Xbox Series S (Xss)
My battle plan for the Game Pass is this: stick to a healthy schedule of Xbox exclusives I missed out on and multiplatform smaller titles that I'd rather avoid buying for $5-10 on the PSN. The other benefit is that since it's on a different platform, I won't be rabidly chasing
My first playthrough was the remaster of Final Fantasy 8, a title I remember liking much more than its audience did in 1999. In my memory, you played as Squall with his cool gunblade, there was a bunch of opera music and a love story, and you even went to the moon! There were some twists in both the story and the game's mechanics, and I thought that was all cool. Well, 20 years later, it was still a great playthrough. The soundtrack--sadly one of Nobuo Uematsu's last--was amazing and I was surprised to hear so much in common with the FF7 soundtrack in terms of instruments and...I'm not a musician, but there were some techniques that were similar, if that makes sense.
I think part of FF8's less-than-hot reception is that it followed FF7, and the dev team made two major changes: the leveling system and the junction system. Monsters and bosses level with your party in this game, which makes it less traumatic when you change up your party to characters you don't use as much. The only issue here is that in my 20-hour playthrough, I didn't find a time when I wasn't forced to use Squall. This meant that facing the final boss, he was 47, with other members 18-32. That further leads to the problem that certain monsters don't give up good items until they're higher-level.
But, leveling isn't everything in this game. Final Fantasy 8 uses the junction system, which forgoes MP and instead makes you draw a number of that magic spell up to a limit of 100. You can junction these spells to your character's stats, getting stronger as you draw more magic and weaker as you use that magic. So, at the beginning of the game, Selphie has 15 strength, and gets the ability to junction Fire to her strength stat. When she has 10 spells, strength goes up 1. But then she runs into a monster that's weak to Fire, so you choose between using the spell for big damage now, or preserving her strength stat. It adds a pretty cool layer of depth to the battle/leveling system. Also, most monsters carry 1-3 types of spell. However, this is absolutely and easily countered by the fact that you can draw 100 spells in a single battle; the monsters don't have a limited quantity of said spell. Suddenly, Selphie has 40 strength and can one-shot most things because she hasn't increased her level, just her stat. So the radical departure from grinding levels to get ahead and erasing an MP system in lieu of something else, it ends up being easily exploitable.
However, looking at the game 20 years later with all that extra wisdom, I appreciate FF8 for trying to remove grinding as a necessity to beat the game. Additionally, the Remastered version has a 3x speed, no encounters and no damage* option you can enable at will. I think FFX-2 was the best iteration of the ATB system, and FF13 and 7 Remake hold place for my favorite battle systems with FF8 being pretty low-tier. I used the options quite a bit. No damage works differently than expected, as enemies who deal more damage than the character's maximum HP will die. I really only used this feature in the last chapter of the game to try and rush through it. Unfortunately, Square decided to force you to use random characters in the final battle, meaning you can either spread your resources evenly or reset until you get a decent configuration. So the one section of the game where I needed to use No damage, my characters died anyway. Bleh. Anyway, beating FF8 treats you to some of Uematsu's best composition in the final ~10min sequence. Squall is still an unlikeable jerk, though.
Next up: Streets of Rage 4.
Style AND substance! As a kid, we got a Genesis first, and later a NES. I think it was Sonic and the dope music that made me a Genesis kid. That said, Streets of Rage was always the better choice over Final Fight, and someone at DotEmu agreed and produced this wonderful gem. Simple controls, simple AI, 90s club music OST, and art direction cranked up all the way.
SoR4 makes you play through the story first as one of four characters, but you meet more and unlock them as you go. This is awesome, as one playthrough on normal has taken about 80 minutes with one hard last level to go. One cool thing is that there's a level involving an apartment tower where the music loop progresses as you make your way through the lobby, then the elevator, and climaxes once you reach the top.
Updates can be extreme like Final Fantasy VII with redesigned gameplay and flushed out story details or minimal like the above Final Fantasy VIII, with a minor graphical update and some UI tweaks. SOR4 features some of the modern elements of gaming like slowly unlocking content, crisp and beautiful graphics, flexible multiplayer and the occasional music track evolution. However, it still remains short enough to beat in one session, the controls are simple, and it's as pretty as it is fun.
HWIIYAHHH!
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