Is it okay to talk about the effects of hype AFTER you've played the game? I bought/played Xenogears back in 1998, thought it was a good game, but never thought it was a GREAT game. Then the internet arrives and I discover that some people think of it as 'the greatest creation of the human mind'. Eventually I came to loathe the game (as a consequence of my many arguments with Xeno-zealots) until playing it again and feeling more certain (and secure) of my position on it.
Hype before playing a game... FFVIII is an obvious example. I agree with anyone who was impressed by FFVII and expecting something similarly excellent. Instead FFVIII turned out to be a black sheep of the series. I played it once and then forgot about it. I've tried to play it again a few times but the drawing always turns me off before I get anywhere.
There's also Suikoden II... Before anyone flips out, I do think it's a very good game. I just don't think that a certain person was an effective substitute for a certain other person in the role of primary antagonist. I felt like the betrayal was a bit contrived/forced and that the character was too ambivalent/meek to keep me interested like the other character had. I also had issues with the boring dungeons, but this is of course something that can be held against the entire series, though Suikoden II may actually be the only one that seems to totally recycle forest paths and dungeon corridors (Rockaxe, anyone?). There's also how a number of people view Suikoden II as being so superior to the original, and I think that's a considerable stretching of the truth. It's twice as long and a little more refined, but the original was the original, and the second one hardly introduces enough new things to beat the original in that regard. Plus the original still has the best soundtrack of the series and I prefer Tir to Riou. In the end I actually agree that Suikoden II is the better game, but only slightly. Either way, only together can you say that there's a great experience there. On their own they're just 'good' and not on par with the inspired overall design of a Chrono Trigger or a Valkyrie Profile. They're a bit too grounded in convention to be THAT good. Just my opinion of course, but yeah, the hype and the prices on Ebay made me think that Suikoden II would break into my top ten favorite RPGs with ease. It didn't.
And I like Legend of Mana, darn it. It's one of my all time favorites. A game of endless possibilities and infinite wonder. Oh well. As my mom would say, it's for personal tastes that color was invented. (that really sounds better in Spanish
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Another one I was disappointed in was Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. I LOVED Second Story. But I just couldn't get into this one. When I played SO2, it was really easy for me to get attached to Claude and Co. I didn't give a damn about any of the characters in SO3. I can't even remember any of their names besides Fayt. What a dumb way to spell that, too.
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I think Claude was actually Crawd in the Japanese version, so we got lucky on that one. Anyways, I agree. Star Ocean 2 is a favorite and Star Ocean 3 proved to be a disappointment in many ways. It made an effort to improve upon the combat system (with mixed results) but pretty much cut out Private Actions (one of my favorite aspects of SO2) altogether. The Item Creation was more limited as well. Not just in terms of what you could create, but in terms of freedom of control. Being forced to follow a specific procedure just eliminated the fun in it. I haven't even mentioned the infamous plot twist, which pretty much killed my interest in the series. Let's just say that Star Ocean 3 proved to be a farce in a more
literal sense than even my worst fears could've expected.
Jam it back in, in the dark.
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