FFIV and Infinite Undiscovery:and ricochet and how I need you

FFIV (some of you may know this as FFII from the Supernes or a remake of it on PlayStation) is now available for the DS. Not being able to always keep track of Japanese vs American numbering systems and a largely redone game graphically, I was first thrown off as to which game this was in the series. Square has published some of the strongest selling RPGs on every system starting with the good ol' NES in the US. It's predecessors involved character creation from a simplified D+D background and FFIV (II) was the first Square RPG to have character's with predefined classes and a separate storyline for each individual. Mainly sticking with the latter for sequels and offshoots, it's hard to explain to those that have started playing from FFVII on with how the originals are truly games to play at least once through from start to finish in the way intended by Square. The experience felt with this game in it's entirety has been hard to reproduce even though I have tried many many times to find something similar.

I had played through FFI and it was done quite well for it's place in time versus other RPGs of the day. FFIV (II) felt like a giant leap forward for what creators intended RPGs on consoles to be like, besides the technology limitations of the day. It added new character classes that have stuck through the entire series such as dragoon and summoner and also started the creation of a good chunk of plot conflicts for the series with the creation of things like the Empire. It built a musical score by using only midi to aid in defining and separating individual characters and helped emulate the feel for a plot with rising and falling action. This area with music has been constant issue and struggle for the latest game makers of today.

So is it worth the purchase of a DS just to play this one great staple of the RPG realm even though it is over 10 years old? Besides the fact that there are other quality DS games available, there is usually that one or two games that have to make the total system purchase worth the cash.

This game would be one of them. It has been changed visually, difficulty-wise and has had added minigame additions. Many of the different aspects that were lost or changed during the US distribution from Japan have been changed back. The biggest change was difficulty of monsters and bosses back to the hard Japanese original. Some lost plot parts have been added back into the game.

It's the game in it's entirety that really makes this worthwhile. I yearn for the job well done that this game had in it's day compared to games of today and find very few that can live up to a game's worthwhile total experience matching the old Square RPGs.

There was a separate RPG that came out years later for the Playstation called Star Ocean: The Second Story made by tri-Ace which was actually a sequel to the Super Famicom original. This was a pretty unique game because of the way it dealt with random encounters and fighting. The fighting style mimicked that of the old slash and dodge active RPGs but with an entire party of people instead of the old solo play. Very few RPGs had the active type fighting style that Zelda and Secret of Mana made so fun. Star Ocean was very focused on the party fighting as a group with the player only controlling one character at a time. This game also had a crafting and gathering of equipment and useful items that was one of the largest, maybe even too large, compared to the RPGs of today.

Since then other sequels have been released and tri-Ace has started to work side by side with Square. Their newest creation, called Infinite Undiscovery, is very similar to the basic things that made the original so good with the great graphics of the Xbox360. Reading some previews from various websites, the game supposedly has increased it's party size from 4 up to 12 simultaneous players all fighting at once and at least 30 hours of storyline gameplay. Due out on 9/2 and with our friend youtube showing off gameplay videos, this looks to be the first quality classic medieval RPG released on the 360.

9/6 - Playing 10 hours into the game I started to remember what set Star Ocean apart from the others. The crafting materials require so much fighting for either drops or cash to buy them that I begin to become sleepy before a good amount can be gathered to 'up' the crafting skills. The fighting abilities are similar in that they need to be used so many times to make them more powerful that it takes a good strategy of finding a free rest area to begin to see any difference. And yes, air slash is back only this time it's called slash cannon.

The roaming through free areas and fighting is quite similar to FFXII where random enemies will respawn after coming back to the same areas. The stroyline is at least somewhat interesting and the voiceover acting isn't too bad considering that it had to be translated first and then forced to match the cutscene speeds.

Overall there are very few choices for classic medieval RPG games on the 360 and this one isn't over acted in the japanese anime sense to help steer it to a broader audience including me. The other thing that this game clued me into was that there's another Star Ocean game coming out for the 360 coming out Spring 2009.