Vaan doesn’t know the first thing about sneaking

Mission 3-2: Rendezvous Round Back in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings really did a number on me. A bad number. Not necessarily 666, but something close to that in terms of cruelty and evilness. First, here’s the mission’s description:

After saving the aegyl, the party heads for the shrine holding the auralith, but a watch has already been posted outside! How does Vaan plan to sneak past?  

And the main objective:

Sneak into the temple; Vaan must survive!

What? SNEAK?! Am I playing Metal Wings Solid here or something? Don’t think so. This is supposed to be a RPG/RTS hybrid…you seen an enemy, you attack it until it is dead. ‘Nuff said. Anyways, Vaan is all alone on the map and must sneak past a good number of guards in order to make it to the shrine’s entrance. Okay, sounds easy enough. Map is pretty small. Nope. Took me FOUR tries to complete this mission.

First try, I walked straight down the map, hid behind a pillar, and, when the first guard was looking the other way, tried to rush past him. Got caught, started fighting him, died a sad, painful death.

Second try, did the same thing, but this time used some brains and applied Vaan’s spell Sprint to the equation. Made it past the first guard, hid behind a tiny airship before trying to sneak around another guard. Only when I went to move, Vaan went in the opposite direction I told him thanks to an invisible barrier and thus got some sword swipes to the face.

Third try, all of the above, this time waiting longer for the second guard to move away. Then it was a mad dash across the screen. However, greed took over, and I just had to open one of the numerous treasure chests on the map. Got caught, got killed.

Fourth try, repeated same steps as before, utilizing Vaan’s Sprint ability as much as possible. Skipped all treasure chests. Tried to sneak by two viera archers guarding the shrine’s entrance, but they discovered me, loosing arrow after arrow my way, and all I had at that point was adrenaline and speed…so I made a beeline for the flag, finally completing the mission with a sliver of health left.

Whew. Also: ASDFGHJKL.

This game was not built for stealth missions. The biggest hurdle is that, unlike in games such as Metal Gear Solid or Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, there’s no indication as to how far an enemy’s perception ranges. Can that soldier see me walking towards him? Can the viera archers view me from afar? If I crossed the enemy’s path here instead of here, am I less visible? It’s a guessing game, in short. Try to sneak by and see if you have the luck of the Irish. Another problem falls on the touchscreen controls and speed that units actually walk at, but that’s kind of a muffin in comparison to the lack of stealth-like details missing from this mountain. Heck, even a simple ! mark above an enemy’s head when they’ve spotted you would help; I just rushed past enemies and had to watch them closely to see if they were following after me or not.

So here’s to me hoping that this was the one and only stealthy mission in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings…

So far, a severe lack of Fran in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

Granted, I’ve only played roughly an hour and fifteen minutes of Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings so far…but come on! Out of that time chunkage, Fran was only on screen for about less than 60 seconds, uttering maybe two lines or so of dialogue. The Mist made her woozy. Yeah, it always does that! She’s allergic! Then her and ever-charming friend-at-hand Balthier disappeared from the story as Vaan and his cohorts went on adventuring and stealing an airship of their own.

As the only non-Hume character playable in Final Fantasy XII, Fran really stood out. Also probably because of the bunny ears, revealing outfit, long legs, and devilishly good lisp. Seriously, one could listen to her talk all day. Get that woman a phonebook to read from! She made playing FFXII feel like an actual fantasy game; sure, the other citizens of Rabanastre helped, as did magically ornamented locales and flying ships…but Fran, as a part of your active troop, helped seal the deal that you were on a quest of a special kind, with a special kind of people. Visiting her fellow viera in the hidden land of Eruyt Village was one of my favorite parts of the game.

And so, Revenant Wings is not doing her justice. Not one lick. Spoiler alert for an old game!

See, at the end of FFXII, it’s believed that both her and Balthier perished during the final battle craziness. That terrible thought was dashed as Vaan later learned–much later, like almost a year later–that the two partners-in-crime were still at it, and that they wanted to meet up to go treasure-hunting, thus giving us the starting point for Revenant Wings. This really short meeting of Vaan and his old friends lacks oophm; it’s supposed to be the first time they’ve seen each other in awhile, since one party thought the other dead actually, and there’s no reunion-like talk, no “hey, remember how Ashe was actually the main character and not you, Vaan?”, nothing; only tips on being a sky pirate from Balthier, a complaint about the Mist from Fran, and then a TTFN (ta-ta for now) if ever there was one.

In short: NEEDS MOAR VIERA LOVELINESS.

PURCHASE OF THE MONTH: Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime and Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

Woah, woah, woah…two games for the Purchase of the Month? Yes. Let me explain.

For about the past year or so, I’ve allowed myself to make one videogame purchase every month. This keeps my wallet safe, this keep my brain at ease during these crazy retail seasons, and this keeps this blog active and alive with new content–well, considering that I’m often late to the party and buy mostly “old” games these posts are not necessarily new content about new content, but new content nonetheless.

Also, a Purchase of the Month does not necessarily mean a top-dog, AAA product retailing for $60 or more. In fact, here’s a rundown of my purchases from this year, as best as I can recall or find out thanks to Grinding Down‘s search function:

• January 2010 – Nothing
• February 2010 – Dragon Age: Origins
• March 2010 – Pokemon HeartGold
• April 2010 – Borderlands
• May 2010 – Picross 3D, The Saboteur
• June 2010 – Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
• July 2010 – Limbo, Dragon Quest IX, LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4
• August 2010 –  Scott Pilgrim VS. The World: The Game
• September 2010 – Mini Ninjas
• October 2010 – Chrono Trigger DS, Fallout: New Vegas
• November 2010 – Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings
• December 2010 – ???

Hmm. Might have forgotten some XBLA titles in there. Now, of those listed, only a few were brand new retail copies; about 75% were purchased for less than $25 each, which I think is a great amount to spend on a videogame that may or may not give you a good amount of playtime. So, if I’m not looking for a big name retail game, I’m looking more for something in my secondary price range. The fact that both purchases of this month were released well over three years ago definitely helped with this–DQH: Rocket Slime was $6.99, and FFXII: Revenant Wings was $14.99. Perfect, I said to myself and not out loud as that would be a bit weird.

Right now, with the way life is–married, working, stressing, worrying, not drawing, not writing, worrying, worrying, wondering, sleeping more, band practice, worrying–it seems I have a lot less time for console gaming and much more time available for DS gaming on the go. These two games, plus the epic RPGs of Chrono Trigger and DQIX, should help fight back the lack-of-serious-Fallout: New Vegas shakes. I’ll also go into the reasons I picked each of these up in another post later on. Because, yes, I do have my reasons!