And so it begins. I can't even count how many Saga games Square Enix has released (originally starting on Game Boy with the 1989 release of Final Fantasy Legends), but we're about to venture into Unlimited, the second most recent installment in the series. Lauded by some, abhorred by most, it's pretty clear from the game's opening scene we're in for a disastrous night. Tonight's live blog is brought to you by Ethan and James.
9:52pm - Oh God almighty this is a mess. We're already lost. The game plays like a banged up pen and paper role-playing game. Imagine explaining to a team of Japanese video game developers the idea behind Dungeons & Dragons without a translator in a pitch black room and you get Unlimited Saga.
9:59pm - I feel horrible for the artists who worked on this game. Music and graphics look beautifully. But unfortunately not even lovely bandages can cover up the rotting corpse underneath. 5 minutes into the adventure and already the mechanics are broken.
10:02pm - No exposition, no explanation, and a whole lot of roullete wheels.
10:06pm - Money quote from the game manual: "Perseverance is the key."
10:13pm - "Who thought this was a good idea!!" Jim yells at the screen as he helps his avatar token hop around some nebulous adventure map.
10:15pm - Roulette wheels. Sometimes they help you attack enemies, sometimes they help you escape from under boulders. Who knew?
10:23pm - Laura (former "Sea Wolf" pirate) seems to have come down with an ailment. We can't quite tell what she suffers from. But based on the icon below her status, I'm diagnosing here with a mild case of exclamation point.
10:30pm - HP, LP, EN...the importance and relation of each of these stats is still unclear. 0 HP was our first clue not all was as it seemed.
10:35pm - This shit is fucking deep.
10:38pm - And it looks like we're about to kid nap this little girl we just found, AKA she's joining our party. Just in time too, because a giant eye testicle just attacked us.
10:43pm - AND, she just leveled up her abilities and now has "Detect Vegeplast." So we should be good now.
10:55pm - First treasure chest opened! All it took was a little time and for one of us to see the action icon in the top left corner of the screen. Looks like we can start picking up crates now, which is apparently what we were suppose to be doing in the first place.
10:59pm - This is less like playing a JRPG, and more like watching some primitive tribe of highly decorated natives as they engage in deep and complex social rituals, and trying to figure out what the hell any of it means.
11:03pm - Next treasure chest poisoned the team, exploded, and then transformed into a monster. These are dark times we live in...
11:06pm - BTWs that dragon has nothing to do with anything, we just needed a pic to break up them words.
11:22pm - Getting our asses handed to us by some Gobstopper looking blobs on what appears to be a polished green marble sand dune.
11:42pm - We traded places as I had a meltdown of epic proportions trying to beat my head in while hoping to make sense of the map. Ethan is now beating insects up left and right. Of course he starts an adventure and now it looks super easy...he'll learn...oh he will learn.
11:48pm - So far the story is...completely and utterly lame. Princess escaping slaughter runs into sea pirate who decides to transport this kid..."cause alright why not."
11:50pm - Every time you finish an "adventure" you get to add a new skill to your "Hexagon-of-Confusion." This game suddenly reminds me of the movie Swordfish and that ridiculous multi-hexagon ultimate computer virus he had to create...except without a naked Halle Berry, which in the end all Swordfish was anyway. (I'm obviously bored of this already).
11:57pm - Another treasure chest...another trap. Jesus Christ. Finding out how to open things was just the beginning...
12:00am - (see above)...of something we should have never started.
12:01am - Ethan couldn't open another chest because "it was locked by powerful magic." Luckily though he could its fortune...of the fucking chest. Which of course he also failed at doing, but it finally opened. Netting us a whopping 6kr. Just to let you know, a piece of cotton cost 245kr.
12:08pm - Honestly. The artwork in this game is pretty beautiful. And I mean that like, the actual pieces of landscape 2D art that exists everytime you move. My only explanation for this game is they blew all there money paying artists and then forgot they had to do other shit so some dude was like "nah man, nah. Instead of characters walking around, we'll get a board piece that just move. People like Monopoly. Bing bang boom, Unlimited Saga." This of course was all in Japanese at the time.
12:11pm - So something has been bothering us and we figured it out. This game is the exact equivalent of being taken to a D&D game with people you don't know who have memorized every spell and dungeon book known to man. But you are of course a first time player. So much like prison, they have their way with you before you learn to navigate the system. This is likely going to end with us offing ourselves...which again, would probably still be alot like prison.
"I'd like to tell you Andy fought the good fight..."
12:16pm -We are again adding to our "HEXAGON OF CONFUSION."
12:30pm - Finding this old contest more interesting than the game at this point. Quote of the night: "Which SaGa Frontier 2 character left the note 'Where did you go, Graha?'"
12:39pm - Meanwhile, something about finding this butler's missing "jewels" in a mansion. Task equals chopping apart furniture, once again, via the roulette wheel.
12:43pm - Now into some caves. Not much to see here. Some monsters, some rocks, and some secret passages that melt away when a fire axe hits them.
12:50pm - While James curses one of the weapons breaking, let's take a look at some Unlimited reviews from Amazon.
12:53pm - "Little to nothing is explained in game (and the manual covers very little). You'd need a guide for most of this game, but a printed one never existed."
12:57pm - "Even having the game for a several months, I don't think there is a way to heal yourself during battle."
12:59pm - "[Y]ou WILL die."
1:03pm - Back to the action, James continues to get his ass kicked by small cheetah.
1:09pm - Unlimited Saga is one of those games that ended developers' careers. I'm sure whoever cooked up this blistering casserole of broken gaming wishes their names airbrushed from the history of this title.
12:59pm - "[Y]ou WILL die."
1:03pm - Back to the action, James continues to get his ass kicked by small cheetah.
1:09pm - Unlimited Saga is one of those games that ended developers' careers. I'm sure whoever cooked up this blistering casserole of broken gaming wishes their names airbrushed from the history of this title.