Cosmos: 40 Years Later

Yes, the Cosmos I’m referring to this week is Cosmos by Carl Sagan. Specifically I’m talking about the book because I just finished reading it for the first time. One of those backlog items that I’ve had around for years, basically from when I first watched the corresponding show almost a decade ago. It was nice to read the book now because apparently I had forgotten a lot of what the show talked about.

I know it technically hasn’t been 40 years since the book and TV series came out, it’s been 39, but I figure that’s close enough to make the claim. I suspect that come next year, there will be a bunch of articles doing the official 40 year anniversary, and they will probably talk about some of the points I want to bring up today.

As I already said, I either forgot a lot about what the show was about, or some things just didn’t register the same way they did with the book because times have changed a lot since then. I do know that the book and TV shows have differences, but I feel like if I watched the show again it would also land differently.

I remembered most of the science bits, but I also learned a lot of it in school, so that’s not much of a surprise. The only part that was a good refresher was on how different elements are actually made and how they come to be on planets like ours. I also remember the section on how many recent “discoveries” were actually found thousands of years ago, but all of that knowledge was lost due to religious suppression. Even now, just thinking about how much was lost due to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria is sad and frustrating. That had a big impact on me the first time around and the book added even more flavor and details.

In terms of things that stood out to me this time around, there are three areas that are worth bringing up.

First, there is a big emphasis on how important it is for the human race to do more things in space. This probably seemed more obvious at the time because back then there was a lot more momentum for doing space projects. That momentum has slackened significantly in the last 40 years, so you don’t hear about the few projects that do exist much unless something novel happens. As such, I’m sure Mr. Sagan would be a little disappointed in how things have gone.

What has happened in the last decade is that private industry has tried to make up for the lack of progress in the public sector (due to lack of funding). Obviously the two you hear the most about are SpaceX and Blue Origin. What is interesting about this development is that, though the technological advances have been amazing, there has been a tremendous amount of backlash against the people running these companies, and subsequently a backlash against the companies themselves and the money being spent on them. The general theme of these criticisms is that the money could be better spent on fixing problems that have more immediate impact on the world we already live on. Other criticisms stem from the founders of these companies being awful people.

It seems very likely that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and others in this industry were inspired by books like Cosmos that pushed the idea that going to space was important for the human race. But was it really the right message when it seems to sacrifice the well-being of Earth in exchange? Maybe not so much. I don’t really have a dog in this fight since I fundamentally believe that people have the right to do what they want with their money, and the technology coming out of these endeavours is objectively good for the world at large, but I do think that the money could be better spent and I would rather see more money put into the public sector where there’s no profit incentive for something so important. I can’t help but feel that Carl Sagan’s dream of humans reaching the stars has been somewhat corrupted by people who have the means to do so, but not the right motives. They come across as rather myopic on the state of the world.

Second, there is a surprising amount of doomsday worries considering how positive the rest of the book is. It shouldn’t be that surprising given the book was written during the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was still a viable threat. But what’s interesting about it now is that we have sort of come back around in a circle where it might be a viable threat again. After the collapse of the USSR, there were a few decades where we were actively working to fix the problem of having enough nukes to destroy the world hundreds of times over, and no one really gave it another thought. I know I certainly didn’t growing up.

But now, while we are certainly not at the same level of threat as then, people are starting to worry again. We have a lot of unstable leaders right now who have access to those weapons, and it’s not a stretch to think that any one of them could start a war because they need to show the world who is the most insecure about themselves. One would like to hope that cooler heads would prevail and stop that from happening, but we just don’t know.

It stuck out to me how many times the book gives the sentiment of, “it will be incredible when we realize this monumental achievement, assuming we don’t destroy ourselves first.” The book even spends most of a whole chapter talking about nuclear weapons and what it would do to us should they be used. It’s like, I get why it is important to know these things, but it seems out of place with the rest of the book. Still, somebody has to tell it, so I’m actually glad it’s in there. It drives home the point that we as humans are capable of amazing things, but we’re also really dumb about ensuring our own survival.

And speaking of our survival, that leads into the third point, which is that we have done shockingly little to maintain this little planet we live on over the last 40 years. What’s sad about it is that you read books like this and you realize that we have known for decades what we need to do. While Mr. Sagan didn’t call it climate change as we do now, there is a big emphasis in the book about how we need to move towards cleaner sources of energy and do less to destroy the parts of the environment that keep things in balance. Yet here we are, decades later, and very little has actually been done.

Granted, I don’t expect the whole world to just listen to one man and say, “sure, we should do that.” But it wasn’t just him that was ignored, literally everyone has been ignored. For example, there has been some information going around in the last week or so about a study Exxon did back in the early 80s, shortly after this book came out, where the researchers accurately predicted what today’s CO2 levels and average planet temperatures would be. They also mentioned just how bad that would be for the environment. But of course, Exxon being Exxon, did nothing to try to combat that. Making money off of cheap fuel is more important, the environment be damned.

It hurts reading about these warnings being given decades ago, and having to live through the present where it might be too late to fix the problem. Perhaps it is true that any civilization who is smart enough to contemplate the Cosmos is bound to destroy itself before it can actually do something about it.

Anyway, Cosmos is still a good read and still just as poignant as it was back in 1980 when it came out. It’ll be interesting to see where we are 40 years from now and what we will have learned by then. Unless, of course, we destroy ourselves first.

Marvel's Spider-Man

Total Time to Complete: About 45 hours

This is only the second non-Final Fantasy game that has been reviewed on here, the first one being Uncharted 4. There have been plenty of other games since Uncharted 4 to deserve a full review, Horizon: Zero Dawn and God of War come to mind, but for now I’m going to stick to making sure I get a full review up for Spider-Man because it is still fresh in my mind. The others may still find their way here since I’m not really done with them yet as far as DLC goes.

I wanted to wait to write a review for Spider-Man until I finished the DLC, the three parts of The City That Never Sleeps storyline. Now that I have done that, as well as got 100% on everything including trophies/achievements, I have some thoughts.

And just as a note going forward, though the Uncharted 4 review and the Final Fantasy reviews (so far) used different formats, all reviews from this point will use this new format to make it easier to encompass more aspects of each game, regardless of genre.

With that, let’s dig in.

World Building

When you are playing an RPG like a Final Fantasy, it is appropriate to say that exploration is a key part because the whole world is foreign to you as a new player. You are often discovering each area as the character(s) does. But when it comes to a world that already exists, like Manhattan, it isn’t as appropriate since you aren’t really exploring it in the same way (it certainly can be if you’ve never been there, but the characters all know where everything is). So I think the term “world building” speaks more to not just the exploration aspect, but also to whether the world you are playing in feels like it should.

Having visited New York City multiple times now (and soon to be living there), I can say with confidence that this game nails how Manhattan feels. It’s obviously not completely to scale with the real thing, the streets are detailed enough that you can look for familiar haunts only to find that many whole sections have been either cut out or morphed into something that the game needs. But the verticality of the city and the traffic below you as you swing through the air feel perfect. The way you interact with the world at large is also great since a lot of time can be spent finding the hidden nooks and crannies, or giving high-fives to pedestrians. And nothing is more perfect than using the subway to fast travel, always with a scene that fully embraces what taking the subway can be like at times (the rando sleeping on Spider-Man’s shoulder is my favorite).

I don’t know if I can really say that exploration is rewarded that much since everything is put on the map for you to explicitly find. Sometimes getting to the object in question is a little tricky, but nothing is ever truly secret. You do get rewarded to some degree as many of the landmarks you seek out are real places so you can get satisfaction from that the same way you might from an Assassin’s Creed game. But at the same time, I prefer this approach in my open world games because I don’t have the time to search every block for secrets like I did when I played all of Rockstar’s PS2-era games. I don’t mind running around and fetching each trinket, as long as I have a general idea of where they are.

Character Development

This section is going to take over for what used to be characters and story. If you think about it, the whole point of a story is to challenge the characters and see how they grow from that. Hence, character development is a nice way of covering both sides.

What Spider-Man (the game) has going for it is that it has a wide cast of characters, on both the good side and evil side, but it doesn’t try to stretch itself out too much. It keeps the number of villains down to about a half-dozen, and another dozen of side characters that Spider-Man (the dude) interacts with on his journey. The DLC also adds a couple more characters into the mix, but the essential core is around 20, which is a good amount considering the overall scope of that universe. They were careful to pick enough characters such that you can have multiple plot threads weaving together, but no one gets short-changed (well, almost no one).

The thing I really like about the Peter Parker in this game, outside of being the wise-cracking goof he’s meant to be, is that he’s many years into his role as Spider-Man. This means that not only is he established, but so are the villains and his relationships with the other good characters. With only a couple exceptions, like Miles Morales, he already knows everyone he interacts with, which allows the pace of the story to stay quick without getting bogged down by exposition. When a “new” character pops up, you know after a minute of dialogue between Peter and the character exactly what the deal is with them.

The only real downside to this approach is that, even though Peter Parker goes through a lot of hardship in the game, you never really get the impression that he changed all that much. Learned some new things, yes. Life-altering events, yes. But does any of that change the way he interacts or approaches situations? No, he just continues to do his normal thing. Granted, his way of dealing with challenges is fairly idealistic and maybe he doesn’t need to change that. I think that he did the right thing in pretty much every situation. It’s just kind of weird that you don’t really get much reflection from him on the bad things that happened. He just continues being him.

I find that to be a pretty minor nitpick though since all of the characters are enjoyable to be around, including the villains. The DLC doesn’t do this as well as the main story, but I still want to see more story content in this world so that I can see how the characters handle it.

Mechanics

The mechanics section is going to be the catch-all for everything gameplay related, which can include the battle system, the leveling system, the different classes and abilities each character has, even aspects of exploration can be covered here too. As such, it might get a bit long.

For the most part, the mechanics of Spider-Man fall into four categories: combat, progression, locomotion, and missions.

Combat

The combat in Spider-Man is very similar to the Batman: Arkham games but themed just so. You have attacks that can be chained and are context sensitive depending on your position and the position of the targeted enemy. You have a dodge move that works well with the spidey-sense indicator that you’re about to be hit. You have abilities that come in the form of gadgets and suit powers. And you have all the locomotion movement you have the rest of the game.

I found the basic attacking and dodging to be very fun and satisfying. I would use some of the more interesting moves if necessary, launching enemies into the air was common because some enemies required it. But most of the other ones I would only do if an optional objective called for it. The same goes with the gadgets. Most of the time I would forget they were even there, so I only used them against certain enemies or when objectives required it. I did use the suit power as much as I could, though I only used a couple before I got the invulnerability and just used that the rest of the game.

My only real frustration with the combat (aside from the difficulty at times, but we’ll get to that) was that the dodge didn’t work as often as I felt it should. I did eventually understand that mashing buttons was not as effective as deliberate presses to combo and dodge, so that wasn’t as much of a problem when the game started getting hard. But even with that I think the game isn’t quite as tight as I would like. It is really close, but it makes those times all the more frustrating when it doesn’t click. Like some other problems with the game, it seemed to get worse in the DLC, even though in theory it should be the same.

Progression

Though it wasn’t used much in older, open world games, leveling has since become more common. In this case, it honestly doesn’t make that much of a noticeable difference, it’s mostly just a gate to unlocking combat and locomotion abilities. The only other thing it does is increase your health, which is good since there’s no concept of equipment in this game, so levels basically replace the need to have to get new weapons or armor.

Since abilities are tied to levels, it was easy to get them, and having the freedom to choose when you got them via tech trees was great. The passive suit powers are also tied to levels, though you have to have resources to unlock them. Active suit powers only come with unlocking a suit, which requires resources and advancing the story or doing side missions. Gadgets also require resources and advancing the story to unlock. Having multiple things tied to resources provides more options since you have to allocate them between suit powers and gadgets. Having that freedom to choose to suit your play style is a staple of good design.

There was only one problem I had with the progression system, and it wasn’t really even the fault of the system. Having unlocks that require resources is difficult to work with when you can’t get the right resources. In this case, I constantly never had enough challenge tokens, and I didn’t even finish unlocking everything until the first DLC pack where more challenges became available. It is certainly possible to get the tokens needed in the main campaign, but it ended up being too hard for me. So it was a bit frustrating to not have access to everything when I finished the main game. Based on the number of resources I had left at the very end of the game, I don’t think the unlocks were properly balanced since I was lacking in some tokens but had dozens of others.

Locomotion

This is really the part of the game that got most people excited, and it hit me immediately as well. Swinging and moving through the city is delightful. I don’t know if I would go so far as to say it is sublime since it stumbles at times to follow what your intentions are, but I can’t think of another open world game that does it better. Even at 40 hours in, when the rest of the game has gotten a bit stale, the locomotion continues to be fun, especially when you can accurately predict obstacles and speed through them.

I already said this in the year-end review, but swinging around Manhattan was a legitimate factor in my decision to pursue moving there.

Missions

I feel that as far as mechanics go, this comes across as the weak link. What the game does do well is provide a lot of different types of missions. However, many of these different types end up becoming their own type of side missions and those tended to get old fast. The base story missions are where the game really shines, which is novel because what you actually do in them is pretty similar as well. What makes them all so good is that the studio spent a lot of time creating different environments and you are encouraged to approach them like they’re puzzles.

Most of my complaints are similar to those of other critics. As I already said, the side missions that spawn off the main quest line get old before the end, some more quickly than others. I didn’t mind the stealth missions as Spider-Man or the Spider-Bot missions, but when it came to stealthing as Mary Jane or Miles, those often became frustrating and I don’t think they added anything. I also found the mini-games fun, though I know many didn’t like them either. Basically anything involving Peter Parker was great, other characters not so much, and a lot of mission types overstayed their welcome.

Engagement

When I think of engagement, I think of “how good is the game at making me want to keep playing?” I know there are other definitions out there, but that’s the one I’m trying to go with now with my focusing goals. This feels like a better category to have than just difficulty curve because it is just a subset of the overall impact a game makes on your desire to continue.

But with that in mind, the difficulty curve of this game is not the best. It spikes a lot during the main game, and then just shoots through the roof as you get through the DLC. I had to drop the difficulty down from normal to easy in the final DLC to get past a couple parts that I was getting I’m-about-to-quit-frustrated with. I also gave up on trying to max out the challenges because they were hard in the wrong ways. It’s certainly not the worst game at this, the overall curve of the main story was actually quite good, there were just a few too many BS parts for me to say it was great.

Other than the difficulty problem though, the game was incredibly good at keeping me engaged for hours at a time. It perfectly fits that “I can do just one more mission” structure. Knowing exactly where to go and what to do plays a big factor in that because I don’t have to think about it and I like to see numbers tick upwards. And in most cases there wasn’t much punishment for failure (though there were a few that were very frustrating because of how far you went back). The game rides well on its fun mechanics, having plenty of things to do, and having relatively short objectives to keep you going.

Presentation

Prior to this review, this would just be listed as the story integration section, which is certainly an important aspect, but it’s really just a component of a presentation layer that also includes interface, aesthetic, and sound. Note that I did not say graphics anywhere in there, since graphics are largely standardized across games now, it’s much more about what is done artistically that interests me.

Let’s go ahead and start with that aesthetic portion. Overall the game looks good, it definitely focuses on being more realistic than comic-y, though some of Spider-Man’s costumes can bring more of that out. From a distance, Manhattan looks like it does in real life, you only see the limitations when up close. It also has that great blend of what we know today with near-future technology (and seemingly unlimited budget) that the Marvel movies also do extremely well.

The game chooses to use cutscenes almost exclusively for showing events and story beats rather than while the player has control, which keeps things looking clean, though out of sequence at times. All of the rest of the story integration comes from phone calls that do happen while the player is moving Spider-Man around the city. One cool aspect of this is that how Peter speaks is based on whether he is stationary or in motion. It’s one of those neat attentions to detail you probably wouldn’t notice since you only hear lines once, but takes a lot of effort to pull off.

The interface while in the world is pretty good, and the menu is clean enough, though it could be snappier. Most open world games have this problem with the menu though, so it’s not a big surprise. It does at least keep with a high tech style that goes with Peter Parker, who is a well known inventor among his peers, so it doesn’t feel out of place.

I will say that on the sound front, it doesn’t come across as particularly impressive, it gets the job done. My only real complaint is that there isn’t much variance in the music, you basically get the same theme every single time you start swinging through the city. Cool for the first 20 hours, but then you start wondering if they couldn’t have had more tracks or variants.

Conclusion

I don’t know if it came across very well in what I wrote above, but overall I loved playing through the main game of Spider-Man. I did find the DLC more of a challenge to enjoy though, it just got too difficult for the combat to stay fun and the story that came with it didn’t pay off even close to as well as the main story.

I honestly doubt I will ever go back to this game simply because I did everything I could and there’s so much more to play, but I highly recommend it for those who haven’t. If I do return for a new game, I will just stick to the main campaign and ignore the DLC. In lieu of that, I really hope they are able to put out a full-fledged sequel in a few years. I will jump on that day one.

Final Fantasy IV: Interlude + The After Years

Total Time to Complete: 44.5 hours

So… it’s been almost three years since the last review in this Final Fantasy Challenge. Obviously my grand plans of 12 games in 12 months did not come to fruition. But! I am not going to give up on at least getting through the whole series. And since I’m not limited by time constraints at this point, I’ve decided to include some more games in the series beyond the main numbered titles, namely direct sequels like Final Fantasy IV: Interlude and Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.

Why exactly has it been so long since the last review? Two main reasons. One, right after the Final Fantasy IV review, I had to move houses which took up a lot of my free time. Two, and more importantly, I just couldn’t get into Final Fantasy V, which I started right after finishing the last one. Spoilers for that review, which is still forthcoming, but my opinion on it hasn’t changed much since I dropped it to work on these games instead.

That being said, it also took me a really long time to finish The After Years. The Interlude chapter was quite quick, it was about 3 hours and didn’t really do much, but once I got to The After Years, it just kept going, and going, and going. It would be safe to say that I’m not a fan of these sequels, so let’s dive into exactly why.

As a quick note, this review is pretty much entirely about The After Years since it is actually worth talking about. The Interlude is too short and too similar to the original to have anything to say other than, it was a thing that happened. So let’s dig in.

Exploration

Looks pretty familiar

It is difficult to decide where to go with this section because, for the most part, the game world is identical to the one we already played in the original FF4. So for this section, and all the other sections as well, I will be focusing on the key differences.

The first key difference is that, since the game is played out in short episodes featuring different characters, the world in Interlude and The After Years never fully opens up. Each episode is isolated to a small section that the main characters need to navigate, and in some cases they will go through this same area multiple times. You also go back to the same areas in multiple episodes where nothing is different about it. Even near the end of the game where you are given a little more freedom, you are not rewarded for it, the world has nothing interesting to find. They essentially took a decently large world and shrunk it down into a bunch of repetition with nothing fun to do.

The second key difference is that there are a few new areas, namely the craters and the second moon. The craters add very little as they are short and, like everything else, are visited multiple times with no variation. The second moon serves as the new final dungeon like the moon did for the original game, and it plays out similarly, albeit even longer and more frustrating. I already didn’t like the final dungeon in FF4, and this final dungeon is just twice that, so it really was just a grind to get to the end.

I don’t know if there’s anything the game really could have done to make the exploration more interesting. Going back through old familiar areas is not inherently bad, but there is way too much of it, and they didn’t even bother to change up the enemies or items you get in those areas. I suspect it is a symptom of a larger problem, which I will get to shortly, but even just a little more effort into putting some variation in the old areas would’ve done a lot to make it better.

Battle System and Leveling

What is irks me with the battle system is that they could’ve just left it alone and it would still be one of the best the series has to offer. It is still snappy, crisp, and requires a lot of experimentation to figure out the best way to tackle enemies and bosses. The wrinkle they decided to add with this game (specifically The After Years, Interlude has no changes) is that there are moon phases that impact how powerful abilities are.

There are four types of abilities that are affected by the moon phases: basic attacks, black magic, white magic, and special abilities (which can be magic depending on the character). During every phase, one type will be enhanced while another is hindered. So for example, during a phase physical attacks will be 25% higher but special abilities will be 25% lower. The phase also affects which enemies spawn during random encounters.

The idea of phases is a decent one in theory. It encourages you to have a well balanced team that can handle any phase, and also pushes you to use more magic or special abilities when you otherwise wouldn’t. But in practice, you rarely have the option to create a balanced team, and once you do have the option to choose your team, you’re going to choose the characters you want to have and manipulate the phases to take advantage of your party. So in the end, the phases end up being more of an annoyance and you just blow tents at save points to cycle the phases to what you want.

The other major addition to the game are bands. A band is a combo move that can be performed by two or three characters that deals massive damage to enemies. Essentially the same idea as combo techniques in Chrono Trigger. The problem with bands though are that, unlike Chrono Trigger where you automatically get them based on the party and their levels, with bands you have to figure out which attacks/spells combine together by guessing. With this added hassle, I spent zero time trying to figure out what the bands, though some of them you get through story cutscenes. Another problem they have is that I generally found them to be less effective than just having the characters do their own thing. So yeah, the bands are pretty useless and I honestly forgot they were even in the game until I saw it while looking up other info. I have no doubt that when given the right attention, the bands are fun and break the game in various ways, but it was just never convenient to use. If you’re going to rip off Chrono Trigger like this, you might as well make it just as easy to use too.

Characters and Abilities

THOSE GRAPHICS!!!!

Speaking of characters, there are too damn many in this game. I think above all else, this is where The After Years really fails for me. When you have up to 21 characters that you can choose from by the end of the game, you don’t have time to invest in them all, so what is the point? You just end up in a situation where you are forced to use underleveled characters because the game says you have to, and when you get to the end game you choose the 5 or so you care about and the rest are thrown to the side. And by the time you get to the end of the game, the difficulty ramps up a lot so you have to stick with whoever you have at the highest levels anyway. So of course when I played through the game I just chose the characters I liked from the original game and threw the new characters away because they are garbage and pointless.

The main problem with the new characters is that in any other game they would be NPCs because that is how much effort was put into making them interesting characters. The only new character with any depth at all is Ceodore, and even then his only arc is that he feels he needs to prove himself to his dad, Cecil (who himself goes through a far more interesting arc of getting possessed, becoming the bad guy, and fighting to restore himself and fixing what he broke). And when you think about it, literally every other new character is going through the same arc, they are all trying to prove that they are worthy to one or more of the original characters. That’s it, they have no other purpose, they have no other goals or stances on what is going on in the game. The only difference with Ceodore is that he’s simply there for more of it, so you see a little more growth for him in that area. Most of the other characters already seem competent enough at the beginning so they have nowhere to go from there, they just suffer from low self-esteem.

Honestly, it’s fine that they wanted to introduce these new characters because they show that the original characters have grown since the original game and have other people involved with their lives now. But there was no reason to make them all playable too. What would’ve made the game way more interesting would’ve been if none of the old characters were playable, or maybe just temporarily, so that the new characters were forced to become the new heroes. You already have history with the old characters, so why would you want to play as someone else?

Difficulty Curve

Yeah, this sums up how useless the others are

Much like the original FF4, the difficulty curve of these games was very good. This makes sense since almost all of the enemies are from the original, with some new ones for flavor. The only real complaint I have about it is that, again because of the episodic nature of the game, you go through the initial curve so many times. Since each episode starts with a fresh character, you have to grind from nothing up to the low-mid tier over and over again. Only when you get to the last chapter and everyone is available do you see the curve go up from there.

And again like the original game, I never felt that the game was being cheap until the final dungeon when the regular enemies can take so much out of you. You get to a point where every fight is pretty easy to get through, but you have to fully heal every time in order to not get blown up randomly. It becomes just resource management of white magic through the whole dungeon, popping up to the surface if you happen to run out of tents/cottages. This is a totally valid way of doing things, the dungeon itself is the boss, I just got tired of it by the end because I was checked out from the game in every other way too.

Story Integration

They could’ve at least tried to make the menu more interesting

Since the integration of story is identical to that of FF4 from a gameplay perspective, let’s talk about the thing that’s been talked about this whole time, the idea of having episodic content in a game like this. When the game originally came out on the Wii, the episodes did come out as episodes, so you would get the new one, play through it, and wait a little while for the next one and play it. Neat idea in theory, but I think what really hampered them was the choice to have so many different characters that are given their own focus, so each episode is overly isolated. You have a bunch of characters doing things in parallel and you don’t get a sense for what is actually happening until you’ve played for 20 hours or so. Fewer, longer episodes with multiple characters in focus would’ve worked better.

I suspect that Square Enix figured this out too since the last two episodes are drastically different. While the first 8 episodes are very short, around 2-4 hours each depending on how quick you are, the ninth episode took me around 6 hours and the last episode clocked out to almost 15 hours. This implies to me that they realized the episodic thing wasn’t really working and they just dumped the rest of the game into one last episode to get it over with. I don’t know if that is actually the case or not, but it would answer why there was such a change in episode length.

In this case, I do not think that the episodic nature of the content helped the game. Again, I think it forced too much focus on too many characters without giving a strong sense as to what was actually happening until much later. The reason why so many other FF games get the story right is that they are focused on one character and the other characters get their time to shine as well as they support the main focus. The original story of Cecil works because he spends the whole game trying to make up for the terrible things he’s done, and the other characters both support and work against him at different times based on their needs. This game shows that splitting your attention between so many characters leaves all of them feeling hollow with little to no growth.

What could be done to make it better? One option, as I said, would be to just throw the old characters aside and just be NPCs to a new set of characters focused around Ceodore, who basically represents the next generation. Another option, fewer episodes with much longer arcs, and have them be a little more sequential instead of purely in parallel. That way, even with a mix of new and old characters, you can build up a full party in each episode and get somewhere satisfying with them.

Conclusion

Let’s face it, these sequels to FF4 are terrible, and I’m not going to pretend that they are worth anyone’s time. Among the rankings I have for the first four games in the series, this is down at the bottom. Yes, I would rather go back and play FF2 again before touching this again. When it comes right down to it, The After Years is just a boring game. FF2, for all of its flaws, has enough merit to keep it interesting and engaging, even when it’s frustrating like few games are. The After Years takes what is already an excellent game and ruins pretty much everything about it in order to create something insufferably mediocre. It’s a shame really. But on the plus side, the original FF4 is still there and still excellent.

Current Ranking

1. Final Fantasy IV

2. Final Fantasy I

3. Final Fantasy III

4. Final Fantasy II

5. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years

Uncharted 4

So outside of the Final Fantasy games, this is going to be the first piece of media I’m devoting an entire review to on its own. And this is for very good reason. Namely, Uncharted 4 is one of the best games I have ever played, and is worth getting the full review treatment.

Just as a bit of backstory, I love the Uncharted series. Uncharted 2, in particular, may be my favorite game of all time. It is certainly in the top 3 (for the record, when I consider what games/movies/etc. are my favorite, it comes down to asking “which one of these would I rather do than anything else right now?”). I love (most of) the characters and the way they interact with each other. The presentation is second-to-none and the narrative keeps me going for some very long play sessions. The platforming and combat is great fun, though excessive at times. There is very little for me to dislike about any of these games.

And Uncharted 4 is the best representation of the series. You can tell that they really took the time to not only craft new things that would be great to add to the series, but also re-evaluate the things that have not worked as well while still retaining the exquisite level of polish that the previous games are known for. There is also a ton of influence on this game from The Last of Us, which was my favorite game of that year, and it brings the emotional impact of the story to another level.

Let’s start with saying what a technical achievement this game is. It is not only one of the most beautiful games ever made, the fact that they are able to present the entire game without a single load screen outside of the initial one from the main menu is staggering. Knowing what I do about game development, my hats are off to them just for that alone. The smoothness and detail of the animation is also incredible, particularly during cinematics where you get full mo-cap. I find it amazing that there are games now where you can see what a character is thinking just from facial expressions and posture. The first three games had a lot of this as well, but this game is several leaps above even those.

Uncharted 4 retains most of the same solid mechanics from the first three games with a couple new additions. You now have access to a rope (often called the “magic” rope because of utter lack of realism), which ties into a lot of the platforming, but is surprisingly useful during combat as well for getting around enemies. There is also a lot of sliding down and across things. I don’t know if that one is actually new to the series, but it is presented as a standard mechanic in this one. The parts where you have to hook winches up to stuff is also a fun addition. Others have noted this as well, but it does feel like the combat went backwards after Uncharted 3. Thankfully this game doesn’t rely on it as much as that one did, so it’s a negligible drop.

The Uncharted games are best known for are their set pieces. Most famously the train sequence in Uncharted 2, but the ship and plane sequences from Uncharted 3 and the convoy chases in every game are also blood-pumping scenarios of controlled chaos. I don’t think Uncharted 4 quite matches the highs of previous games, but there are definitely some good action pieces here. The opening of the game fighting off a legion of boats in the sea. The jeep escape through the middle of a village followed immediately by a convoy chase right in the middle of the game. The prison escape (both of them really). There is plenty here to get excited about.

However, I don’t think the set pieces are the important parts of this game. Uncharted 4 is much more a reflection on the series and Naughty Dog, the developer, in general. This game is the last one in the series (though who knows if that will actually hold true, the ending certainly provides a full-stop conclusion, but this is games), so it is full of nostalgia bombs, reminding us of all the great things that have come before it. And I might just be a sucker for those kinds of things, but I loved those moments where it was referring back to the great adventures of the past, Uncharted or otherwise.

If I had to single out the thing I liked most about this game, it would be the relationship between Nate and Elena. Being recently married myself, even though we don’t have any of the same problems that they have had, those moments where they were opening up to each other just tugged at my heart. It’s the kind of relationship that you can only depict by having a lot of history, which the first three games provided. It’s the difference between drama in movies and drama in TV shows, the amount of time you spend with them really does matter, and this is probably the first game to ever pull this kind of relationship off. I hope that I’m not the only person who feels this way as I want to see more games invest in their characters this way. Sure, you can argue that Nate is a bit of a psychopath based on the number of people he kills and swindles in these games, but you would hard pressed to find a main character in a game who is as charming and complex as he is. You often get characters who are one or the other, but not both.

I feel like I need to add at least one criticism, so I will throw out the only thing that really made me go “ugh” while playing the game. Basically, every time a squad of enemies showed up. The pacing in this game is such that you spend most of it exploring and platforming. Because of this, when enemies did show up, it came with a sense of annoyance at being pulled out of the fun of exploring. It wasn’t quite so bad when you discovered some enemies who were already camped out since that would allow for more stealth action, it was much more annoying when you were already in an area and they appeared or ambushed you. It’s a small gripe, but it really did bring my mood down a bit each time it happened, so I feel it’s worth mentioning.

Ever since I finished this game, I have been weighing in my mind whether Uncharted 4 is the new king on my list or if Uncharted 2 will retain that spot. Up until this point, if I listed out my favorite games and then ranked them by how much I wanted to play them right then, Uncharted 2 was #1. I still feel like time will have to tell with this one as I feel that Uncharted 4 is the better game in almost every way, so I may find myself replaying it more in the future than 2. In any case, it is certainly on my short list of favorite games ever, so I can’t give it much more praise than that.

Play this game. Do it. And play the previous ones if you haven’t because they are also fantastic. And play The Last of Us while you’re at it. Naughty Dog is truly the king of cinematic gaming right now, and their works are well worth the effort.

Final Fantasy IV

Total Time to Complete: 23 hours

As I mentioned in a challenge update, this is the first time I’ve ever played Final Fantasy IV. Or really any SNES Final Fantasy game outside of Mystic Quest (which I will probably revisit again as a bonus round). One of the main reasons I wanted to do this challenge in the first place was to finally force myself to play these games I’ve been meaning to get to but just haven’t. The SNES era of Final Fantasy (and RPGs in general) is often regarded as the best, so I have been excited to dive into them.

And Final Fantasy IV did not disappoint. It is easy to see why people continue to love it today and why Square Enix has re-released the game so many times (as I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve owned 4 different versions of the game myself!) and has even gone so far as to make sequel content. This game is where, in my opinion, the idea of what Final Fantasy is today began.

But how well does it actually hold up compared to the works of today? Surprisingly well in a lot of areas, though it certainly does have its limitations. We shall dig into those in depth here, but on the whole, I think Final Fantasy IV could come out today and still do well for itself.

Exploration

We're taking this ship... TO THE MOON!!!

Where FF1 and FF2 had excellent dungeons with poor overworld exploration and FF3 had the exact opposite, FF4 finds a nice middle ground between the two that makes dungeon exploring satisfying while also providing things to do outside of dungeons. Unfortunately it doesn’t go quite far enough in either aspect to match the previous games’ highs, but it does create an overall package that I like more than the others.

From a dungeon diving perspective, FF4 pulls mostly from FF2 in how the dungeons themselves are laid out with lengthy, branching paths that often reward those who venture down every fork. But it also pulls the good bits of FF3 with tons of hidden paths that always lead to good treasures. The reason it works so well in FF4 is that you can often see the hidden treasures on the screen, but no obvious way to get to them. So you are encouraged to look for obvious and not-so-obvious holes in the walls that provide access to those treasures. Overall I really like the dungeons of this game, it just doesn’t quite match the feelings I got from FF1 and FF2, but is certainly a huge improvement over FF3.

World exploration is where FF4 falls a bit short of the bar set by FF3. And this is despite the fact that FF4 has three worlds to explore versus FF3’s two. The problem is that all three of the worlds in FF4 are smaller than any world of the previous games. It creates this feeling where, once you get full access to that world via airship, you get excited to go see what you haven’t seen yet, only to realize that there just isn’t that much to see. On the main world, by the time you get an airship, you’ve already seen 80% of that world and what remains is just towns, no dungeons. The underworld does a little better with two optional dungeons (though one could argue they aren’t that optional), but then the lunar world finishes up with just one optional dungeon. That just doesn’t feel like much after FF3, which encouraged a lot more going back and forth between the two world screens you had access to. It also doesn’t help that, unlike FF3, the world map in FF4 shows you where everything is from the start. You do have to enter a town or dungeon to find out what it is, but it still feels like a step back.

At this point, if I had no other influences, I think I would actually take FF4’s dungeon design over the others (despite my nitpicks), just increase the scope to be closer to FF2, and then keep FF3’s world design.

Battle System and Leveling

FF4 is where the great departure happens in terms of battle system. Unlike the previous three games where you selected your team’s actions at once and hoped they resolved in the intended order, FF4 introduced the now-famous Active Time Battle system. Most people are familiar with it, but the idea is that each character and enemy has their own action gage that fills up at a rate corresponding to their speed stat. Once the gage is filled, that character can take an action. One of the ways this opens up choice for the player is that you don’t have to make characters take actions, you can just leave them with a full gage and switch to another character you would rather use instead. Depending on the fight, this can be very useful. Having this system also requires the player to be a lot more engaged in the fight since the enemies do not stop attacking while you select commands for your own party, which was not an issue with the previous turn-based combat.

Outside of that new mechanic, FF4 takes mostly from FF2. The front and back rows return once again, but with a small wrinkle. Unlike FF2 and FF3 where you can assign any row to a character at will, FF4 requires that characters alternate between rows. With five characters in battle at maximum, this means that 3 have to be in front and 2 in back or vice versa. While this seems like a weird restriction at first, you realize that there’s never really a situation where it hurts your party. You will only ever have 3 attackers or 3 mages at most at any given time (unless you decide to do so at the end of the game). So even though it is a bit weird, it’s not a real negative.

Also coming back from FF2 is the generic MP pool. No tiered spell pools this time around. Each spell just has a flat casting cost and each character can cast it as long as they have the overall MP for it. But FF4 doesn’t go so far as to bring back levels for spells, it still has tiers for spell strengths. Most spells can also be cast on individuals or all characters/enemies at will, though some are restricted to individuals, which adds a bit of tactical decision as to how to best employ them in battle.

Not coming back from FF2 is the leveling system though, that goes back to FF1, but with another wrinkle. Like that game, there is just one stat for leveling, which is EXP. You get enough EXP, your character gains a level which means a set increase in all stats. So it’s even less interesting than FF3 with its jobs. However, this game does introduce the idea that character abilities are tied to their levels. Where in the previous three games you could buy and assign magic to any character you wanted (as long as they had the right class/job), in this game abilities are tied to character (more on that later) and you only get access to spells once a character reaches the right level. So that does add a little bit more value onto the leveling system as it also opens up your options as the game goes on. This way of gaining abilities hasn’t been used much in the rest of the Final Fantasy series, but it has become common among RPGs as a whole.

On the whole, I liked the combat in this game. It was really quick and required more tactical play than the other games in the series thus far. But there aren’t any aspects that stand out as unique anymore. In a large way, FF4 is the game that most RPGs have stolen from when it comes to battle mechanics. So it’s hard to say what I would take from this system since every RPG already is this system. I think that in any game I would make, I would start with the same base as FF4, but then add some twists to give it some flavor.

Characters and Abilities

This is perhaps where FF4 deviates the most from the previous entries in the series thus far. Unlike those games where you have a consistent party (though FF2 does have the rotating fourth character), characters are constantly joining and leaving your party in FF4 as the narrative weaves around them. This game is also the first to introduce the idea of being able to customize your party with the characters you want to use (though from what I understand this ability was added in later versions, it’s not in the original). And this makes for some interesting gameplay as FF4 also introduces the idea that characters are “born” with a set of abilities that cannot be modified or switched in any way. With the party structure changing all the time, this forces you to adapt and make tactical changes depending on the characters you have.

The game is careful to never screw you on this aspect though. Outside of the very beginning of the game, you always have at least one mage in the party (not counting Cecil, who is the only character you have the entire game, and has some white magic) and at least one person who can deal out physical damage. So you never encounter an area where you simply don’t have the characters to make progress without frustration.

As far as abilities go, the game scales it back quite a bit from FF3. While that game had over 20 different jobs, this game has effectively 10: Knight, Dark Knight, Dragoon, White Mage, Black Mage, Summoner (who can also use black magic), Magus (both white and black magic), Thief/Ninja, Monk, and Bard. And of these classes, only the magic users see any real progress in their abilities. As mentioned earlier, characters gain access to higher level magic as they level up, you do not purchase magic in this game as you do in the first three. The exception to this is Rydia, who gains summons by defeating them and gaining their powers (for some of them, the rest she just already knows). The other non-magic classes simply have a set of extra commands that do not change over time, which is more akin to previous games.

I would be remiss to completely skip over the characters themselves, as I’ve done so in every other review so far. In character development, FF4 is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessors. The characters not only have personalities, they are fully explored and put to the test as the story goes along. When bad things happen to the characters, you feel bad, and that’s about as much as you can ask for. It is easy to see why FF4 is one of the few games in the series to have gotten a sequel many years after the original (FF7 is really the only other one), since players have shown over the years that they really do love these characters.

I think the best aspect of FF4 in this area is the fact that each character is locked into a class and you have to adapt to different combinations of classes as the game goes along. So many of the other FF games allow for characters to be whatever they want, and I feel like this system is more in line with how people actually are in real life. The abilities themselves aren’t anything to write home about though, they are common enough now that they just make sense, so not having them would be weird. And while I do think that having characters gain abilities with levels is good, it generally works better with a skill tree of some kind where you have choices.

Difficulty Curve

This definitely happened to me a few times

This is going to be a short section because, honestly, the difficulty curve in FF4 is damn near perfect. The game was never too easy, but also never frustrating. If I had to call out one area where the game is a little cheap, it would be at the very end, where the final boss is a good 30 minutes past the last save point. I say this because that’s a long time to spend getting back to the final boss if you end up dying there multiple times, which is quite possible. Zeromus is pretty hard to beat, and I got a little annoyed the first time I died against him, but it only happened that one time. If I had died multiple times against him, I probably would’ve ending up hating that last part, so it is worth pointing out.

But outside of that one area, the progression is really smooth. No spikes or huge steps. Each area you go into introduces new enemies that are tough to start with, but you get a good handle on them by the end of the dungeon. The bosses on the whole might be a little on the easy side compared to the regular enemies in the dungeons, but the gap was never huge, the bosses still felt like bosses. What this game does so well compared to the previous ones is that a lot of the time, the difficulty isn’t in just making the enemies stronger, it’s in adding restrictions or new behaviors that you have to identify and then figure out how to get around. It adds a puzzle element that I wish more games had.

I definitely liked the enemy design and progression in this game, and I want to see more games nail it just as well as FF4 does.

Story Integration

You know I had to...

So far we have seen that FF4 has improved on the previous games in almost every way, and the integration of story may be the biggest improvement of them all. Outside of having a pretty good story, at least for the time before most of its elements became cliché, the story drives a lot of gameplay as well. As mentioned already, your party of characters changes a lot during the game, and it is all driven by the story (or maybe the other way around, in any case, they are tightly connected). This pattern will be repeated in most of the rest of the series going forward.

One of the other elements that this game brings that was toyed with in FF2 and FF3, but never fully realized, is the integration of story into the battles themselves. There are several story moments that occur during battles where you don’t have control, you just watch as battles play out as needed. There are also other battles where you have active control, but things either get interrupted or you have to do certain things to make it advance to the next stage. It’s a great way of shifting expectations during battle scenes that has been in every FF game since.

Sadly, outside of those two aspects, the game doesn’t give you a whole lot of agency. Sure, there are side quests that provide some more content, but they don’t have any real effect on the outcome of the narrative. The story is still quite linear with few opportunities to explore the world outside of the major plot points. So from that perspective, it hasn’t improved at all over the last three games.

But on the whole, this game set a great foundation for the rest of the series to build upon narratively, so it should be commended for that.

Conclusion

It isn’t hard to guess that Final Fantasy IV has blasted to the top of my game rankings for this challenge. As I said in the intro, I really do feel like this is where the series as we know it began, and it still holds up today as a classic worth playing. If you were to take all of the mechanics of this game and make a new game today out of them, you would probably have a solid experience.

At the same time I can’t help but wish that the game experimented a little more, or perhaps even failed in some aspect. It definitely takes more from the highly experimental FF2 than the others games before it, but because the game was so successful, it has been copied to death and lacks uniqueness as a result. If there had been an area where the game failed, it would stand out, and would potentially be more interesting. The reason why I respect FF2 so much is that even though it failed horribly at what it tried to do, it at least gave you ideas that are still unique and also showed you how to not implement them. Obviously I cannot fault FF4 for this, it did exactly what it set out to do. It just makes it difficult to pick out specific things that would be cool to have in games today.

Current Ranking

1. Final Fantasy IV

2. Final Fantasy I

3. Final Fantasy III

4. Final Fantasy II