More FFX: After trying my hand at the Butterfly Catcher and Chocobo Racing minigames without winning (I got my Chocobo time down to roughly 7 seconds, though), I think I've come to the conclusion that I don't need the Celestial Weapons. Or the Dark Aeons, for that matter; Yojimbo seems to kill practically everything in one attack except for Dark Valefor.

Let's see whether I can conquer my obsessive-compulsive side and beat the game without all of these things...

You've made the right choice.

I prefer to customise ordinary weapons myself anyway.

Haven't touched my Wii since Tuesday, was out last night

Gonna see if I can grab an hour or two tonight

I'm very excited about Metroid Prime 3. I plan to get the Wii online (maybe not at my present house, alas, but I'll see), buy a Gamecube controller, and fish around bargain bins in stores And St.B has my old Gamecube, so I can borrow games from her...

On the topic of the FFX minigames: I think I wouldn't mind having to play them over and over again if they weren't designed so badly - and many of them are. The Butterfly Catcher game suffers from the graphical depiction - it's very difficult to figure out where in space the butterflies are, since there's little depth perception. Especially when several of the red buggers are very close together, it's largely down to luck whether you can evade them or not. Luck also plays into the Chocobo races to a much larger extent than it should. Sometimes the balloons line up perfectly; sometimes they do, but for the teacher, not for you. And another major design flaw in both of these minigames is that you can't skip the rest of the game once you cannot win it any more. Miss out on the first couple of balloons because the teacher gets there first, through no fault of your own, or bump into one of the red butterflies that can almost not be avoided, and you know you can't win. But you still have to wait for the time to be over, or you still have to get to the end of the race. That's simply not fun. Blitzball is different, because you can practice your own skills as well as those of your players, even if you're losing - but in the end, many of the minigames feel more like punishment to me than anything else.

Yeah, for me no FF game has had minigames to rival VII's g-bike, especially not X. The good thing is you don't have to play them over and over again. If I were you I would rush to the end of the game now and enjoy the story, rather than hang around doing optional stuff. I find optional number-chasing diminishes my enjoyment of FF games, at least the first time round.

In fact, one time I got a PS2 magazine with a save file for FFX where every ultimate weapon and every overdrive was unlocked, and every character had colonised the entire sphere grid. It was boring as hell, there was nothing to do.

Thing is, I like the optional sidequest in Western-type RPGs (e.g. Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Planescape Torment, Arcanum). I tend to make sure that I complete all of those. It's really the design of the sidequests in FFX that makes me think the game designers developed acute dementia at some point...

But sidequests in western RPGs aren't the same thing as the mini-games in FF. In the games you mentioned the sidequests are missions that NPCs send you on with a miniature story of their own. The mini-games in FF games are just little arcade games built into the game for which you sometimes get bonuses for completing. You can't judge them by the same standards. Thankfully you can ignore them.

Good call, Black Wings. I enjoyed some of the random mini-games from X, but thought of them as little more than just little arcade games in the middle of another game entirely.

quote:

Originally posted by Soulslack:

quote:

Originally posted by Scought:
--Wii already boasts more than 180 games, including 120 downloadable Virtual Consoleâ„¢ titles.

I look at this statistic as a bit misleading. The stat should read that there are already 60 games for the Wii console. The fact that there are a bunch of pre-Wii ports available as well is nice but not as wonderful as having 180 games sounds.

Don't get me wrong - I love, love, love my Wii. I just really can't wait for all the wonderful promised games to get here.



- Soul

I thought the same thing when I saw that. I've really only found a few games that, to me, are worth buying for the Wii at the moment.

The (still needs to buy Twilight Princess) Scott

quote:

Originally posted by Black Wings:
You've made the right choice.

I prefer to customise ordinary weapons myself anyway.

It's just more rewarding to really buff up a weapon yourself. Part of the reason, I did the hunt every monster thing was so that I could get a lot of the components to make my weapons stronger.

The (components to make magic cost less were always the hardest to get) Scott

I remember a combination to put in one of Lulu's dolls that let her cast two ridiculously overpowered spells in one turn for 4 MP. It was awesome and I didn't have to do a bizarre mini-game for it.

I think I made the same weapon, BW. Lulu's minigames were both . . . stupid. I didn't do hers or Kimhari's, the latter mostly because I never used the big blue guy.

Kimahri's my favourite character (except maybe for Auron). I was pissed off because if you use the standard grid he's pretty useless. When I replayed it using the expert grid I had him follow Wakka around and learn all the status change attacks. Still didn't bother getting his ultimate weapon though

I just never found him all that useful. I mean, with Wakka you get the status attack and the only guy in the game who can reliably hit flying opponents with a weapon attack. I didn't get much use out of the . . . thief girl, whatever her name was. Rikku? She was pretty much a one trick pony and a handful of teleport spheres meant that Auron attacked for 10k+ damage and stole from the target.

I just picked up "Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System" (seriously, that's what the box says!). Haven't tried the game yet. Spent a chunk of time watching the bonus "Archive of Final Fantasy XII/Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary DVD."

For every installment of the game starting with II, the narration made a point of explaining in detail who Cid was this time around...

I was very tempted to get the FF XII international, but my flatmate who owns the PS2 is moving out this week, so I'd have nothing to play it on. Also, my Japanese sucks hard core. I'm looking forward to all kinds of Crisis Core swag when I hit the Tokyo Game Show next month though.

quote:

Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
I just never found him all that useful. I mean, with Wakka you get the status attack and the only guy in the game who can reliably hit flying opponents with a weapon attack. I didn't get much use out of the . . . thief girl, whatever her name was. Rikku? She was pretty much a one trick pony and a handful of teleport spheres meant that Auron attacked for 10k+ damage and stole from the target.

I think I used Rikku a lot because it was fun to caste Haste on her.

The (everyone looks funny with Haste) Scott

Wakka's victory gyrations with haste were...creepy.

So far enjoying Wii Zelda very much...glad it went back to 'real' graphics, instead of Wind Waker's cartoonish look. I hope it'll be much longer than Wind Waker, too. My biggest gripe with that game was its shortness.

But all the compulsory story battles in FFX were pretty easy regardless of which characters you used. So I just used the characters I like most and neglected Wakka and Rikku because they annoyed me.