Cowboy Moment
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 8, 2011
- Messages
- 4,407
So, I recently actually got to finish TiTS SC recently. I'm not really much of a JRPG person (I think the only one I've ever managed to complete beforehand was Xenogears, and this includes bouncing off of multiple Final Fantasies), and I initially bought FC because I was surprised to see a lot of praise for it from people whose taste I tend to respect. Looking into the series as a whole, I also found the idea of a consistent metaplot spanning 7 games and 13 years worth of development to be very intriguing and ambitious. I enjoyed FC a fair bit, mostly for the surprisingly engaging narrative and meticulous worldbuilding, and had high expectations for the sequel after the rather well-done ending twist in the first game. Some TLDR impressions below.
Alas, high expectations are usually followed by disappointment. The systems mostly stay the same with minimal additions so there's not much reason to talk about them. The narrative, though, both in its pacing and content, absolutely drops the ball. The main reason for this, is that it's focused on the villains, who are painfully stereotypical and boring, and would be absolutely at home in a Saturday morning cartoon. About half the game is spent on building up each irrelevant Ouroboros enforcer, then a whole chapter on going through samey dungeons and fighting them again, only to be forced to fight them yet again in the final chapter.
This horrible waste of time (I'd estimate more than half of the game could be removed without altering the story in any meaningful way) is my second main complaint. Everything before the dragon hunt is so painfully inconsequential and stupid, not even the villains themselves care about it. In fact, the only reasonable explanation for their actions in the first half of the game is that they're trying to stave off boredom by fucking with the protagonists. The first game got away with having a relatively low-key plot by always maintaining a sense of forward progression - introducing new locations, new characters, the protagonists slowly moving up in the world, and so forth. In the sequel, this is replaced by running around places you've already seen and accomplishing jack-shit.
The other problem is that Ouroboros in general is just dumb and incredibly out of place in an otherwise grounded and reasonable setting. I don't think I'm having unreasonable expectations here - the entirety of FC's plot is orchestrated by a total of two Ouroboros members, with nobody being the wiser. In SC, it turns out this *secret*, clandestine organization has enough resources to effectively wage war on a small country by itself, and is seemingly incapable of accomplishing anything without throwing its huge weight around. In Chapter 3, I honestly expected an Ouroboros scheme to galvanize the international situation, distracting the military by threatening war with the empire, and therefore giving them more room to maneuver (this kind of happens later but is resolved in 10 minutes...). But nope, it's all stupid brute force from that point on, with nary a hint of intrigue.
This is especially disappointing because the antagonists in FC remained threatening without being superpowered anime tropes. In fact, the final chapter of FC is my favourite, because it creates a very effective feeling of being outmaneuvered by Richard and co, and having to desperately grasp at chances to turn the tide. Again, this is not because the Intelligence Division is composed of unbeatable superhumans, but because they're well-informed and politically savvy. Incidentally, they also have very reasonable and understandable motivations, much unlike the "I'm just here along for the ride" Ouroboros enforcers.
Similarly, the Joshua situation is resolved in 5 minutes in a very anticlimatic manner, and has little to no meaningful consequences whatsoever. You'd think being brainwashed into the perfect child soldier by a sadistic psychopath who can literally manipulate memories would cause some mental problems, but nope. Even the promises SC itself makes, it fails to deliver on - the Aureole is a very cool concept, basically a near-omnipotent sentient AI forcefully building a Brave New World style utopia, which is way more interesting than your average ancient artifact; but then, none of this ever comes up, and its only use is making Weissman into a multi-form final boss.
Overall the game gets better in its second half, the tower dungeons exempted. In fact, the chapter where you get to traverse the whole country without orbal power is a much better take on "go places where you've already been and see what has changed" than chapters 1-5, and having to give up using arts on your characters as you progress is a nice gameplay-relevant consequence of the whole setup. Pity it's ruined by more Ouroboros bullshit at the end.
I want to say I'm not exactly looking forward to the third chapter after this, but the ending twist with Kevin killing Weissman was pretty cool - but then again so was FC's twist with Joshua, and that ended up having very disappointing payoff, so I'll probably wait until I'm in the mood for this type of game again. It's all a bit unfortunate, especially since I'm told that the already localized Cold Steel games are worse than Trails overall, so it seems Falcom has also hopped on the decline train. Pity.
This horrible waste of time (I'd estimate more than half of the game could be removed without altering the story in any meaningful way) is my second main complaint. Everything before the dragon hunt is so painfully inconsequential and stupid, not even the villains themselves care about it. In fact, the only reasonable explanation for their actions in the first half of the game is that they're trying to stave off boredom by fucking with the protagonists. The first game got away with having a relatively low-key plot by always maintaining a sense of forward progression - introducing new locations, new characters, the protagonists slowly moving up in the world, and so forth. In the sequel, this is replaced by running around places you've already seen and accomplishing jack-shit.
The other problem is that Ouroboros in general is just dumb and incredibly out of place in an otherwise grounded and reasonable setting. I don't think I'm having unreasonable expectations here - the entirety of FC's plot is orchestrated by a total of two Ouroboros members, with nobody being the wiser. In SC, it turns out this *secret*, clandestine organization has enough resources to effectively wage war on a small country by itself, and is seemingly incapable of accomplishing anything without throwing its huge weight around. In Chapter 3, I honestly expected an Ouroboros scheme to galvanize the international situation, distracting the military by threatening war with the empire, and therefore giving them more room to maneuver (this kind of happens later but is resolved in 10 minutes...). But nope, it's all stupid brute force from that point on, with nary a hint of intrigue.
This is especially disappointing because the antagonists in FC remained threatening without being superpowered anime tropes. In fact, the final chapter of FC is my favourite, because it creates a very effective feeling of being outmaneuvered by Richard and co, and having to desperately grasp at chances to turn the tide. Again, this is not because the Intelligence Division is composed of unbeatable superhumans, but because they're well-informed and politically savvy. Incidentally, they also have very reasonable and understandable motivations, much unlike the "I'm just here along for the ride" Ouroboros enforcers.
Similarly, the Joshua situation is resolved in 5 minutes in a very anticlimatic manner, and has little to no meaningful consequences whatsoever. You'd think being brainwashed into the perfect child soldier by a sadistic psychopath who can literally manipulate memories would cause some mental problems, but nope. Even the promises SC itself makes, it fails to deliver on - the Aureole is a very cool concept, basically a near-omnipotent sentient AI forcefully building a Brave New World style utopia, which is way more interesting than your average ancient artifact; but then, none of this ever comes up, and its only use is making Weissman into a multi-form final boss.
Overall the game gets better in its second half, the tower dungeons exempted. In fact, the chapter where you get to traverse the whole country without orbal power is a much better take on "go places where you've already been and see what has changed" than chapters 1-5, and having to give up using arts on your characters as you progress is a nice gameplay-relevant consequence of the whole setup. Pity it's ruined by more Ouroboros bullshit at the end.
I want to say I'm not exactly looking forward to the third chapter after this, but the ending twist with Kevin killing Weissman was pretty cool - but then again so was FC's twist with Joshua, and that ended up having very disappointing payoff, so I'll probably wait until I'm in the mood for this type of game again. It's all a bit unfortunate, especially since I'm told that the already localized Cold Steel games are worse than Trails overall, so it seems Falcom has also hopped on the decline train. Pity.
