Selliquence

I'm actually trying to learn Al Bhed on my own and it's really fun~ I can write it fine but I still need to ram all the Al Bhed speaking scenes into my head to learn how to really speak it. I'm seriously prepared and ready to start a dubbing project where it's all translated and spoken in Al Bhed. This is something that needs to happen!

This was one of those games I was originally raised on, my brother would play this game over and over and over again and I always loved to sit and watch with my other siblings. Recently, I finally got to play and finish it on my own because of the HD release. There were many times before that I had tried to play it, but failed to finish because I either stopped for a long period of time and started over, or because of the dreaded incident where our very first PS3 died and upon getting a new one it had no backwards compatibility. (Luckily though I have gotten my hands on a PS2, so playing those games will no longer be a problem. HEART ) Now, because of this I may be a little harsh on the HD release, but my nostalgia is so strong on this one because this game has really changed my life. After playing the game, I realized how bad the HD graphics looked compared to the original graphics, in my opinion it just seemed like they slapped the poor things on and were done with it ready to sell. I've compared the original and HD side by side many times, and they just- don't look like themselves in the HD. Sure, they're a bit recognizableee (?) but their faces just looked really different compared to their signature look that left such an impact on me. Let's not forget, upon looking at these, their expressions were hidden behind the HD. There are many examples like in one moment where Yuna is angry, in the HD she just stands there emotionless, it really took the feeling out of the whole game- as well as the color, I mean it can't just be me but it seemed less colorful. I know they were trying to make it look more- 'realistic' but the thing is, FFX didn't have that realistic style to begin with. It was colorful, and in its own style. And you have to know something is wrong when you show your brother, the one who originally introduced the game to you, the comparison and he thinks it's poorly drawn fan art. When I told him it was the remastered he said that it looked toned down and they look less recognizable. Because really, it was a shocked image of Tidus, and in the HD comparison he just stood there with his mouth slightly opened. I guess- what I was really expecting, was for them to make the fighting avatars and scene avatars look the same as they did in FFXIII but that was one thing they didn't do. The avatars still changed and looked very poorly in small scenes like it was released back in 2000 as the first was. Sure, the hair looked 'smoother'-ISH. But at least before the characters actually HAD character (and to be honest the hair still looked choppy). I'm just going to say, from now on I'm not going to play the HD release ever again. I'm sticking to the PS2 version. To be honest, for this part of it, I don't know whether or not the original had the same problem because it was so long ago when I played it- but even if it was like that in the original it seems like they should have been able to fix it in the HD release- when I played the HD the lips never matched up. Yes yes- I know the whole dubbing thing where it's difficult to match up the lips, and I mean heck- For video games with graphics like that it has to be harder because the lips move more precisely to the Japanese- but this was different- in the scenes (not CGI) the voices were only two seconds off from the lips, like the voice actors had done it perfectly fine, but it wasn't synced up correctly with the game. Again, I don't know if it happened in the original PS2 version but I had to divert my eyes from their mouths when watching because it bothered me that much, and it seems like something that could have been an easy fix in the HD release. Again, nostalgia harshness, but let's be real- this just seemed like a quick fix to get in extra cash. I still love the game, the story, the characters, and the play style with all my heart, but not what they fixed up so poorly. And I mean- COME ON- No Al Bhed language option!? They had over 10 years to work on that!

This is one of those games I saw my brother playing when I was a kid, so when the Re-release came out I had high expectations. Before playing, I told my brother who had played it about it and he did that kind of scoff and said it was too difficult to play when he was younger so he never completed it. I kind of threw this over my shoulder because I had played other Tales of games in the series so I was just thinking- he was probably just too young to really get it. Also to add on to my expectations, was the fact that this Tales game was really popular among fans, in fact I always looked at it as the go to Symbol of all other Tales games in the series. Lloyd was always the emblem character to me which is why I half expected him to make an appearance in Super Smash Bros. because Namco was working on it. So, I dove into it. And the story was pretty good, but everything kind of turned wackely and convulsed into something completely different- which I should have expected. But- I came across a few areas that I can see how my brother got stuck. When moving on further you go to a port city and there's no other directive than that. You just know you have to cross the oceans. WELL. Personally I had a tough time with that because first of all- you have to talk to people in a very specific and set order which I had no idea about, and it's very unexpected to the point where you don't know that you've triggered the set actions until you've triggered the first five. So, I thought I was getting nowhere and left the area. I searched the continent I was on for HOURS going from place to place and finding no luck to where I was going until I noticed a speck of red on the map as a location and I somehow seemed to had missed this off to the side location nearer the port city. And, that's where I was supposed to go. (I understand now that apparently you can do certain things out of order like I seemed to have done, and leaving the port city to go to the other continent, do things there and then go back and accomplish things on this said continent was what I was supposed to do first but I had no idea.) Then there were the MAZES you have to go through, which to be honest I felt old because it brought me back to those days where I had no internet and would jot down notes crazily on a piece of paper to figure out what I was supposed to do, which was kinda fun but lengthy, and being used to going online for the answers I brought shame to myself and went the easy way out, but in my defense it got irritative. On to the story and the characters- I wasn't too happy about parts of it. To me it seemed like certain characters were in the spotlight that shouldn't have been while others were dashed off to the side. For instance Sheena. She had a very- drastically- important role and to me she just felt like a simple side character that supposedly had no other importance. I felt almost cheated that she wasn't granted more in the story. Colette only seemed REALLY important in the first arc and I feel like Sheena's role could have been mixed in with her (even though I'm more a fan of Sheena than of Colette which I'm kind of sad about- I want to like Colette DREADFULLY but I can't seem to like her too much and I don't want to say I find her annoying but I can't find her appealing as much as I want to.) I mean, Sheena was the path to connect the two worlds by gathering all the summons under her name, it just seems like Colette could have been the one to do it because she was more interactive in more ways than Sheena was. WHICH I REALLY WISH SHEENA WAS MORE INTERACTIVE SHE'S A GREAT CHARACTER. Raine and Genis were kind of like tag alongs to me but they were tag alongs that fit in really well so that's all I really have to say about them. Same with Zelos. I mean Zelos. Need I say more? HOWEVER, Presea and Regal just seemed like a big side quest to me and an excuse to have more party members. I really felt no connection with them and was actually kinda peeved that they got to be in the party. This is probably something that's an unpopular opinion, but I just really COULDN'T connect with them. Sure, I could connect enough for a SIDE QUEST story, but that's about it. Other than that, there's nothing, they kind of just squeezed them into the main story to me. Who I really would have liked to have joined the party was TABATHA and MITHOS they were much more important to the story. Technically yes, Mithos was with the party for a while yeah, but not as a playable character. If he WAS a playable character I would have been less likely to have seen him betray the group, once I noticed he wasn't in the party I knew something was up immediately- I mean besides the fact that his name was Mithos. I also would have been able to connect with him better, and would have felt more- hurt- when he betrayed them. As for Tabatha- I mean BAM. At first she seems like just an off to the side character but at the very END of the game she seems to be THE MOST IMPORTANT CHARACTER EVER. Because of that I wanted to know her MORE, have her in the group, and more a part of the main story because really- BAM. I mean BAM she really became important, and to me Tabatha's role- or lack of- was the biggest disappointment to me. I know I really would have liked her as a character if she were in the party. Favorite characters- Lloyd, Kratos, and Sheena. I feel like there isn't much that needs to be said about this. When I was younger, I liked Genis a lot (he really reminded me of Tails) but on playing it for myself, I didn't like him as much as I thought I would, and at some times I actually found him kind of... annoying... I found that pretty disappointing too, because I really wanted to like him like I really wanted to like Colette. Now yes- A lot of these are knit-picks, but I did enjoy the game a bit, just not as much as I could have. And yes, it's an older game- so some of the technical stuff was probably just newer and being worked out, etc. so I don't blame much of that. It's just small parts of the story were little let downs from the epic that I was expecting, which is really on me for how high I placed it from what others had said. THAT BEING SAID, I have yet to play the sequel, but from spoilers I have heard from my friend, I AM ALREADY READY TO RAGE QUIT. Even though it seems like I didn't like the game all that much, the characters have a special place in my heart and hearing about what's going on in the sequel and how the characters act, or what they say- It's already getting to me xD Even so, I still want to play it, and even if there are some things about it I probably won't like (Or a lot of things more like) I'm still really excited. Even though the main characters aren't really... The main characters anymore.... (Another thing I don't like about Tales of sequels). I AM READY TO PLAY!