

I mean, I GUESS there are some examples in RPGs where actual animal characters are handled well enough...some of the animals in the Suikoden series aren't really any less characterized than most of the other characters in the game, I guess. And I admit that in Secret of Evermore, the main character's dog is actually exactly right. I mean, all they really portray is a nosy, playful mutt that the main character is utterly incapable of controlling, a dog that causes way, way more problems than it's worth. But it IS Secret of Evermore, which is a humor RPG--you can't reasonably expect powerful emotion and philosophy, just good laughs. And on that, the dog delivers in a good, canine capacity. So...I suppose that there is ONE well-done animal character in RPGs at present.

Nonetheless, having an animal character that's written well for a humor RPG is not exactly the same as having animal characters that fit well into your standard, more serious and thoughtful RPG (even though I do love a good humor RPG). Why couldn't Persona 3 have gone that little bit extra with Koromaru, instead of just dropping his character development after his introduction? Why doesn't Dragon Age 1 do anything with its Mabari Hound? I mean, the game does some work to set up his breed's traits and tout them as really awesome, so why is it when you get him that he's little more than an extra body that pees on trees? Why is it that neither of the Fallout series's Dogmeats is ever given any sort of personality beyond following random strangers in Vault suits? If Flammie is going to turn out to be such an important part of the plot's finale in The Secret of Mana, shouldn't they have given it more than 5 seconds and like 2 lines of other characters' text to create a character for it? And the list goes on.

Animals DO have personalities. They CAN feel certain powerful emotions, and exhibit distinctive character traits. But they don't act the same as us, and they don't react to things and think about them the same way as us. There IS potential there for an animal character with strong depth--you just have to know how to show that depth WITHOUT forcing a human mindset on the creature. And unfortunately, I've yet to see an RPG get it right in any serious capacity.


04/21/20 UPDATE: Amaterasu, the protagonist of Okami, is pretty close to exactly what I have yearned for in an animal character. So it can be done! Here's hoping more like her will grace the RPG genre someday.








* I can make an exception on talking when it's, like, one single time during a plot-relevant moment. Say like Bahamut Lagoon, where there's a moment near the game's end where this guy psychically hears the minds of the dragons that have traveled with the game's protagonist through the journey, and relates the dragons' love and devotion. That's a one-time thing, and it's a special circumstance, not just the animals deciding to open their mouths and deliver a diatribe. The rest of the time, they don't give any particular indication of human-level intelligence, so they still count as animal characters.

Mass Effect 2's Downloadable Content

And here comes another add-on rant.

As a note, I say on a few of these that they're free with the game, which is kind of true and kind of not. Basically, when you buy the game from a store, it comes with a card for the Cerberus Network, which allows you to download several DLC packages for no charge. Thing is, you actually do pay MORE for a copy of the game that comes with the card for that network, so you ARE paying for the Cerberus Network, and thus, the benefits it comes with are not actually free. This is something that Bioware would prefer that people not figure out, as they not only like to promote their Cerberus Network stuff as "free," but also to pout and say that their fans are unreasonable when said fans complain about some of the crappy add-ons that they have to pay for (pointless shit like extra armor styles or alternate appearances for certain characters). Bioware is fond of whining, at that point, "But we gave you all this other stuff for FREE! You people are never satisfied! I WORK AND I SLAVE OVER A HOT STOVE ALL DAY ETC." It's probably the first time I've seen this company be outright disingenuous, and its focus on exploiting loyal fans and complaining if that exploitation isn't 100% successful is disturbingly reminiscent of SquareEnix's current business plan. I sure as hell hope THAT won't continue. Bioware's misleading--hell, outright dishonest--wording aside, however, the Cerberus Network's content, even if not actually "free," is still a good deal for the overall cost, given how many DLC packages you get with it that have some actual content.

Anyway, let's get this going.



Zaeed Massani: Zaeed is free with the Ceberus Network. Basically, this DLC adds a new team member, a famous bounty hunter, to Commander Shepard's squad. Zaeed's as much a character as any other; they skimped on nearly nothing with him--he has unique dialogue reactions when he's in your party to many parts of the game, he has scenes of his own in the final mission when needed, and he has his own special Loyalty Mission for you to play through as any other character would. All he lacks is regular dialogue for when you speak to him on the ship (although he still has plenty to say in an NPC fashion, so that's no strike against him) and a mission to actually recruit him, which would have been nice, but is an acceptable loss when everything else is right. He's a pretty fun character to listen to, he's got some history that's interesting, and his Loyalty Mission gives him an acceptable bit of character development--nothing stellar, but certainly not bad, either. Zaeed's a solid DLC addition, to be sure.


Normandy Crash: This one's tiny. As a single 10 to 20 minute mission with no dialogue and only slight plot relevance that doesn't involve any action, you wouldn't think I would have any positive remarks about it, but life is pretty unpredictable--I actually really liked this one. The overall idea of recovering pieces of your former ship is decent, the execution is exactly as it should be--quiet, reflective, mournful, and lonely--and the choice given to you of where to place the memorial marker is a nice touch, letting you decide what was the most important and symbolic part of the first Normandy to honor with a statue. The DLC also provides posthumous character development for a relatively minor, yet memorable, NPC from Mass Effect 1, Navigator/XO Pressly. Overall, this minuscule DLC packs a lot of atmosphere, meaning, and even a bit of character development into its few minutes.


Firewalker: Another free Cerberus Network download, the Firewalker DLC pack adds 5 minor missions to the game that incorporate a new vehicle, a hover attack vehicle thingy called the Hammerhead. The Hammerhead's controls are pretty slick, it shoots missiles quite handily, and the missions have a small story tying them together of trying to locate missing scientists and an ancient artifact. It's not an especially strong story entry, but it's nice in that the plot acknowledges the goings-on of the Mass Effect galaxy while Shepard's fooling around with his main quest, reminding us of the importance of the Protheans that Mass Effect 1 established and perhaps promising future developments with this DLC's events. Not a bad little hour or two of extra game play, if not at all memorable.


Kasumi - Stolen Memory: Now THIS is more like it. This is probably the best add-on I've seen since Fallout 3. With this DLC, you get Kasumi, a new party member who, like Zaeed, fits in like she was always in the game, having reactionary dialogue throughout the game and her own scenes to play out during the last mission, but with more character depth than Zaeed. You also get a new mission to play through that focuses on Kasumi, and the mission is, honestly, pretty damn good. The mission itself is pretty cool, it has a good element of plot to it, and it develops Kasumi's character quite nicely. Thumbs up on this one, definitely.


Overlord: Not the best Bioware's done, but not bad. This DLC is basically a few missions connected by a side story of short-sighted ambitions causing inhumane treatment of the innocent in the name of the greater good. It's decent, and its nature reminds me a bit of the various side quests from Mass Effect 1, which often had similar tones and ideas. And anything that reminds me of ME1 ain't a bad thing--I think the only failing ME2 had was its strong dissimilarities to its predecessor. So Overlord's alright. But it isn't great. And as an extra that costs $7 instead of just being packaged with the Cerberus Network (which would have made more sense anyway, given that it uses the Hammerhead, which came with the Firewalker DLC, which was a Cerberus Network package), I can't in good conscience say it's worth the price.


Lair of the Shadow Broker: Very nice, this one. With a good story and some much-needed character development for Liara, both of which tie up loose ends that the game proper just kind of left, this is definitely a high quality DLC. It's exciting, well-told, and interesting pretty much from start to finish, and all the bonus content at the end is a real gem--after gaining access to the Shadow Broker's data and files, Shepard gets to read up on the intel the Broker has on Shepard's companions and friends, which means lots of neat tidbits to further develop most of the game's major characters. Many are amusing, many are insightful, some are even touching--it's all great stuff. Hell, I'd actually say that the development you get for the characters as an end bonus to this DLC is the most worthy reason to play through it. There are several little gameplay bonuses to this DLC, too, that go beyond what you'd expect, so that's nice, too, I suppose. But the main reasons to play a DLC are all there and solid with this one.


The Arrival: The Arrival's a pretty decent DLC. Initial reaction to it by fans was that it was "predictable," and this is generally true for anyone who's familiar with Reaper technology, the rarity of one of Shepard's missions going without a hitch, and Shepard's penchant for lecturing ancient apocalyptic horrors on the virtues of the human spirit--so, in essence, predictable to anyone who's played Mass Effect. But if my recent enthrallment with the new My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon has taught me anything,* it's that predictable conclusions can still be interesting and worthwhile if you have a skilled creative mind behind them. And this DLC is such a case. Yes, you'll probably see the twist coming in some capacity, but the events of The Arrival are still neat, and very relevant to the major story of the series--more so than most other DLCs, I think. In fact, this add-on feels less like a contained side story like most of the above do and the ME1 add-ons did, and more like an important part of the overall plot of the Mass Effect trilogy's events. There's nothing incredible in here, and the mission, while full, is over kind of quickly for the price, but it's a solid little adventure, it gets the player's focus back on track with the main story after a lot of DLC packages that kinda deviated away from it, it's exciting, it features the return (and first visual appearance) of an important secondary character from ME1, and it helps to transition from ME2 to the upcoming ME3 (I think; I won't know for sure until we actually see ME3, but that's what it feels like). So I'd say it does most everything Bioware wanted it to, and is decent and worth the price of admission as much as any Downloadable Content ever is. A good way to conclude ME2's set of add-ons, as ME3 looms.



And that's that. On the whole? I think Mass Effect 2's Downloadable Content has been a pretty good thing. Sure, there were a couple that really weren't all that noteworthy, and Bioware's shady policy regarding the Cerberus Network is very disappointing. But the majority of the add-ons were good offerings, and I don't feel like any of them were an outright rip-off, and both of these points make Mass Effect 2's set of add-ons a marked improvement over those of Dragon Age 1, so Bioware's certainly improving. Bethesda's Fallout 3 add-ons were still a better deal and half the time were of greater storytelling quality, but ME2's additional content nonetheless leaves me with a positive impression.

Now, will Bioware continue to improve with Dragon Age 2's add-ons, or will it go back to the generally disappointing DA1's add-ons for inspiration? And how will the somewhat recent Fallout: New Vegas's add-ons measure up against its own predecessor's? We'll just have to see.












* Shut the fuck up. MLPFiM is awesome and 100% acceptable by masculine standards. It beat the shit out of 4chan and there's like thousands of other guys who love it. Look it up if you don't believe me.

General RPGs' AMVs 2

Well, by now you guys have probably figured out that I am quite partial to a truly excellent AMV, given that every time I find one I feel is really great, I do a whole long rant on it. Of course, one does not often find a fantastic RPG AMV whilst browsing the internet...in fact, given the number I've found that are so great that I deem them worthy of personally keeping and subsequently ranting about, I'd say, quite seriously, that your chances of finding a great RPG AMV are about 100 to 1. I mean, that really seems to be the ratio I've experienced.*

Still, even if a truly skillful, exceptional AMV is extremely rare, that's not to say that there aren't a good few AMVs out there that are, if not great, at least decent, sometimes even good. I'm sure has hell not going to spend 2 - 4 weeks writing out an analytical rant for each of them,** but hey, just because they're not amazing, that doesn't mean they don't deserve some note for at least being competent, right? Just the ability to rise above flat mediocrity with RPG AMVs is uncommon enough that it ought to have some recognition. Hence, here is a list of 13 RPG AMVs that are at least pretty good, and worth a watch, organized by game. Why 13? Because it's enough to give you a good handful but not enough to overwhelm you, and because superstitions are for wusses.

And hey, by the way, if you watch one of these and like it, be responsible and give it a Thumbs-Up, or even leave a positive comment. It distresses me how few views and feedback quite a few of these AMVs have, considering that there was clearly some decent effort put into quite a few of them.



CHRONO

Chrono Cross: Plastic Blue, by xXOverXStudiosXx: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8SCU9ybSjQ
The music used is Blue, by The Birthday Massacre. Can't say I'm a fan of the music in any capacity, but ah well. The visual nature of this AMV is very impressive, using tints and visual effects up the wazoo to create a music video that nearly perfectly portrays the surreal, turbulent emotions and twists of the music. This is done so well that I was very tempted to keep this AMV in my personal collection as one of the very best ones out there--but in the end, I opted not to, because while Chrono cross's videos work well enough for the song, I feel like you could have taken a great many games' FMVs and gotten an equal result with the same amount of visual effects. In essence, there's not much to this AMV that ties it more strongly to the game it uses than would tie it to any other game whose visuals it could have chosen instead. Nonetheless, a pretty impressive offering.

Chrono Trigger: Chronology Anthology, by Parasite02: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU9O_3VEtTs
The music used is Book of Days, by Enya. This is a pretty good tribute video, with the music and scenes being well-coordinated. There's a lot of neat visual artistry, too, although there are times when it gets excessive and distracting.

Chrono Trigger: This War is Ours, by Smndo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xgIG2wCWzo
The music used is This War is Ours, by Escape the Fate. Lots of visual effects thrown in here, and most are pretty well-used, although there are several times during this video during which I wish things would slow down and be less rapid and confusing. However, putting that (and the, er, less than perfect English used in the video) aside, this is a really neat AMV, using the song to its full extent at several times (particularly at the part starting at 1:15) and including visuals not only from the FMV anime cutscenes, but also from official art, AND the pixellated gameplay itself--and always effectively. I'm often annoyed with the fact that AMVs are as a general rule afraid to include video of actual gameplay for any RPG made before the Playstation 2 era, because if you use it effectively in the right doses, as this AMV does, it enhances your work without being distracting. This is especially handy with a game like CT, whose FMV offerings are distinctly limited to work with.


DRAGON AGE

Dragon Age 1: In Paradisum, by Darkozl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLt8EhtotNI
The music used is Requiem for a Tower, by Clint Mansell. This AMV is an enjoyable tribute to the game, and uses speeches from the game well with the song's prominent build-up. That's all, really, I can't say much more about it--it's just pretty darn good.


FALLOUT

Fallout 3: My World, by FalseEmperor13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYhoWv39qIs
The music is My World, by Brand New Sin. You may remember FalseEmperor13 from one of my earlier AMV rants, Fallout 3: If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children will be Next. This AMV isn't excellent like that one, but it's a pretty solid offering, using the heavy, action-oriented tune and lyrics well with the game's visuals to illustrate the idea of a world that's forsaken anyone who wants to live decently in it. The AMV also uses Tenpenny and Dukov from the game to embody the lyrics referring to the one who gets what they want from the world, which is a nicely appropriate connection.


FINAL FANTASY

Final Fantasy 9: Bloody Nails and Broken Hearts, by LeviSouthward: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSDPNs4YGf4
The music used is Bloody Nails and Broken Hearts, by Billy Talent. For a game that is so often paired with calmer, more melodic tunes, this AMV surprises you with how well FF9's impressive visuals can also work with a harsher, faster, more action-oriented song. Several good choices on what clips to match to certain parts and lyrics of the song make it that much better.

Final Fantasy 9: Dragon Boy, by Thistledemon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf-c8EpSKts
The music is Dragon Boy, from the Spirited Away soundtrack. The visual beauty and grandeur of Final Fantasy 9 is a perfect match to the comparable beauty and grandeur of Spirited Away's music, and this song in particular works very nicely to make a tribute to FF9's epic, gorgeous world and adventure. Many good cases of scene selection here, too, that help emphasize the music's qualities. I just wish it didn't end so abruptly, because the AMV winds up feeling incomplete, particularly since the final scenes didn't seem to conclude the video in any particular way.

Final Fantasy 9: She's so High, by Fellow Hoodlum Inc: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtJO14xMcVk
The music used is She's so High, by Tal Bachman. This song really works for Dagger as a character, the scene selection to go with the music is usually well-chosen for working with the tune, and how can you not love using Kuja to portray Aphrodite?


THE LEGEND OF ZELDA

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Girlfriend, by Amandamaya123: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxHZ7sYkXNA
The music is Girlfriend, by Avril Lavigne. Honestly, this song is annoying as hell to me, but I must say, the scene selection is at several times damn clever, and fun to watch. The expressions and actions in the scenes used often match up extremely well to the (obnoxious) lyrics of the song, and make for a rather fun watch, even if the idea that Link and Midna have any particular romantic chemistry is...fanciful, to put it mildly.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Hand of Sorrow, by 00peachy00: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSqAXHzHGDo
The music is Hand of Sorrow, by Within Temptation. This AMV uses the artistic and powerful visuals well to match the strong, epic feeling of the music, and there are also several nice visual effects thrown into it that enhance the AMV but never go overboard (which is a common problem with AMVs that add visual effects). The one major flaw to this AMV is that it's simply over too soon; the song cuts out before it's finished, leaving the feeling that there should have been more.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: High School Never Ends, by Amandamaya123: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ia3yHJ4lXk
The music is High School Never Ends, by Bowling for Soup. This one's just clever and amusing overall, using visuals of the game's characters to illustrate the song's lyrics from start to finish. Sometimes the connection's vague, but often it's done very well, and the overall effect is lighthearted and fun.


PARASITE EVE

Parasite Eve 1: Parasite Eve Blinded me with Science, by Fellowhoodlum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLamjcrrbzg
The music is She Blinded me with Science, by Thomas Dolby. It seems strange, but this light-hearted, quirky song winds up working really well with Parasite Eve's disturbing visuals, changing them from creepy and at times gross to entertaining and mad-science-y. But hey, PE1 is a present-day science fiction RPG, so everything really does wind up fitting pretty well with the song, aided by the AMV maker's talent at selecting scenes and transitions that work with the song's tune and lyrics.

Parasite Eve 1: Superstitious Feeling, by ShawnDDude: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4roryDASXiY
The music is Superstitious Feeling, by Harlequin. This tribute is really very good, with the music portraying just the right mixture of mystery, tension, and urgency to match the atmosphere of PE1.



And that's it for now. Hope you found at least a few of these enjoyable. Since I only rarely stumble across a truly amazing AMV, expect to see more 13-pack rants like this one about the decent AMVs I happen across in my searches for greatness. Although even decent AMVs can be uncommon, so even these will only happen once in a while.


















* Of course, take out Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy 8, and Final Fantasy 7-related AMVs from that mix, and you're probably down to a 50 to 1 chance.

** That really is how long I usually take to get my AMV rants done. Yes, I do, indeed, sometimes suck to a ridiculous degree.

Fallout: New Vegas's Lousy Karma System

Traditionally, Fallout games keep track of a player's actions using Karma. For doing something good, like giving a thirsty beggar some water, asking for no reward for a service rendered, or seeing how many rounds of ammunition one mob boss's head can hold, you get Karma. For doing something bad, like selling your friends to slavers, blackmailing merchants, and setting off a dormant nuclear warhead in the middle of a busy town because a neighboring town leader thinks the place is an eyesore, you get negative Karma. Your Karma score would influence various things, mostly the way that NPCs would react to you, your available options for a few quests, whether bounty hunters or mercenaries will eventually start hunting you down, and most importantly, whether potential party members would join you, and if so, which ones. It's a nice little idea that enhances the game's enjoyment and gives extra emphasis to the idea that your actions in the game have consequences by giving your actions overall some long-term results to accompany whatever immediate effects you've caused.

Fallout: New Vegas introduces an accompanying system in its installment, that of Reputation. There are several groups of influence and power throughout the Mojave Wasteland in Fallout: New Vegas, and what you do for or to them affects how that faction as a whole sees you, which in turn determines how they react to you and what quests and rewards they're willing to give you.

I like the idea in theory. After all, not everyone on one side or the other of Good vs. Evil should have the same values. If you get a bunch of Negative Karma because you can't help stuffing people's pockets with live grenades, it follows that a bunch of chaotic, anarchistic, crazy drug-users might react well to you, but a company of organized slavers probably wouldn't be all that impressed, even if both groups are on the Bad side of Karma. Having individual Reputation scores for each faction provides a chance for more plot relevance for your actions, making things more realistic, and also emphasizing the importance of the different factions to the Mojave Wasteland setting. Good idea!

Bad idea: relegating EVERY major effect traditionally associated with the Karma system to the Reputation system for the factors. They left Karma in the game, but it's almost entirely irrelevant now. First of all, there's barely ANY result of really high or really low Karma. The companions who can join you are dependent on your Reputation; the only one that actually cares about you being a psychotic mass-murderer is Cass, and she can be talked out of leaving you for your baby-eating ways, anyway. NPCs' reactions to you only seem to significantly change from Reputation--whether angels sing in your presence or you kick puppies with lead boots on, all any given NCR official cares about is whether or not you've been helpful to his country previously. Few NPCs have any biases beyond those faction-related. What quests are available to you are the same way--if there's any discrimination going on for whether a quest is offered to you, it's based on what factions you're friendly with, not whether or not you're a trustworthy individual in general. With few exceptions, the Reputation system has made Karma irrelevant.

Second problem: at least half the NPCs in the game belong to a faction, so killing them only affects your Reputation, not your Karma rating. So, hey, if you're not a fan of the New California Republic and want to serve another faction, feel free to open fire on a squad of unsuspecting NCR soldiers sitting down to have lunch. Sure, the NCR won't like you gunning down defenseless peace-keepers...but it won't make you a bad person, apparently! Now the only people you have to worry about killing indiscriminately are independent NPCs (which will give you bad Karma) and gang members (which will give you good karma). So if you actually CARE about what your Karma score is, your options for affecting it the way you want to are much more limited than they used to be. And who you're shooting at isn't the only thing that doesn't work the way it used to regarding Karma--while it was frowned upon in Fallout 2, grave-robbing is apparently A-OK in Fallout: New Vegas. You'd think someone in the town of Goodsprings would care that you're violating their grandmother's corpse on the off-chance that she was buried with a Stimpack hidden in her coffin, but nope.

And y'know, getting back to the idea that faction-specific kills don't influence your reputation, there's one aspect of it that I really have to say is ridiculous. Now, in the example I gave, you're killing a bunch of soldiers for the New California Republic faction in cold blood. Now, that's a pretty immoral act that you'd expect negative Karma for, but I can almost understand why you might not have a Karma penalty applied. I mean, it's hard to argue that the NCR isn't at least partially good, but they're very imperialistic, and even if they're bringing about a far safer, better form of life for the people of the Wasteland, they ARE doing it through fairly standard imperialistic military methods. You could be a good person and still disagree with the NCR's way of doing things, and support another fairly good faction instead. So even if it SHOULD be an evil act to kill such soldiers if they're not attacking you, I guess I can accept that it's associated with the act of opposing a faction that you could object to while still being a good person.

But the same Karma problem is present with members of Caesar's Legion! Kill a Legion recruit, and you'll only be awarded negative Reputation for them, but your Karma won't be affected. Now seriously...why the HELL do you not get good Karma for killing a Legion NPC? Come on. Other factions may have aspects of moral ambiguity, but you can't honestly try to tell me that a morally decent person could support Caesar's Legion. This is a faction that burns, pillages, and murders everything in their path, destroying every male it can't make one of its own, and enslaving every female as a supposedly inferior being. Sure, they exemplify militaristic discipline and abhor the drugs that run rampant throughout the Wasteland...but that discipline is savage brainwashing, and they act on their hatred for chems by crucifying anyone they suspect of using them. In fact, the Legion just crucifies just about anyone it dislikes for any reason--they're big fans of horrible, tortuous public death. And hey, might I again mention, ENSLAVING HALF OF THE HUMAN RACE. Being sexist asswipes convinced of the inferiority of women in all things is bad enough as it is--using that philosophy to enslave all women to serve all their labor needs is amazingly evil. I'd say it's worse than just having normal slavery, but slavery is already the absolute polar end of the moral spectrum in my mind, so I guess it can't actually get worse.

So, essentially, Caesar's Legion is a group that combines the cruelties, barbaric violence, and dogged imperialism of Rome, the brainwashing power of the Third Reicht, the empire-built-off-slaves part of Ancient Egypt or the deep pre-Civil War US South, and the gender philosophies of...well, pick just about any society and go back a little ways to the point where women had absolutely, 100% no rights and were considered inferior in every way. Some cultures won't require you to turn too many pages of history back to find it.

Can someone PLEASE explain to me why feeding a Legion member a bullet breakfast does NOT give me positive Karma? Is there REALLY any moral ambiguity associated with this faction that could reasonably lead a good person to support them?

And when I ask for explanation, I mean a REAL one. Not the lame-ass failure of an excuse that's been going around, claiming that since Caesar's Legion is using all these terrible, evil acts toward the goal of creating, maintaining, and spreading a form of civilization, it falls into a neutral zone for morality to the Fallout universe. No. That is fucking stupid. Maybe if Caesar's Legion had been a faction existing early in the series, like within the first few decades following the world's destruction, that claim could be made, because at that point, there really wasn't anything anywhere resembling civilization that I know of, so perhaps seeing the Legion as the ONLY alternative to chaotic, violent, deranged anarchy would have been able to make it a "neutral" kind of choice. Maybe. But in the setting of Fallout: New Vegas, having the Legion be considered anything but brutal, heinous evil is, and I can't emphasize this enough, fucking stupid. Because by that time, that area of the Fallout wastelands has got the New California Republic as an option for civilization, and Mr. House, the New Vegas families, the surrounding towns, and the various smaller factions ALL present viable opportunities for civilization. You're not choosing between Caesar's idea of civilization or none at all. You're choosing between one legitimate form of civilization (the NCR), another conglomerate of legitimate civilizations (the towns and factions of New Vegas and the surrounding area as they already exist), or a form of civilization that finds honor in brutality, enslaves half its population for a condition they can't change under false claims that it's inferior, and delights in monstrous torment. So saying that Caesar's Legion could be considered a "neutral" moral choice in any way for the setting of New Vegas is so arrogantly short-sighted and reeking of idiocy that I wish I could hit each and every person who makes that claim in the mouth so hard that they'll look like a checkerboard the next time they grin.

Anyway...I think I've gotten a little off-topic. Back to business. There are many good innovations with Fallout: New Vegas, and the Reputation system works very nicely by itself, but they really just dropped the ball completely on properly incorporating the traditional Fallout Karma system for New Vegas. It's so totally insignificant to the game's entirety that it might as well not even be there, and the developers were so obsessed with making the faction Reputations a big deal that they created a separation between Reputation and Karma that at several times, like with the Legion somehow not being considered evil, seems outright stupid.

Mass Effect 2's Loss of Atmosphere

I've always had a soft spot for well-made science fiction space epics, things like Star Wars (not counting the newer trilogy) and Star Trek (not counting...well, half of it). I love the thrill of alien worlds and their infinite possibility, the ideas of intergalactic governments and alliances working together or at war, the endless possibilities that are presented, the creativity of alien species and cultures, and the way it can all relate back to humanity, providing lessons about ourselves that are really no less applicable to us in this day and age than they are to these fictional space farers of the distant future. Or the long ago in a place far, far away.

This is part of why Mass Effect 1 had such a hold over me. It was just such a perfect space epic. It really had everything one could ask for--adventure, excitement, high technology, space battles, human nature, exploration, aliens, and so on. And the other part of why I loved ME1 so much was that it did it all so very well, with a very good cast, a great plot, neat ideas, and thorough explanation of its universe's setting. My enthusiasm for the space opera aside in general, ME1 is a great RPG in its own right.

Mass Effect 2 never held the same power over me, much though I hoped it would. It's not for lack of quality, to be sure--the plot of ME2 is decent (although admittedly not nearly as good as its predecessor), and the characters are very good, some even excellent. And as a science fiction game, it's terrific, filled with creativity and effort in all the many facets of its genre. The aliens are still interesting and diverse, the technologies are still eye-catching and awesome, and everything is still defined with great depth via the game's codex listings.

Yet as I played ME2, I found that there was something missing from it, some crucial part that had given the original its magic. ME2 had more polish, more involved settings, better action, and even a generally superior cast of characters...yet its atmosphere, its soul, simply lacks something its original had, and this missing component will always prevent it from being truly great, as ME1 is.

I've wondered why this is since I finished playing ME2, and I've had a few ideas about why it is, most of which I've discarded. At first I thought it was perhaps because Mass Effect 2 is just plain a lot darker than its predecessor, both in tone and in the story's events. I've mostly discarded this idea, though, as there are other science fiction stories of a darker nature that retain their spellbinding qualities.* I also considered the possibility that the further exploration and definition of the ME universe in ME2 could have done it, adding too much realism and detail to what before was a creative universe far more imagined than actively seen and defined. But I don't really think it's that, either. ME2 doesn't really show you that much more of its galaxy than ME1 did, even most of the game's settings are harsher than the original's tended to be. And I really don't think that fleshing out your created universe can ever be detrimental to telling its stories, unless you're just doing it poorly in general, which is not the case with this game at all.

I think, however, that I've figured it out, what the sequel to Mass Effect is lacking that keeps it less than a true space epic for me. It's the mysticism. You see, to me, I think a big, epic space science fiction series needs a hint of the wondrous, the inexplicable, the supernatural.

To explain what I mean, let's look at my favorite space epic, Star Wars.** With Star Wars, you get all kinds of really awesome science fiction ideas all meshing together beautifully--you get huge, interstellar conflicts, tons of aliens (both sentient and not), neat futuristic technology, epic clashes of good and evil, equally epic clashes of the human spirit against itself, countless interesting worlds and astral locations you can visit and explore, big space battles, good characters...you have it ALL, and it almost always is fun and interesting to watch. Yet there is more than that, one grand, all-encompassing thing that ties the hundreds of stories of the Star Wars universe together with more than simple continuity: The Force.

I'm going to assume that you don't need an explanation of The Force. I mean, is there anyone old enough to read these rants who hasn't seen enough of Star Wars to have a general idea of it? I hope not.

The Force adds a huge dose of mysticism to Star Wars, and by its effects, the true character and distinguishing feel of Star Wars is formed. Oh, sure, lovable rogues, hotshot space pilots, amusing droids, grand space battles, and many other parts of the series are essential aspects that also give it its character. But it's the mystical essence that binds all life, that guides the fates of all beings, and that gives rise to the Jedi that truly defines this series. It's through The Force that Star Wars delivers its best insights on human nature, creates its most memorable warriors and villains, allows for its greatest feats and contrivances, and provides moral and even religious foundation for its great struggles. The Force gives we, the audience, a greater feeling that the events we view or read are immense and far-reaching, and a better sense of how deep and limitless the Star Wars galaxy is. Anything and everything can be waiting to be discovered in Star Wars's locations and its history, and no matter what it is, it will be or will have been of great importance to The Force and thus the fate of everything, even if it has been forgotten by (or was never known to) the galaxy's records.

Some space epics have mysticism more than others. Star Wars obviously has a huge dose of it. But I think that, for it to truly draw one in and entrance an audience as grand and amazing, there does have to be SOME element of the unknown and fantastical. Star Trek has many times had its crews encounter various mysterious occurrences in their travels that they have no explanation for, such as the Guardian of Forever time portal thingy. That there could be such objects and beings of mysterious origins, of great power impossible to understand fully, that there could be objects and places left behind mysteriously, waiting to be rediscovered but perhaps never fully accounted for, gives the series a sense of wonder at times, and a mysterious grandness to the exploratory cause of the Star Trek crews. Without these elements of mysticism, Star Trek would still have most of its other aspects and their worth intact, but it WOULD have a lack of something intangibly desirable to it.

Mass Effect 1 had this hint of mysticism, mainly in the Protheans, and the cycle of destruction of the Reapers. Spoilers ahead, naturally; it's best you be familiar with Mass Effect before reading this. The Protheans, as the most recent species destroyed by the Reapers in their recurring extermination of all life, left behind traces of their civilization that are surrounded by mystery for most of the game. Trying to understand the mysteries of the Protheans, most prominently the reason they disappeared, is the touch of mysticism that helps ME1 draw us in, the promise of something old and awesome to be discovered in the past of outer space. And once the answer is found, and the Reapers' cycle of destruction revealed, the mysticism remains, becoming now the questions of how many times over the galaxy has witnessed this occur, what species there might have once been, what the lost history of the Keepers might be, what the Reapers are, where they come from, whether their purpose is one that we even COULD understand if they were willing to say. Although I'd say that Mass Effect 1 is a sci-fi epic primarily of adventure, action, aliens, and astronomical awe and advances,*** that touch of the unknown and mysterious gives it a nice tone and backs up the grand scope of its story.

Mass Effect 2 just...well, it just doesn't really have this. The fate of the Protheans, their legacy, it's no longer in focus. You can't explore planets for pieces of lost cultural history for the older races of the galaxy any longer. The motivations, the origins, the nature of the Reapers...these are no longer questioned, no longer even put forth as significant. The here and now, the tangible, the thought of what's happening and not the why or how of it, these are what Mass Effect 2 focuses on overall. And hey, it's all pretty damn cool, it makes for a good story, and there are many terrific aspects, like several of the new characters, that really satisfy a player eager for intellectual quality. But there IS something lost in ME2's narrow focus on a tougher, faster, more no-nonsense setting and storytelling style that ME1 had, something mystic and spellbinding, and I do mourn it, because that was truly what took a good game, and made it a science fiction classic.











* Although, for the record, I do wish ME2 hadn't set such a darker, more gritty tone than ME1 had. It seems unnecessary at times, and as a player I often feel displaced by it when seeing characters and locations that seem significantly altered from the their incarnations in the first game by this darker tone. I have my suspicions that this shift in plot atmosphere was done at least as much for marketing purposes as it was for any related to creative direction.

** To be more precise, the original trilogy and the extended universe created by many terrific authors like Timothy Zahn, as well as the extended universe created by many worthy published comics and great games like the Knights of the Old Republic series. I mostly don't think about Episodes 1 - 3 in this consideration, as well as most of the stuff associated with them. It's too painful.

*** I like alliteration.

Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals

A little over 15 years ago, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was in its prime, and the RPG genre had come into its own on the system, with several companies following the path that Squaresoft paved with quality offerings like Final Fantasy 4 and The Secret of Mana. And it was at this time that one of the most solid classics of the system was developed by Neverland and released by Taito, Lufia: Rise of the Sinistrals, better known as Lufia 2. As lousily bland and unremarkable as Lufia 1 was, Lufia 2 was fun, inventive, emotionally endearing, deep, and made every effort to tie itself in to Lufia 1 as a prequel that set up all the aspects of the first game, to the biggest plot themes to the smallest details. 15 years later, there are still many things done with Lufia 2's plot and characters that I sadly can't say I've seen attempted again. Although there are other SNES RPGs I think are greater works than Lufia 2, such as Chrono Trigger, I think that this game above all others is what I think of when I think of a classic SNES RPG. Simple yet elegant, standard yet creative--what a great game it was.

Until SquareEnix got its clumsy mitts on it.

Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals. This is the name of the remake released early last year of the classic Lufia 2 by SquareEnix. Seeking a quick, easy, cheap way to make a buck without having to resort to providing quality, as is the case of almost everything SquareEnix does these days, the company has taken the original Lufia 2 and given it a whole new look for the DS. Actually, it's more than just a new look--they've basically gutted the entire game and recreated every aspect of its nature in their own cheap, shallow image. Although according to Wikipedia, SquareEnix isn't totally to blame--apparently the same company that originally made Lufia 2 has developed this with SquareEnix. I don't know what the story there is, and I don't care. Maybe everyone involved in the original is long gone from the company, so its new developers didn't have any interest in the product nor skill at writing. Maybe SquareEnix did the lion's share of the development. Maybe the folks at Neverland just went fucking crazy during the past decade. I don't know.

All I do know is that the remake is garbage. If you go into it knowing nothing of the original Lufia 2, then Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals is an unsatisfying, trite offering of no interest that leaves no lasting, meaningful impact upon you at all. As a way to spend time, it rates slightly below gluing your hands to your face and slightly above being run over by a car. And if you go into it having played Lufia 2 and had any respect for it whatsoever, then it's...well, Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals is to Lufia 2 what The Last Airbender movie is to the original Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon.

In the interest of having a concrete stance, I watched a reliable Let's Play of this remake, and kept notes on the problems I found with this remake. I soon found a rather sizable list forming (soon, as in, a dozen problems in the first 2 segments of the Let's Play). Some were nitpicky. Most were considerably more legitimate complaints about the plot and characters. And now, for your reading "pleasure," I am sharing them all with you. "Enjoy."

Obvious Note: There are a lot of spoilers. If you aren't familiar with Lufia 2, or at least the remake, then don't read this. It's written with the assumption you'll understand the plot points and characters discussed.


All the Things that Suck About Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals as a Remake of Lufia 2

1. Right off the bat, there are problems. Gades announces to the world that he's going to take over the world and that he'll let humans who obey him live. This is contrary to the original Sinistrals, who never announced their intentions like some stupid 1960s comic book supervillain. The Sinistrals were dark gods, and they were far above concerning themselves with the populace at large in any such way--they felt no need to announce themselves like this; they just came and destroyed as they pleased. THAT fit the character they're supposed to have--destructive deities who considered themselves so far above petty humans that just suggesting that they concern themselves with the beings they were about to crush to the extent of warning them would be insulting. It would be like you announcing to an ant that you intended to step on it and any others you happened across. This small act lowers their godly ego and works against the intended role of the Sinistrals.

2. The intro of the game makes me think of some 1990s arcade game's intro montage. You see the villain introduced in a nefarious, mustache-twirling manner as he speaks of his evil plans, and you cut to short scenes of every person who will join your party reacting to this threat by uniformly assuring the children around them that it'll be fine cuz they're gonna take this guy down. Seriously, it's like SquareEnix took its cues from the intro to Final Fight, and it gets sillier still by the fact that half of all the particularly strong people in the world seem to regularly hang out with children that need reassurance. I mean, come on, using that cliche once wasn't good enough, they had to jam it in 3 times?

3. Maxim's knowing Lexis already is a load of crap. In the original, Lexis was a scientist that Maxim and company met in the last half of the game, and whom they traveled with for a time, before he stayed behind to help them out from the science front rather than in battle. Here, he's vaguely introduced as Maxim's old friend from the start. There are 2 major changes that result from this alteration, and neither are good. The first problem is that it removes a good chunk of the game's time, since some of the events that would have occurred had Lexis joined the party later and done the plot-related stuff at that time just don't happen. Secondly and more importantly, this has actually LESSENED the significance of Lexis's role and limited his character development. While him being there from start to finish gives a greater chance to develop his character, SquareEnix squanders this by relegating him to a small support role, someone who rarely takes part in any major plot-significant way, and who usually only gets a chance to speak on the world map screen--and further, his lines usually are just a way to sum up what the party is currently doing and where they're headed. Lufia 2 created a better character with less time by giving him more to do and more significant things to say. The remake's Lexis is little more than a sign post pointing an arrow in the direction of the plot.

4. As with Lexis, Maxim also shouldn't have access to the ship, Excelion (Excerion in Lufia 2) from the start. The Excerion served a basic but functional purpose in Lufia 2, a way to open up new areas for Maxim and company to visit and advance plot in. They only got it later on, because in a game with a structured plot, having too many places open early on presents problems of keeping track of everything and having the party visit places in sequential order. In this game, though, Maxim's just given the ship right off the bat--and yet the problem with this is that SquareEnix has to immediately take away the ship's basic function! As soon as you get control of where you go on the map, you find out that Lexis has screwed up the ship so it can only travel on the land, and that he'll restore more functionality later. Um, excuse me, but if you're going to immediately go back on your action of giving Maxim a mode of transportation by limiting it to the same kind of travel he could do on his own, WHAT WAS THE FUCKING POINT OF MAKING THE CHANGE TO BEGIN WITH? Not only is it stupid and pointless and needlessly divorces the remake from the original that was respected and part of why people bought the remake to begin with, it's also a pretty weak example of writing--I mean, come on, Lexis removed the major function that would allow his craft to travel to the temple that he and Maxim knows is the central location for the world-changing events currently unfolding? All this needless change did was create a noticeably poorly-written cop-out! And this won't be the only instance of the game immediately having to go back on a change it made to the original for no reason, either. No, sir.

5. Hey, for that matter, how exactly does one modify a sea-faring vessel in the course of a few hours to be fully and only capable of traveling on solid terrain? I can suspend some disbelief with mad science in magical fantasy worlds, but that's just stupid.

6. Let's talk about the looks of the main characters, shall we? I was going to relegate these all to individual points, but I can't pretend that visuals are that important, so we'll just cover them all with one nitpick.

First of all, Maxim. Rather than be a well-groomed fellow with a dependable-looking build like in Lufia 2, SquareEnix has transformed Maxim into a leather-wearing Anime Biker Bishounen stereotype. Wasn't the point of updating the graphics of this game to make things look BETTER than their sprite origins? Way to fail on that, SquareEnix.

Next is Lexis. Apparently, just having Lexis's role be strictly relegated to science-related subjects wasn't enough for SquareEnix--they really, really felt you HAD to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Lexis was about science and nothing else. And so, they made him a body double for Doctor Emmet Brown. Nice work on subtle character design there, guys.

Every time I look at Iris I get annoyed. Why the hell did they make her look like an albino goth? It takes you hours to start taking anything she says seriously because of how ridiculous she looks.

You know, I actually can't say I was particularly fond of Tia's original look--frankly, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish her from a random NPC. But it was STILL better than this game, wherein she cosplays Launchpad McQuack.

Dekar could almost look decent if not for the fact that they changed his Anime Cliche Blue Spiky Hair into an obnoxiously pale pink Vanilla Ice look.

And oh hey, an albino bishounen elf in a robe. Thanks a lot for the meaningful visual change to Artea, SquareEnix. I'm sure your decision to make this alteration to his appearance had only the most artistic of motivations.

7. At this point, this is almost a given for a SquareEnix game (although I am told that Natsume handled this part), but I should note that the voice acting is...pretty bad. It's not the late 1990s any more, developers. There's a large pool of voice acting talents who know what they're doing to choose from now. Get with the fucking program, for God's sake.

8. Why did they make the world map one of those Select Your Destination things? What, was the sheer processing power and scope of the 16-bit Super Nintendo game's map too much for the poor technology of 2010? Doing this isn't just a pointless change that takes that much more of the game out of your hands, it also screws up the presentation of Lufia's world. In a game like Final Fantasy 10, or Final Fantasy Tactics, these location-selecting maps are okay because the game's entire scope takes place in a limited area of its world. FFT takes place in a single country, Ivalice, while FF10 takes place in a large area called Spira--we're never given much indication that there's anything outside of Spira, meaning that Spira COULD very well be the entire world, but the overall presentation nonetheless comes off as that of a fictional LAND, rather than a fictional PLANET. World maps you travel on manually, like in Lufia 2, help you to interpret the size of the fantasy world you traverse properly, helping to instill the sense that this is a functionally large world from the fact that you have to spend time to go through it, and you can only see a small chunk of it at a time. Putting a whole world map on the screen and having you select from a list of locations almost invariably makes the geographical scope of the game seem much smaller. This makes the entire world of Lufia 2 seem stupidly small, and certainly doesn't help to lessen the feeling of disappointment at how much is missing--more on that later.

9. The start of the game in the remake has Maxim just jumping into a dungeon to find and fight Gades. In the original Lufia 2, Maxim was a professional monster-hunter who kept his town safe by killing monsters in the area, and he only found out about the coming threat of the Sinistrals by the words of the enigmatic Iris, who charged him with a mission of saving mankind. It was a bit cliche, but it was handled well enough that it also felt like a proper start to an epic tale of heroism and so on. In this beginning, he's just tossed straight into the world-saving bit unceremoniously, with his motivation and history being at best vaguely referenced later. The original's beginning was better, and this fast-forward to the action in the remake leaves something to be desired.

10. Maxim's general mannerisms and personality suit his new look, which isn't a good thing. The original Maxim was a respectable warrior, friend, and man who seemed like a believable, decent, dependable person that fit the role of a legendary hero well. This new Maxim is just another dime-a-dozen anime-style teen hero, which is not nearly as interesting or likable.

11. Hey, you know how I said Lexis looked like Doc Brown's clone? Well, it ain't just the looks, actually, his personality's been transformed into a generic mad scientist rip-off. Hell, he even says "Great Scott" at one point. The original Lexis's presentation was realistic and mildly creative in how natural a person he felt like to the audience--even if we didn't see much of him outside of his role as the team's science guy, he at least felt like he was a person, not just a one-dimensional stereotype. Now, however, he just comes off as Dr. Insano's lame dad.

12. Okay, I don't usually care about having much challenge in an RPG since gameplay doesn't matter to me anyway, but getting 5 level-ups for free as a reward for dying is IDIOTIC.

13. Why does Maxim ask himself "Do the Sinistrals really exist?" when he's actively seeking one out to fight him after hearing said Sinistral announce his candidacy for World Dictator to the entire planet's population via global megaphone?

14. Now, I don't remember Lufia 2 mentioning this point at all one way or another, but I got the impression that, in the original game, magic-using people weren't all that rare. Some couldn't use magic, like Guy and Dekar, but as most of the people who joined your party were able to (Maxim, Tia, Selan, Lexis, and Artea), and as little was really said about this ability for most of those members, I can only conclude that it wasn't considered a huge rarity for people to use it. So why change the game's world to make magic-using humans rare? There's no significant change it makes to the plot. I admit that this is a nitpick since it doesn't make the game WORSE, either, but it DOES stand as a prime example of all the completely unnecessary, pointless changes made to a game that functioned excellently as it was.

15. Instead of being the enigmatic watcher and guardian of Maxim throughout his journey, whose benevolence and knowledge is ever a source of curiosity to Maxim, Iris is now someone who just travels along with the party. This completely changes her very important role in the game, and the loss of the mysterious guiding figure lessens the story's ability to draw us in.

16. "Solider." "That laugh of your's." "Someone from Parcelyte has to make Gades pays for." Natusme's editors are so competent.

17. Why the hell would Iris introducing herself as "Maxim's new partner for his journey" make Tia think she means that she's Maxim's new wife? I know Tia was always somewhat jealously sensitive to Maxim's being around other women, but this is an idiotic exaggeration.

18. What the fuck is an energy core? This world isn't supposed to have modern technology! And why the fuck do they need it to power their DOORS? Not a single goddamn thing is accomplished for the game's events by introducing this inexplicable magical device that changes the world's technological level completely. What the HELL? Why?

19. I've already mentioned the change in Lexis for the worse as a character, but it bears mentioning that even the intended effect of the change--stressing Lexis's scientific pursuits--is less than the original Lufia 2's version. Frankly, the new Lexis's going irrationally bonkers whenever he encounters any technology of interest, it, well, it makes it less convincing, somehow. I mean, just throwing in such an exaggerated reaction isn't actually a very convincing way to say "This guy is a scientist." He seems more like a nut. Lufia 2's Lexis had an intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm that befits a scientist. He treated scientific pursuits and his interests with a scholarly eagerness, and it far more convinced an audience that he was a man of science than the new Lexis's fanaticism.

20. I'm sorry, how does Maxim noting that a mechanical bridge is incredible prompt Lexis saying "Now you can see how manly I am!" in response? Like, where the hell did THAT come from?

21. So...Parcelyte has the jeweler who crafts the Ruby Apple, is the home town of Guy, AND is where Selan is from. They basically just rolled 3 separate towns and arcs of the plot into 1! And the later Bound Kingdom combines 2 separate towns and arcs, as well, as does the Grahtze Empire. Having several towns and cities across an expansive world helps to build the idea that the world is big and well-populated. Cramming everything together into half a dozen locations this way makes the whole world of the remake feel smaller than the scope of events in RPGs that take place in one specific part of the world only--I feel like there's more people and land mass in any given Suikoden country than in this game's entire world.

22. If you're going to fuck up the entire role of Iris in the game so that you can clumsily force her into the party, then why the hell just have her sit on her ass on the ship when the team has to go through a dungeon? Although she rarely does anything when she IS with the party in dungeons and whatnot. What was the point in making her a constant companion if you're going to ignore her presence as much as you would have in her previous, true role? Throughout this remake, Iris's occasional role in events could have been served exactly as well had she been a recurring event character as she was in the original. She takes no significant part in the various conversations characters have with each other in the gaps between plot events, so what was the point in making her present for them? And most idiotic of all, comparing what actions Iris takes and events she influences, you'll see that she actually did considerably MORE stuff, and took part in more important conversations that would influence her perspective, in the original!* That's not just a Fail, that's a Cyclical Fail, a Fail that goes along its merry, sucky little way and accidentally plows into its own ass!

23. A suitcase that can shoot boxing gloves. Really. THAT'S the weapon you chose to change Tia's armament to, SquareEnix? Something a Looney Tune character would have too much dignity to use?

24. Tia's personality has been made much too feisty and assertive. This wouldn't necessarily have been a bad change--I would have preferred the more serious Tia, but that would have just been personal preference--but for the fact that the writers don't handle the changed character very well, and thus her new, spunkier attitude just seems mildly annoying most of the time.

25. Berty and Bart weren't exactly subtle, serious thieves in Lufia 2, but their incarnations in this game, Berty and Betty, are absurd. They're actually MORE annoying and excessively dramatic than Team Rocket, for God's sake!

26. It's Maxim who's supposed to be fine with giving Rochy a false Ruby Apple, and Tia who's supposed to be opposed to it, not the other way around. This further screws up each character's development and personality, and ruins the entire point of the sidequest--the original purpose of it in Lufia 2 was to have Maxim decide to give Rochy the false Ruby Apple, but only so that he could then give the reward for it to Jaffy, who was supposed to be in unfair debt to Rochy, so in the end, the payment for Jaffy's craftsmanship and effort goes to Jaffy. This is a fair ending for everyone, and shows that Maxim values the spirit of justice, not the letter of its law. In this remake, it's a diversion from the plot whose only purpose is technical (to get the player used to Tia and her Grappling Hook) that has lost any intellectual or spiritual significance.

27. Why the Mystic Stone Board? The game already rewards you for poor gaming with 5 free levels every time you fail. What is the need for ANOTHER way to make the game easier? My only guess is that they hoped adding needless extra complexities to the gameplay would pad the game out a bit.

28. Making Idura into the local priest for Parcelyte adds nothing to the story or character in this remake worth mentioning; in fact, it's slightly detrimental, since establishing a previous personality and role in his community makes his sudden, unexplained change to evil seem strange. At least with a goon who had no backstory, as Idura was in Lufia 2, you don't have any previously established personality for the guy and thus his being an evil jerk isn't out of character.

29. The showdown with Idura to save Jessy is just fucking terrible. I don't care if you do think your boyfriend is a muscle-bound oaf sometimes. If you're in mortal peril, having been kidnapped by a psychotic magic-using jackass who worships malevolent gods of destruction, and your boyfriend has fought his way through a dungeon of murderous monsters and risked his life to save you, YOU DON'T FUCKING GIGGLE WHEN YOUR KIDNAPPER CALLS HIM A MEATHEAD.

30. As a follow-up to the previous grievance, you don't immediately hurl around a lot of insults about your boyfriend's intelligence right after he SAVES YOUR LIFE. Way to make Jessy real fucking classy, remake.

31. Guy's direct and thick-headed nature is over-played. A LOT. Occasionally being slow on the uptake was part of Guy's personality in Lufia 2; in this game, the entirety of his personality and development consist of people (including he himself) informing him that he's a stupid, brainless lummox. He seriously cannot say 3 sentences without the game reminding us again and again that he is a dumb chunkhead. It gets real old, REAL fast.

32. Guy and Jessy's relationship is supposed to involve some light verbal sparring and good-natured disagreement. It's not supposed to be 90% Jessy complaining about how stupid he is.

33. Where is Hilda, Guy's sister? What purpose was there in removing her from the game? I mean, I admit that Jessy can take Hilda's role as kidnapped bait early on just as well, and that from that point on Hilda didn't have too much plot importance anyway so Jessy alone suffices, but there's still no need to cut her altogether. Did they get rid of her because they wanted to have Guy's rescuing Jessy make their relationship more real to the player? Because that sure as hell didn't work out thanks to how they handled it (see points 29 and 30). Frankly, I would have welcomed Hilda's presence, as she might have managed to be 1 single person in Guy's life who wouldn't tell him over and over that he's stupid as shit.

34. Tia was not thrilled at having Selan around in the original Lufia 2, but she was a classy enough person not to just be whiny, hostile, and generally belligerent towards Selan like a put-out preteen. This game's Tia, of course, manages not to have this basic level of adult dignity.

35. If the remake is going to keep the scene where Selan admits that Maxim isn't a bad leader, it should have kept the scene where she has an issue with having him lead her to begin with! This scene just comes off as disjointed and coming out of nowhere without the progenitor that it was meant to have!

36. Tia's poorly-written bitchiness is not only an inferior change to her character, but it doesn't even make sense at times. Why would Tia resent the fact that Selan is allowed to hit switches to lower obstructions to the group's path when Selan is the only one with a tool that can do so anyway, and when it was already explicitly mentioned previously that Selan's presence in the group was good, because they needed a military officer, such as she, to open the obstructing gates? Apparently it's not enough to make Tia bitchy for no reason, they have to also make her a petulant child.

37. In Lufia 2, the point of the scene where Tia gets separated from the group by wandering off by herself was to establish that Maxim and Selan are both alike in having a reflexive, unthinking desire to save those around them, even if it's reckless to do so. Keeping the scene but removing that part of it renders the whole thing meaningless, and robs Maxim and Selan of important character and relationship development!

38. I don't care if she IS feeling meaninglessly indignant because people actually have the gall to laud praise on Selan for contributing to their quest, Tia's running off on her own after JUST having been saved from death that came as a result of her running off on her own and rebuked for doing so is IDIOTIC!

39. I don't really see the point of changing Prince Alex's character development in this new version. In Lufia 2, he was an arrogant prince who thought he could take anything on and was way stronger than his soldiers, who he basically patronized. He eventually learned his own limits and what his proper role as a prince was when he learned that his prowess as a warrior was largely imagined, which ended with him apologizing to Dekar and realizing that he could learn a lot on how to be a better man from him. The remake's take on Alex being a youngster who's too eager to be tough isn't terrible, but it's neither executed nor concluded as well. And that's really too bad, because, since the overall events of the Prince Alex plot arc are the same in either version, this was yet another thing that DIDN'T NEED TO CHANGE AT ALL.

40. That's right, Lufia 2 remake. Add an over-the-top comic sound effect and give people sweat drops when Dekar talks about being great at picking up the ladies. Really show us just how well you understand SUBTLETY.

41. In neither the original nor this remake is it in Selan's character to lose her cool about Gades's second attack on Parcelyte and go off to take him on herself. In all previous situations in either game, it's been shown that she is cool-headed, analytical, and highly competent.** SquareEnix is clumsily trying to force Maxim and Selan's relationship's growth the only way an incompetent company knows how--have the male save the female from doom that she's either too weak to save herself from, or (as in this case) has brought on herself by being irrationally emotional. In this imbecilic way, the miserable hacks at SquareEnix hope to compensate for having cut out a significant portion of the characters' interactions and disrupted the subtle romantic growth that the original Lufia 2 portrayed. They try to explain it later using a rather trite backstory they make up about Selan blaming herself for her reliance on her former captain leading him to his death, but that doesn't explain why she completely lost her head in the matter, since there's every indication thus far that her outstanding military discipline and mentality are the strongest part of her character.

42. Oh yeah, awesome, so Gades's True Form reveals that he is actually...a flying building. And I thought being menaced by a dastardly tree in Final Fantasy 5 was anticlimactic.

43. They really overplay Dekar's tendency to boast about being not only the best at swordsmanship, but also the best at whatever else happens to be going on at that moment. I mean, I admit that I DO quite enjoy the line "The other thing I'm the best at is doing things I don't understand with my energy waves!" But even a good joke gets old when it's told too many times.

44. Speaking of those energy waves! Personal energy waves were a part of Lufia 2, but you can't seem to have a single conversation regarding the Sinistrals without hearing energy waves mentioned at least 3 times in this version. When you mention them that damn often, the audience starts to really want to know what the hell they actually are and the details about them, since they apparently are an integral part of 3/4ths of the game's plot events...knowledge which the game never really sees fit to adequately grace us with. To be fair, Lufia 2 didn't, either--but it wasn't dropping the term every 4 sentences, either, so it wasn't drawing the audience's curiosity as much. If you're going to wave a wand and say "An energy wave did it" for roughly half of all the plot events in the entire game, then your audience needs to have a damn good understanding of this plot device for it not to seem like it's lazy and incompetent writing. Which they don't, and thus it does.

45. The romance building up to Selan's confession of loving Maxim is ludicrously short, underdeveloped, and spontaneous. In the extremely short time she's known him--short even compared to how long she'd known him in the original, and I admit, it wasn't all that long back then--she's barely interacted with him, and most of those few interactions have been unrelated to their getting to know each other, respect each other, feel out one another's personalities, anything. The issue of her accepting the need to rely on Maxim happens almost immediately before she lets him know she loves him; she hasn't had time to emotionally adjust to her realizations, and yet she's already deciding that she loves him for it! And besides the fact that they quite literally know nearly nothing about one another, Maxim has not had the time (nor personality) to really do anything to impress Selan in regards to his character--the game's rushed through so many events and cut so much out of the plot that Maxim doesn't come off as any more or less heroic or noteworthy than anyone else in his team at all. Even if I feel Lufia 2 did rush things a little with their falling for each other, it was at least mostly believable, and you could see actual foundations for their emotional connection there. Here, it's ludicrously spontaneous.

46. Oh, hey, yeah, great...change Selan's focal point of character development early on and the only issue she and Maxim really interact over from her coming to trust other people to fight with her as equals as it was in Lufia 2, to her coming to accept that she needs help sometimes and it's okay to be saved by Maxim. The difference between the 2 versions is subtle, but telling--in the original, the issue is trusting others as peers and leaders and the events that develop this involve Maxim proving himself capable, but in the remake, the issue is whether she can be okay with needing help, and the event that develops this is her failing and Maxim having to rescue her and carry her on his back. So while the founding principles for this character development are similar, it's the remake that takes it in a direction that can be seen as the female needing the big, strong man to save her and finish the job that she can't do herself.

47. For that matter, Maxim's side of the romantic build-up is even worse. Even if it's a terrible idea, Selan's falling in love with Maxim because he taught her that she can depend on someone else to save her less than 5 minutes ago is still SOME reason for her to emotionally attach to him. What's happened in the short time he's known her that's made him love her? She's done nothing for him on an emotional level, had very little to say to him, evoked little reaction in him besides a desire to make her accept his help, he hasn't made any mention of her being attractive to him in any way...there's nothing there on any level! You'll probably have a better understanding of whoever you sit next to on a 2-hour flight than he has of her!

48. You know, if you're going to keep Tia a part of the story after the part where she left for good in the original version--a change which I think is utterly meaningless to begin with, incidentally--maybe you should have cut out the original's line where she SAYS SHE'S LEAVING. Because it kind of seems a little misleading when she's back on screen less than 5 minutes later!

49. Tia and Dekar, ladies and gentlemen. Tia and Dekar. A love so pure and convincing, it had to be born off screen, in the space of 2 minutes real-time, done solely because it just wouldn't be right if there were anyone in the main cast who wasn't hooked up! Apparently, SquareEnix is getting advice on character romance decisions from a 14-year-old Fanfiction.net addict.

50. Okay, seriously, Jeros has way too much hair for a newborn infant. I don't have as much hair on my head as he does! Has anyone at SquareEnix actually SEEN a baby before?

51. "This is getting me excited!" THAT'S what you say when your friend and his wife come running to you and say that their baby has been kidnapped by a psychotic cult member? That is NOT the appropriate response, Lexis!

52. I'm pretty sure that Dekar saying the phrase, "I live by love, but I won't be chained to it" in reference to his girlfriend Tia wanting a baby does not, in fact, mean "Guy should be more open about his feelings for his girlfriend Jessie." That really just is not a valid interpretation of Dekar's statement no matter how you look at it.

53. Iris's development into a more human character is sloppy and not at all believable--particularly when a major scene for her development, the scene where she gives Leefa the flower and names it Priphea, actually has most of Iris's dialogue being basically the same as the scene was in the original Lufia 2--but in the original, it was SELAN saying them! How exactly do you use dialogue to develop a character when it was written for and said by someone ELSE who was a very different person? Even when this game keeps things the same as in the original, it STILL manages to screw it up somehow!

54. The spoken lines for Berty and Betty during the tank boss fight in Gratze are so stupid and fucking annoying as to defy description.

55. Why the hell does Tia get mad and claim that Guy's killed them all when he smashes up the Grahtze missile that the party is riding? They're riding an armed, fired warhead speeding towards its target! What, the team would have had a BETTER chance of surviving the missile's descent by staying on it and being at the very heart of its explosion?

56. What kind of idiot asks if the reason her boyfriend is surprised to see her is because he's cheating on her? It seems fairly obvious that Guy is surprised by Jessie's sudden entrance because she has just appeared out of nowhere halfway across the world from their home! But hey, by all means, remake, make Jessie MORE of a unlikable and highly illogical bitch for no reason.

57. Going back to how poorly Iris is characterized in this remake for a moment, in Lufia 2, Iris's subtle character development came significantly from her observations of people as she watched Maxim, being mentioned here and there during her appearances in small speeches that gave you a fairly good idea of what and how she was learning. In this game, though, these subtle monologues and dialogues are replaced with numerous choppy, awkward one-line observations like, "You are funny people," or "This weapon is amazing" and having nothing of significance to expand on these notes with. Call me strict, but I don't think that statements like "Grass is green" and "Water is wet" really count as acceptable character development.

58. Why the hell does Artea have a gun in the remake? Just...why? What was the point of THAT? He could have been a long-distance attacker with his bow and arrow equipment from the original game just fine! He's a member of an elven community that abhors technology and he lives a spiritual life in commune with Nature. How does it make sense that he would own and use a weapon more technologically advanced than almost anything else in the world? You don't exactly whittle a high-tech projectile energy weapon from wood, you know!

59. It is said at one point in the remake that Amon, Sinistral of Chaos, would not be so successful in creating his chaos if people could just learn to trust one another. This is not particularly well thought-out. Wouldn't unquestioningly trusting others make you MORE of a target for Amon's lies and deceptions, since, y'know, you'd just believe whatever damn thing he or one of his flunkies told you?

60. The more it's used, the more Karyn's song in the remake seems less like something naturally comforting and soothing and more like brainwashing. I mean, it's stated that it has soothing energy waves in it, so it's essentially a mood-altering form of plot-magic, and watching the scene where it's used in Elcid to instantly turn frightened children into completely enthused and reassured supporters of Maxim is...well, it just all really seems a lot like mind control. Like...emphasis on the words "REALLY" and "A LOT." I'm not entirely sure that this is such a morally acceptable tool for Maxim to use to get people to calm down.

61. Maybe the reason that Milka's absent father is never discussed in the original Lufia 2 is because it is rude and more than a little outrageous that someone (Tia) would interrogate someone she just met YESTERDAY (Artea) about whether he's the kid's illegitimate father, and if not, pressing him for information on who was. And THEN pushing the subject further by urging him to totally hook up with his dead friend's wife. Seriously, Tia, you have known Artea for 2 DAYS IN TOTAL. It really just isn't appropriate for you to be harassing him about his personal life, even considering that this terrible game has ineptly warped your personality to that of a pushy, obnoxious twit.

62. Regarding the remake's Albert character: Okay, I realize that 50 years is a long time, but somehow, it seems to me that if a guy finds the ultimate hidden temple where the world's most legendary and powerful sword lies, and has an emotionally traumatizing event in said temple that changes his life forever, then that guy shouldn't FORGET the location of the temple's entrance.

63. Adding Albert and Elaine's little side story to the remake makes the following part of the scene where Daos takes the Dual Blade less sensible. After all, the conclusion of this new side story has Maxim resonating his energy waves with Dual Blade to calm it and bring it under control. In Lufia 2, Daos's proving initially to be the more worthy master of Dual Blade is surprising, but there's really no precedent to indicate that Maxim has what it takes to wield it properly, so it's believable. But in this new version, Maxim has proved literally minutes before that he has the ability to control the sword, to direct it with his will! The only significant impact that adding Albert and Elaine's little side show has on anything is to lessen the logical integrity of this crucial scene.

64. It's time for another Good Idea, Bad Idea.
Good Idea: Getting the help of 2 thieves to help you sneak in somewhere.
Bad Idea: Getting the help of 2 loudmouth thief-wannabes who have all the subtlety and quiet of a marching band to help you sneak in somewhere.
Seriously, Berty and Betty get found out every damn time they do anything, and once they have your attention, they relish keeping it, as obnoxiously as possible. Those 2 are the last individuals on the planet that Maxim should be asking for help from for infiltration missions!

65. Why is Leon's word allowed to supersede Thea's on what the Gratze Empire will and won't do for Maxim? Isn't she the daughter of the emperor, while whatever hand in official state policy Leon has with Gratze Empire is solely based on his marrying into HER royal family? If Thea wants to give Maxim the city's energy core, Leon's say on the subject shouldn't matter.

66. Wow, President Miles. You learn a couple folks you're talking to are thieves, and you immediately suggest they go rob your wealthiest citizen. Kind of a dick move there, buddy.

67. In the remake, when Tia's group is confronted with a device that will need to be manipulated to continue, Tia's lack of immediate understanding of how it works is patronized with the statement, "Maybe some day you'll understand." It's a fucking energy augmenting machine the likes of which Tia will probably never see again. Either she gets it or she doesn't, and either way, it's not that big a deal since you don't have to understand the thing to interact with it.

68. Actually, wouldn't it make more sense for Tia, the girl who's expressed a mild interest in doohickeys and who knows the famous inventor Lexis personally, to know what the energy augmenting machine is, rather than Selan, whose job and hobbies (both of which are "Be A Soldier") don't have any particular connection to high technology?

69. In the original Lufia 2, Dekar made his return on the eve of the final battle between gods and men, arriving on the back of a whale to explosively destroy a legion of huge monsters in order for his friends to be able to leave so they can race to the final battle. In this remake, Dekar makes his return by...walking into a room and telling his prince that things will turn out okay. That's about as far a step down as it gets.

70. While the new reason Iris has for watching over Maxim is not actually a terrible idea for a villain (to make everyone believe in him so that when she kills him, the world's hope is completely crushed), the original Lufia 2's role for Iris as the one Arek the Absolute sent to observe the humans and determine whether it really was the gods who deserved to rule the planet had a grander feel to it. Not to mention that Iris's role in this seems nonsensically superfluous anyway--Daos's ability to completely terrify pretty much everyone on the planet accomplishes the same goal as destroying their hope anyway, and will certainly have as much of a lasting diminishing effect on people's thoughts of resistance as destroying Maxim will. The whole "Build up the perfect hero, then destroy him to utterly crush all hopes of resistance" idea is good and sensible, but only IF you don't already have another way to mentally subjugate all of humanity more readily available to you--which Daos clearly does have!

71: The plan to crush the world's hope using Maxim's death would be better for a different set of villains--the Sinistrals were, in the original Lufia 2, convincing deities of cataclysm because, while interested in exterminating humanity, they forever saw it as nothing more than insects before them. When you're an evil god and you know it, and regard mortals as no more than vexing ants to be stamped beneath your godly heel, you don't care about what those mortal bugs feel, whether or not they feel any hope of opposing you. The original Sinistrals sold their position of malevolent power greatly through their ego and indifference; the remake's Sinistrals have a concern for humanity's actions that's out of place for their role.

72: You know what strikes me as mind-fuckingly amazing when I watch the conversation Selan and Maxim have before they leave for the final battle in the remake? If you compare it to the original version, you will find that the original version--you know, the one released over a decade ago during an age famous for its poor translations, by a company with fewer resources than SquareEnix has currently--actually had THE BETTER TRANSLATION. And it's not like the problem is a poor translations of ideas that were added or changed in this version--this conversation is actually one of the few things that SquareEnix didn't significantly change the core of. Selan, Maxim, Guy, and Artea are all saying the same things as in the original--they're just using worse English to do so. This means that SquareEnix could have, for most of the scene, used the same dialogue line for line, and it would have been better. The localization team for SquareEnix is already behind the times in levels of competence, but this is a low moment, even for them.

73. One of the things the remake adds is Gades briefly waxing philosophical on evolution and his connection to it after the final rematch with him. Uh....what exactly did evolution have to do with this rematch with Gades, and his return to life in general? He wasn't any different or better than before, which is sort of what evolution is supposed to be about. And for that matter, how exactly is destruction the ultimate path of evolution, as he claims? That's a philosophy too bizarre and vague to just toss out there with no explanation, because without further elaboration, the statement really has no meaning.

74. Maxim's refusal to fight Erim is ridiculous. It's one thing in RPGs when a hero can't bring himself to face a loved one in combat when it's a case of the person being tricked or mind controlled into doing battle, or at the very least, someone the hero's known and cared for dearly for a long time. But Maxim is throwing the fight against someone who has willingly betrayed him, who has explained that she was never on his side and has taken long, elaborate measures to ensure a death for him that will doom the world. And it's not even like she's THAT important a person to him! He's only known her for small periods of time over the course of a year, and quite frankly, the emotional connection between Iris and him in this game is far from convincing--in fact, I think the emotional ties between these 2 were far better portrayed in the original--so it's hard to really believe that he would seriously refuse to fight against her when the entire world's population is depending on him to make it to and defeat Daos, including Maxim's baby son. We REALLY are expected to believe that he's not going to give his all to keep everyone he knows and cares about safe in this battle because he doesn't want to bruise the fragile goddess of death who's told him their friendship was just a roundabout way of killing him?

75. Goddammit SquareEnix, the temperature of one's hands really does not have any goddamn thing to do with how good a person they are.

76. In Lufia 2, the Dual Blade looked like a sword. In Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, it...well, I don't know WHAT it looks like, really, but it sure as hell isn't a sword, and the shape, likely weight distribution, and size imply that it would be pretty damn difficult to USE it as a sword, too. Here, just look at this damn thing:

Dumb even by RPG weapon standards.

If when rotated 180 degrees your sword looks like a fucking toucan's face, you have FAILED as a blacksmith.

77: So let me get this straight--if you bought this game when it came out, you were paying $30--you know, the average cost of a regular, brand new game made from scratch--for a remake of a game about a decade and a half old that's had about a third of its content and play time erased. You guys know by now that I'm not a fan of the amount companies charge for rereleases, but at least with those, you're getting the FULL GAME when you pay for it a second time. With this, you're paying a new, complete game's full price for an adaptation that's only 60% there. I realize that the overhaul in gameplay and graphics and such is a significant cost, but just how much of that is offset by how much they didn't have to spend because they'd needlessly cut it?

78. Oh, and hey, part of the later half of the game that was cut out of this version? It included some of the good characterization given to Maxim and Selan regarding their relationship with one another. Actually paying attention to the continued love between husband and wife and some issues that come up for them to overcome was one of the several great things that Lufia 2 did that was noteworthy and unique. In this version, though, barely a word is mentioned about their marriage from the moment they finish saving Jeros halfway through the game until the talk before the final battle. Jeez...what good parts of Lufia 2 this remake didn't outright destroy, it just removed entirely.

79. Why the change of dialogue in the ending regarding the wound to Artea's eye? In the original Lufia 2, Milka noticed during the ending that Artea's eye was wounded. He reassured her that it was "alright," and that it wouldn't kill him. This is, of course, one of Lufia 2's countless moments of setting up Lufia 1's events, in this case the fact that 99 years later Artea has gone blind from this injury. Him saying it won't kill him is fine, since it clearly doesn't, and does leave the possibility that the injury is still serious enough that it will eventually blind him. It's not the BEST way of writing in this eventually blinding injury, I'll grant you, but it at least is reasonable. In this remake, however, Artea assures Milka that it "is not serious." The original at least didn't DENY that it was a serious wound, just saying that it wouldn't kill him. But by just flat-out saying it's not a serious injury, there's the implication that this injury WON'T ever amount to any permanent damage. So if this remake still intends to set up Lufia 1's events the way the original Lufia 2 did (not that there isn't already plenty of other stuff that would contradict the succeeding game anyway), then it has stupidly changed the dialogue to be worse suited for its purposes than the original game's. And if the remake is NOT trying to set up the later game's events the way the original did...then what's the bloody point of having the eye injury to begin with?

80. Hey there, kids! Are you not happy with the original ending of Lufia 2? Are you too shallow to appreciate an ending where the main hero dies, no matter how excellently created it may be? Are you willing to believe the most contrived plot-hole-creating horse shit without question or complaint so long as everything is happy sunshine with bunnies, peaches, and sprinkles in the end? Do you just have a hateful loathing for anything even remotely resembling intelligent, or even competent, storytelling? If you answered yes to those questions, then has SquareEnix got a treat for you: the new, secret New Game+ True Ending for Lufia 2's remake! Thrill as all emotional impact of one of the greatest endings in RPG history is sucked out instantly thanks to Maxim and Selan NOT dying in the new ending! "Ooh" and "Ahh" at the utterly ridiculous way that Iris defies what's actually been shown by the game to be her death and inexplicably comes back to life just long enough to provide a nonsensical reason for why Maxim can apparently increase his personal energies at the drop of a hat! Gleefully ignore the obvious questions running through your head about why the act of pouring all his energies and concentration into saving his son wouldn't already have raised his personal energies as much as possible anyway, and how he could have MORE energy and endurance to provide AFTER going through a long secret boss battle than he would have had he not been in exhausting combat for 20 minutes! Clap and cheer as SquareEnix rubs its unwiped, infected asshole against the tombstone of Lufia 2 in one final, heinous act of defiance against the game that it has brutally murdered!

81. Oh, yeah, remake, that's just great, have Tia crying in the cowardly happy ending, too. Just remove that much more meaning from her character and the ending by having her sob just as hard for the fact that things are okay as she would have for her intuition of Maxim's death.


And there you go. I hope this list shows pretty conclusively why Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals isn't just a fairly lousy RPG in its own right, but also a vile, wretched pile of slop that insults and mocks the classic RPG that it claims to reimagine. I mean, just LOOK at all the shit I've mentioned here--there isn't a single level that SquareEnix's remake does not fail on when compared to its predecessor. The little details are worse. The quality of story-telling and character-developing is worse (and by a lot). What parts of Lufia 2 it keeps, it screws up. What parts of Lufia 2 it removes had impact on the rest of the game that is not eliminated, causing later events to seem spontaneous and strange because they had been meant to rely on concepts and dialogue that's been cut. And what parts it changes are almost invariably made worse by the alteration. And hey, let's not forget, the player was paying the FULL price for a new game, yet only getting a PARTIAL game due to all the events and content of Lufia 2 that's missing in the remake.

Now, in the spirit of fairness, I DID compile a list of the things that Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals changes for the better. I honestly am trying to be objective and reasonable here, and I'll give the remake credit where it's due. So here are the things the remake changes or adds that had any significantly positive influence.


All the Things That Don't Suck About Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals as a Remake of Lufia 2:

1. The tutorial images are kind of cute.

2. Selan's speech to Lamitty, the girl who's being teased, is a bit better and more reasonable in the remake than it was in Lufia 2.

3. Parcelyte's king in Lufia 2 was a little too generic an NPC given how many instances of the plot he was involved in, and the fact that Maxim clearly came to know him on some personal level over the course of the game. The new president having a more distinctive character makes more sense for telling the story.

4. The aftermath of Gades's attack on Parcelyte is handled pretty well--having the city's residents survive because of Selan's constantly training them in evacuation procedures, along with having them witness Maxim's battle and gain hope from it, actually strengthens Selan's character a little, makes Maxim seem more like the bastion of hope that he's meant to be in the game, and helps give the player a little more respect for each of them.

5. Although the Sinistrals taking such an interest in human affairs is lessening to their roles, as I mentioned above, I do appreciate that Amon is now using powers and plans that relate to his theme of Chaos. The original didn't seem to really do much that showed him to be a god of Chaos specifically.


And that's it. Now, I do appreciate these changes here, and a couple of them are reasonably significant (the Lamitty speech and Parcelyte aftermath). But there's 5 good differences against 81 bad ones, and none of those 5 can compare to the severity of several of the 81's, like fucking up the ending and ruining characters' development and personalities.

Overall, Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals is a lazy, shoddy, sloppy piece of work. And when you look at the game it used as its template, it becomes revolting, even tragic. This is a level of careless incompetence destroying a good product that rivals that of George Lucas and Joe Quesada. Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals is a bad RPG, it's an utterly repulsive remake, and pretty much everything about its existence makes my soul violently ill.










* Oh, but wait, she was mildly amused by that one conversation the party had at the tower. Well, what MORE could an audience want as explanation for why a deity of entropy would have a change of heart and go against everything in her nature? Surely there's no more realistic and powerful cure for moral dilemmas than a case of the giggles!

** I will give you that Selan is later emotional to the point of irrationality regarding the safety of her newborn son, Jeros...but it's a realistic expectation that new motherhood's overpowering protective instincts would cause this in anyone.