Trabia Garden

We're on the verge of a new main-series Final Fantasy release! It's been a while.

One of the things that fascinates me about the Final Fantasy series is the way it reinvents itself with every new game. Every entry in the series tries new things; every entry has its own set of strengths and weaknesses.

Here, for no particular reason, is my list of pros and cons of the main-series games I've played extensively (I haven't played the online entries, and VI is the only 2D release I've played for a substantial amount of time). Direct sequels and spin-offs aren't included. I've tried to avoid very subjective judgements, which is why 'the characters are the beeeeest' doesn't appear under VIII and XIII. Please imagine that 'music' appears on the 'pros' list for all of these games except XII (sorry, XII).


Final Fantasy VI:
Pros: Still looks good twenty years later. Characters all have distinct battle abilities. You can suplex a train.
Cons: Feels a bit unfocused on account of having too many characters and a non-linear second half.

Final Fantasy VII:
Pros: Materia system allows for interesting setups. Midgar is a great setting. Fascinating storyline.
Cons: Graphics have aged badly. Awkward translation. These two things, combined with oddly out-of-the-way backstory cutscenes, make the fascinating storyline very difficult to grasp. It's sometimes hard to tell how you're supposed to progress. (The upcoming remake may well resolve some or all of these issues.)

Final Fantasy VIII:
Pros: Actively rewards not getting experience, so it's great if you prefer exploring and progressing the storyline to fighting random encounters. Triple Triad!
Cons: Confusing stat system, making it easy to screw up your playthrough if you don't know what you're doing. Revolves very, very strongly around Squall, which is great news if you like Squall but may make things tricky if you don't. Story falls apart at disc 3.

Final Fantasy IX:
Pros: Fun and cute! Doesn't take itself too seriously, on the whole, despite dealing with some bleak themes. Contains Chocobo Hot & Cold, the greatest minigame ever made.
Cons: Slow battle system. You will eventually finish the Chocobo Hot & Cold sidequest and be sad that there are no more Chocographs to find.

Final Fantasy X:
Pros: Nicely strategic battle system. Excellent levelling system; the Sphere Grid defines initial roles for the party members but allows for customisation. Strong, reasonably coherent storyline (this is very rare in a Final Fantasy game), although things get weird as you approach the end (this, by contrast, is very common). Probably the most accessible game in the series for newcomers.
Cons: Very linear. Awkward voice acting. A bit too cutscene-heavy. The European release likes to drop murderous superbosses in your face when you're innocently trying to revisit previous locations.

Final Fantasy XII:
Pros: Great translation; a lot of thought has gone into the way different characters would speak. Intricate world. No random encounters.
Cons: Poorly paced; long segments without any story advancement make it hard to follow the plot. Although the voice acting is good, the sound quality (on the PS2 version, at least) is poor. Boss battles tend to be a bit of a slog.

Final Fantasy XIII:
Pros: Good pacing, great battle system, gorgeous. Extensively explores the relationships between the party members. Rarely demands grinding.
Cons: Very linear; no sense of exploration. Writing occasionally lacks subtlety. No gameplay variety; there are battles and there are cutscenes, but that's your lot.


I've no doubt that Final Fantasy XV will also get some things right and some things very wrong, and I'm looking forward to seeing what those things are. Going by this lovely piano-and-violin piece from the Episode Duscae demo (and the fact that the composer is Yoko Shimomura), 'music' seems likely to be one of its successes.

If you'd offer different upsides or downsides for any of these games, I'd be interested to hear about them!

My preceding entry is now a bit outdated because all the Hamilton songs I linked to have been taken down. They're up on Spotify, though, under Hamilton (Original Broadway Cast Recording)! (I downloaded Spotify the second I discovered this. I have a medical need to hear 'Wait For It' ten times a day.)

As I knew very little about the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution apart from what Assassin's Creed III taught me (mysteriously, the British education system tends not to focus much on wars we lost), I've been investigating some of the history surrounding this musical. In the process, I discovered these extracts from an actual historical letter exchange between Alexander Hamilton and his sister-in-law Angelica Schuyler Church (which apparently inspired 'Take a Break' in the musical):


Indeed my dear, Sir if my path was strewed with as many roses, as you have filled your letter with compliments, I should not now lament my absence from America - Church to Hamilton, 2nd October 1787

You ladies despise the pedantry of punctuation. There was a most critical comma in your last letter. It is my interest that it should have been designed; but I presume it was accidental. Unriddle this if you can. The proof that you do it rightly may be given by the omission or repetition of the same mistake in your next ... Adieu ma chere, soeur - Hamilton to Church, 6th December 1787


HAMILTON, OH MY GOD, BEHAVE YOURSELF.

It's also absolutely true that Hamilton couldn't shut up about anything. The Reynolds Pamphlet was ninety-five pages long.


House update: th_esaurus has moved out, alas, but the similarly excellent reipan is now in residence!

My housemates and I have been challenging each other to reproduce song lyrics as well as we can with the limited vocabulary afforded by a fridge poetry set. reipan turned 'How do you write like you're running out of time?' (Hamilton, 'Non-Stop') into 'how do you write runny future to engulf'. I've turned 'He took the midnight train going anywhere' (Journey, 'Don't Stop Believin'') into 'he goes fast in the dark to the world'. But I think the winner of this game is Housemate C, who was given 'Shot through the heart and you're to blame' (Bon Jovi, 'You Give Love a Bad Name') and ended up with 'slay punctured in the heart and I doubt your innocence'.

A fair few people get slay punctured in Hamilton, incidentally.

Somehow I've never told this family story here! A few years ago, my dad was preparing a big lunch for our family and the actors in my mum's play. He came back from the common nearby with a plant.

Dad: I found this on the common. Do you think this is cow parsley or hemlock?
Riona: Er...
Dad: Because I want to put it in the salad. I think it's probably cow parsley. But they do look very similar. What do you think it is?
Riona: I don't know, but I'm not sure you should put it in the salad if you have to ask that question.
Dad: But it probably is cow parsley!

It took a bizarrely long time to persuade him to use something else instead. He really wanted to put that thing in the salad. Here is my free cooking advice to all of you: if you have the choice between something that is probably not hemlock and something that is definitely not hemlock, it's best to go for the latter.


I've now finished Assassin's Creed II!

The problem with the Assassin's Creed games is that I'm perhaps too fascinated by the side-effects of the Animus. I couldn't really get engaged with Ezio's story because I was much more interested in what's happening to Desmond and what previously happened to Subject 16, which ultimately is a very small part of the game. My interest in playing dropped substantially once I'd found and solved the last of Subject 16's creepy little puzzles.

(I keep thinking 'oh, it could be fun to write crossovers involving the Bleeding Effect!' and then remembering that that's only really possible in canons where we know a substantial amount about a character's ancestry, of which there are relatively few. Blast!)

It was still a great game, though, and I like that it enabled me to say 'I'm just going to murder the Pope' to my housemate.

The gorgeous soundtrack may have been my favourite part. It actually kept me from getting too frustrated at multiple points. 'I keep failing this race? Well, at least I get to listen to "The Venice Rooftops" every time I retry!' 'The game's glitched and won't let me escape these guards? Fantastic; that means it won't stop playing "Venice Escape"!' And then, of course, there's the wonderful 'Ezio's Family' over the credits.

So far, I'm not sure anything in a videogame has scared me as much as that terrifying moment when I thought I was going to miss my opportunity to hug Leonardo da Vinci. I'd set the controller down for the cutscene! I wasn't expecting a quick-time event! Fortunately, I caught it just in time. (Why doesn't every game have a 'hug Leonardo da Vinci' button?)

th_esaurus and I have been watching Rebuild of Evangelion, a series of films retelling the story of Neon Genesis Evangelion. th_esaurus has seen Neon Genesis already; I have not. We've now seen all three of the films released so far, and it's been great to watch her descent from 'wow, this is exactly like the anime, shot-for-shot' to 'wait, I don't recognise that character; what's she doing there?' to 'EVERYTHING IS WRONG AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT'S HAPPENING'.

My conclusion is this: Evangelion is surprisingly similar to Kingdom Hearts. It's a story about fourteen-year-olds who achieve remarkable things using the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP and are then horribly torn apart, and everything is incomprehensible, and then a catchy Hikaru Utada song plays over the credits. If Kingdom Hearts III concludes with an exact recreation of the second film's ending, with Sora as Shinji and Kairi as Rei, I won't be surprised.

Well, I might be slightly surprised by the nudity and the corpse tornado. But everything else would fit right in.

If I were a horrible person, I would be considering a Kingdom Hearts/Evangelion fusion in which Sora, Riku and Kairi pilot EVAs. Or possibly Terra, Ventus and Aqua? Axel, Roxas and Xion? I feel that putting Xion in something approximating Rei's role would make a lot of sense, and I find Roxas easier than Sora to picture in Shinji's role; Sora is too psychologically resilient to fit in the world of Evangelion.

But obviously I would never dream of writing such a thing.

(Honestly, although the horrible fusion is tempting, I don't think I'll ever actually be able to write Evangelion fanfiction; I am far too confused by everything. (This is also, I suspect, why I've never written much for Kingdom Hearts.) Possibly for the best?)

For some reason, I'd gleaned from Internet osmosis that Shinji was an incredibly difficult character to like, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually like him a fair bit. Although I sort of wish I didn't, because my heart is breaking for him constantly. I was so pleased when the second film let him go to an aquarium and have a nice day for once. He actually got to smile! It wasn't to last, of course, but I was glad to see him have a moment of happiness, however fleeting.

Absolute Despair Girls: Danganronpa Another Episode is a spin-off game set in the universe of Dangan Ronpa, a series of videogames best known for rendering me completely incapable of shutting up. Another Episode breaks away from the murder-mystery visual novel style of the main games; it's a shooting game,* although it's still pretty story-heavy. You play as Komaru Naegi, the younger sister of the first game's protagonist Makoto Naegi, as she tries to escape a city in which a war has broken out between children and adults.

I have mixed feelings about Another Episode.


( Thoughts on 'Danganronpa Another Episode'. Cut for vague spoilers and talk of (fictional) sexual abuse. )

The tragic thing is that the Dangan Ronpa series, in many ways, is so good with its female characters. The male:female ratio amongst its characters is almost exactly 1:1, which is shockingly rare for something with such a sizeable cast; I can name twenty female Dangan Ronpa characters without much thought. The girls in these games have distinct personalities and relationships with each other and roles in the plot! It's great! But the games have followed a trajectory of 'almost no creepy fanservice!' to 'quite a lot of creepy fanservice' to 'Creepy Fanservice: The Game', and it's starting to make me a little uncomfortable.

My other problem with this game is perhaps best expressed by the distressed e-mails I sent to th_esaurus immediately after finishing it:


( More 'Another Episode' spoilers! I'M PRETTY SURE NOBODY ON MY FLIST HAS EXPERIENCED THIS GAME AND THEREFORE NOBODY CAN ACTUALLY READ THIS ENTRY, BUT I'M WRITING IT ANYWAY. )

What I am trying to say is that I've spent an embarrassing amount of time hunting through the Internet for fanart or fanfiction in which Makoto and Komaru Naegi have a really good hug. The Internet has thus far failed to provide. I have an unsettling feeling that this may end up like my involvement with Waterloo Road, in which two characters so frustrated me with their failure to hug that I wrote no fewer than four stories centred on thinly-veiled excuses to go 'and then they hugged'. Brace yourself.


* Er, 'a literal shooting game', I should perhaps say. There's a fair bit of shooting in the main Dangan Ronpa games, but it's metaphorical; you use your evidence to 'shoot down' other characters' misconceptions and lies in the murder trials. The title Dangan Ronpa, if you were wondering, means something like 'winning an argument with a bullet'.

I have now seen My Little Pony: Equestria Girls twice, which is probably two more times than any self-respecting adult should see it. For those unfamiliar with the premise of Equestria Girls: it is a film about Twilight Sparkle, the main character of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (who is, as you may have suspected, a pony), travelling through a portal to another world. In which she is a human. In high school. And meets human versions of all her pony friends. And there's a shoehorned-in light romance plotline, involving an alternate-world teenage boy and Twilight Sparkle. Who, I might remind you, is a pony.

It is astonishingly stupid.

Perhaps inevitably, I love it.

No, you don't understand how severe this is. I even find the romantic subplot genuinely cute. Developing a crush on a human when you are secretly a pony seems (a) a bit weird and (b) ill-advised, but apparently I don't care.

I've had this song from the film stuck in my head all day. I find cheerful, catchy songs about friendship impossible to resist, which is probably part of the reason Friendship is Magic has me so thoroughly in its clutches. Oh, dear.


I've had a rocky relationship with Doctor Who for... more or less the last seven years, but the fiftieth-anniversary special was a lot of fun! More than just being a fun hour or so, it reminded me of two things: firstly, that Doctor Who was once something I really enjoyed, and secondly, that I really miss Nine (I was pretty heartbroken that Ten and Eleven were hanging out and Nine was nowhere to be seen).

Therefore, in the ongoing bizarre nostalgia explosion that my adulthood is turning out to be, I've rewatched the first two episodes of the Ninth Doctor's series! And oh, I still love the Ninth Doctor. He's just fantastic. And also quite a bit scarier than I remember. That thing he did to Cassandra in 'The End of the World': wow. (That thing he did to Rose, too; it never really hit me before, but he comes back from the Time War and finds a companion and the first thing he does is show her the destruction of her planet.)

I also seem to be falling in love with Nine/Rose all over again, which I wasn't expecting! There had been pairings I'd enjoyed before I saw the 2005 Doctor Who series (Squall/Zell, Satoshi/Daisuke), but the Doctor/Rose was the first pairing I fell in love with in a MASSIVE EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT, READ ALL THE FANFICTION, WRITE ALL THE FANFICTION sort of way. No, hang on, I've just remembered all the slightly worrying James Sunderland/Mary Shepherd-Sunderland fanfiction I wrote. But I do think I 'shipped the Doctor/Rose quite a lot harder than anything preceding it.

(Sudden revelation: all the het I 'ship is really messed up. If they're the same species (see Doctor/Rose, Mitsuki/Takuto, TWILIGHT SPARKLE/FLASH SENTRY I HATE MYSELF) and there's no massive age gap (er, Doctor/Rose and Mitsuki/Takuto again, plus Jeff/Annie, Rogue/Logan and Katniss/Haymitch), I'm not interested, unless it's something like James/Mary or Naegi/Ikusaba, which have a whole host of alarming issues surrounding them. I'm surprised I love Nate/Elena so much; it's so much healthier than most of my 'ships!)

Anyway! Let's push my worrying taste aside for a moment. My interest in Doctor/Rose absolutely plummeted after the Ninth Doctor regenerated; I felt that the Tenth Doctor's dynamic with Rose was very different, and the new dynamic didn't really appeal to me. And I'd assumed that I wouldn't really care about Doctor/Rose on this rewatch, whether because I'd moved on or because my dislike of Ten/Rose would have somehow tainted Nine/Rose for me. I'm delighted to discover that I'm wrong!

When I think about it, maybe it's for the best that Eccleston didn't come back for the fiftieth anniversary. We may only have had thirteen episodes with the Ninth Doctor, but they were, for the most part, a pretty great thirteen episodes. I don't know if he'd ever be able to make a return that would match my expectations.

Derren Brown's most recent touring show, Svengali, was on Channel 4 on Tuesday evening! As always, it was a strange mixture of Derren Brown being terrifying (in particular when he had a creepy doll 'possess' a man from the audience; the poor guy looked as if he wanted to bolt off the stage) and Derren Brown being all giggly and adorable and climbing the set.

My favourite 'Derren being adorable' moment from the show: he opened it with a game called 'Derren, Please Tell Me Where I Might Find Your Other Shoe', in which he hid his shoe in one of three boxes and audience members had to guess which box it was in. Because he is Derren Brown, he had recorded two ridiculous jingles for this game, to be played during the shoe-hiding process. Here are those jingles.

Speaking of Derren Brown, I was reminded recently of something that struck me when I read his memoir Confessions of a Conjuror. I'm not a huge fan of Confessions of a Conjuror - I far prefer Tricks of the Mind - but I did like the description of his thought process the first time a partner said 'I love you' to him:

1. X loves me. Do I love X in return?
2. What does it mean to love X?
3. I sometimes think I might love X. Is that enough?
4. X has declared a binary position: love or not love. I am to take a clear position on one side.
5. If I do not state that I do love X, some time soon, then my position will be taken as not loving X.
6. Now I am going to have to say I love X in order not to cause this relationship to become very tricky by X feeling unloved.
7. Instead we will progress with X loving me and me uncertain about loving X but certainly pretending to do so.
8. What a terrible thing for X to say.


On a completely different note: after everyone in the world recommended the Phoenix Wright series to me, I purchased Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, the first game in the series! I am currently somewhere in the middle of the third case.

Phoenix Wright, are you really an 'ace attorney'? You're endearing, certainly, but are you actually good at this being-a-lawyer thing? Are you supposed to make statements like 'Therefore, this witness is a big fat liar'?

Of course, Wright's supposed aceness is not terribly well supported by the fact that I am controlling him. At the beginning of the second Turnabout Samurai trial segment, I promptly got four penalties on a single testimony (two of which were for presenting the same piece of irrelevant evidence) and had to struggle through the rest of the trial knowing that one more mistake would net me a game over. It certainly upped the tension, I suppose!

I do prefer Ghost Trick, I have to say (er, the two games share a creator, so this isn't a completely arbitrary comparison); Phoenix Wright is a bit wordy for my videogame tastes (and I'm a Final Fantasy fan!), and so far I like Ghost Trick's characters and storyline more. I'm still having fun with Phoenix Wright, though! I particularly like the voice control, and the way Edgeworth acts as if he's been physically hit if you break through his witnesses' testimonies. And I do seem to be quite fond of Wright himself.

(Seriously, though, you're supposed to point out that April May should have noticed Maya's odd clothes? Have you seen what April May is wearing?)

The theme of today's entry is 'television shows beginning with M'.

Misfits: oh, no. How have I managed to become emotionally invested in Misfits? How did that happen? This is such a bad thing to be emotionally invested in. You just had to go and be adorable, didn't you, Kelly and Seth? Thanks, Kelly and Seth. Now I actually become distressed when bad things happen in Misfits, which is always.

Merlin: every so often I remember that this was an actual scene in an actual episode of Merlin and just boggle. To any non-watchers who have heard about Merlin and thought 'well, it can't possibly be as gay as everyone seems to say it is': you are incorrect. (Here, if that wasn't, er, romantic enough for you, is the same scene set to soaring violins. Oh, Internet.)

On a more serious note about the Merlin-and-Arthur relationship: here (Scene 59, starting at the 2.16 mark; the link (found via lozenger8) should take you straight there) is an incredibly lovely deleted scene from the first episode of the fourth series, when Arthur believes he's going to his death. Bless them.

The Mentalist: has anyone made a montage of all the times that Patrick Jane gets punched in the face? That would be my favourite montage. I would watch it every day. Possibly every hour. I love you, Jane, but when people punch you I cheer.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: I'm going to specifically talk about episode 2.09, 'Sweet and Elite', so you may want to rush off and watch that before reading if you haven't seen it yet. I'm not really being terribly spoilery, but just in case.

Thoughts on the episode: I really like Fancypants! I hope we see him again. I loved it when Rarity was watching the Wonderbolts in great excitement and Fancypants, with a little fond smile, was watching her; it was clear that he really enjoyed seeing somepony being genuinely enthusiastic about something after spending so much time with ponies who simply affected interest in everything he said.

I don't really 'ship anypony in Friendship is Magic, but if I did I suspect I would 'ship Fancypants/Rarity. I think they would be good for each other. Fancypants, being surprisingly relaxed and down-to-earth considering his social status, could help keep her grounded; Rarity is a pony willing to disagree with him, which I think he needs.

I have been listening to 'The Pony Everypony Should Know' more or less solidly since I saw the episode, whoops.

I just completed Final Fantasy XIII! And I sobbed quite a lot at the ending, I have to say.

I think Final Fantasy XIII has actually managed to beat Final Fantasy VIII for my personal 'Favourite Central Cast in a Final Fantasy Game' title. I absolutely love four of the characters - Lightning, Sazh, Snow, Fang - and even the characters I'm less passionate about have relationship dynamics that I adore (Vanille and Sazh! Vanille and Fang! Hope and Snow!). The relationship dynamics are my favourite part of the game, actually; I felt that, save for Fran and Balthier, the inter-party relationships in XII were a bit lacking, so I'm delighted that it was followed by a game filled with endless delightful interaction.

The second-to-last boss was so difficult that I was forced to switch Sazh out of my party and bring Hope in. I did not approve of this at all. I've been using Lightning, Sazh and Fang ever since choosing your own party became an option! Suddenly Sazh can't be involved in the endgame just because Lightning can't learn the best healing abilities? I'm sorry, Sazh. You're still my favourite.

When Lightning ordered everyone to stay together, my heart basically exploded. Lightniiiing.

(Some notes I made on the game a while ago, when I was trying to work out characterisation: 'Lightning and Fang are both 'I-don't-care'-type characters, but of different sorts. Lightning believes herself to be incapable of caring. She isn't particularly happy about it and feels others are better off staying away from her, but in her eyes that's just the way things are; no point worrying about it. Fang, meanwhile, is well aware that she cares about one thing: Vanille. In the face of that, she considers everything else irrelevant.'

Somewhat relatedly: is it just me, or does Fang's 'Cheers!' when you heal or buff her sound slightly surprised? Is that because she's used to a survival-of-the-fittest, look-out-for-your-own-but-don't-expect-help-from-outside world?)

I sort of want to write fanfiction in which Lightning and Snow run a detective agency together, just because it would amuse me. Lightning would become so frustrated.

Anyway, yes: Final Fantasy XIII may not be a perfect game, and it seems to be loathed by a lot of the fanbase, but I for one adore it. I'm going to tentatively name it as my third-favourite Final Fantasy title overall, following X and IX.

Finally, here is the gorgeous piece of background music from Oerba on YouTube: Dust to Dust.

Oh, my God, what, Red Dead Redemption has a movie house where you can watch ridiculous old-style silent cartoons on a flickering projector. One of them, entitled The Dangers of Doctors and Patent Medicine, ends with the message 'MEDICAL SCIENCE cannot SAVE YOU. IT WILL KILL YOU and LEAVE YOU DEAD.' This is actually the most amazing game I have ever played.

I enjoy making Marston collect flowers. Sometimes he says, 'Might as well,' as he picks them, because, being a big tough ex-gangster, obviously he didn't set out to pick flowers. He might as well pick flowers, as he's there. But nobody's fooled, because on other flower-picking occasions he'll say, 'You little beauty.'

Marston, incidentally, persists in being ridiculously sexy. Possibly the sexiest videogame character I have ever encountered. When I first saw the game being played, I thought he was quite ugly; now I want him to hogtie me and call me Miss. That's normal, right?

I think I want John Marston to meet Patrick Jane of The Mentalist. They've both had families taken from them, albeit in different ways. I'd like to see them working together. Jane's family can't be saved, but maybe he can help this man save his.

That and, well, Patrick Jane would do hilariously badly in the world of Red Dead Redemption. For all his psychological tricks, he's absolutely terrified of physical harm and he wouldn't be remotely at ease in a setting where most of the people have guns and many of them will happily shoot you.

It troubles me that saving in Red Dead Redemption connotes sleeping for six hours, because I am addicted to saving. I save whenever I do anything remotely significant. So my Marston just sleeps all the time. Obviously I don't have to sit there and wait through the sleeping period, but it's weird when I think that I've played through ten in-game days and probably spent six of them sleeping. Marston, are you feeling all right?

Finally: whenever I've been playing Red Dead Redemption for some time, I find myself humming Pony Chorale from Homestuck as I go about my day. Someone make a fanvid; it only has to be a minute long. IT COULD INCLUDE BAD MSPAINT DRAWINGS OF MARSTON AND HIS HORSE. I wish I had the skills to do this, because it could be magnificent.

HAVE A MILLION ENTRIES ABOUT A GAME THAT ONLY thewaterbandit AND nano_moose AND fireholly HAVE PLAYED, GUYS. If you all play Red Dead Redemption, you can join us over here in the cool corner.