Dream; Final Fantasty 6 - 2

Summary:

A high res remix of FF6 with a improved battle system, extended more in depth plot, and a lot of additional new features.

Details:

So, I put in my game blu-ray disc, to see what all the buzz was about with this final fantasy 3/6 TWO controversy; Having enjoyed the hell out of the first FF6, I was really skeptical about the remix. To my surprise, it both exceeded my expectations and blew my mind with awesomeness.
A lot of it is really fuzzy in memory, but Kevka was a lot mroe seriously evil in this one, and the plot was changed to match up with the more recent final fantasy's; The idea of 'magic' being used to dominate and ultimately destroy the world was still there, and espers were still there, but holy shit they are scary as hell in high res. Also,  the espers are a lot more interactive, not merely quest items; They do actually converse, follow you around and make suggestions depending on how you treat them. Naturally once you kill an esper, it only exists as a spirit, so they cannot do anything until you summon them, which always costs 1 HP + some amount of MP. The battle system was vastly improved, implementing a mixture of both real time fighting and strategic turn based trickery; Also all done in glorious 3D. You had the option to command classically, where actions were mere dice rolls, or you could switch to Star Ocean mode, and stop-time fight all at once, OR you could keep the 'Neo' mode, where it was classical turn based, but each action had *you* play it out, so if you said 'Sabin -> Pummel' then you have to run in with Sabin, and mash buttons or do some sort of mini-game. Sometimes, basic attacks are just running and aiming correctly; which means doing so gives you far more options to have critical attacks, since WHERE you hit an enemy determines that, but only in Neo mode (IE using a sword against the neck = critical hit)
The graphics were photo-realistic photon ray traced HDR Spherical Harmonics ambient occlusion self shadowing ect. goodness. It was amazingly pretty to look at, all of the objects had absurd levels of detail, when you put it in star ocean mode and paused, you could move around the battlefield to look at all the detail of the characters and monsters, seeing every little scar, emotion, item, scrap of clothing, was crazy! Kinda like the first time you discovered link wore earrings in Ocarina of Time.
So, now we have a excellent combat system, an amazing visual presentation, and the traditional orchestral music but this time with less music; Most of the game takes place in an 'ambient' environment, only when you do something that requires a beat, or a induced emotion is there a musical score. This adds greatly to the emotional and immersive impact of the game; For example, walking through a town sounds like a town, but stopping at a shop to do mundane purchasing pops up the lively 'shop' music, and it all blended acoustically together, forming a seamless transition. Lots of the environment was interactive, pots, crates, bushes could be examined or broken; Obviously sometimes with consequences; Most of the time you wouldn't really find anything either; Exploring was well emphasized, there were still invisible walls, but they were there only to help you, and eventually dissapear if you push on them long enough. Though, trying to walk off a cliff, your character stops youl, not a wall. They don't want to jump in lava, spikes, acid, death.
The controls meshed well with a PS3 remote. Was very intuitive for an RPG.
So the plot! Because that's what was so awesome about FF6, is how you got drawn into the world by the story. This is where I'll likely make mistakes; because I didn;t even get past the first part of the game, since I only played it for about 6 hours.
I remember being 'Setzer' in a team with Edgar, Cloud (wtF? musta been gau), Celes, Terra, and Relm (who is an adult this time around, if I could draw you a picture of her she'd get instant cult fame), and we were walking around some town, stocking up before attempting to infiltrated on of the larger magitek ships that had been docked in port. The world was torn, there were multiple powers fighting for supreme control of the magitek and espers, and there was of course the resistance that aimed to stop them from killing the planet/espers. That's what you do, and the first part was just going from town to town, fighting monsters (another note, monsters are very dynamic in Neo mode; They have a lot of specialized attacks and depending on the monster, you can indirectly tame/lure them depending. IE, I would have Setzer try and bait them with food, then Cloud critical them when they got close. Earning me a 'Evil' ranking most of the time, but hey, times are tough. I'm sure the game will cause that to backfire on me later, for being evil to so many of a specific enemy I'll probably run into a much larger one that kicks my ass)
So, eventually, after a lot of fighting and killing magitek guards, we found a drawbridge, and had to solve a physics puzzle with an open ended solution. WE srewed it up, so we had to find a boat and cross the moat; didn;t work, we ended up swimming into the sewer pipes of the ship (if it HAD worked, we would have saved a lot of time & got some cool items)
So now we're in the bowels of this really large, iron rusty colored monster, it was insanely large, larger than the superbowl; it had lots of smoothed out high tech looking cooridors, and the platforms above this sluice, which Terra figured out was 'cooling' their magitek reactor, which contained an esper, we eventually got cloud to ninja us a guard so we could take their weapons; The room we were in was about 35 ft tall, the bottom half had a hemispherical cutout that was full of hte sluice we were hiding in, and was really dark. The top half had cutout platforms nad rooms, lots of scientists in white walking around, and guards with white and red symbols. They looked a lot like the ones from FF6, mind you. so we split up, and each took some positions to try and get intel on where the reactor was. Most of the girls took labcoats and became 'scientists' and the guys took on casual appearances (there was a entire city in this ship, after all.) After some espionage, we got really unlucky, and Kevka showed up. Kevka, in this stage of the game, looked a LOT like sephiroth, but with a much crazier grin all the time, and was tall, but did not yet reach feather in hat stage. He was becoming mad with power, but hadn't completely lost it. Well, Kevka has a few bodyguards, and was actually being pretty personable, hitting people he didn't know on the shoulder, really hard and laughing about 'How's the Day' or something like that, knocking them down and just laughing about it. Was quite fitting. Apparently, Cloud got pissed off and confronted him...
So suddenly, boss mode happened.
Boss mode is really different; If you confront a boss OUT of character, this special mode comes up, where time is slowed down a lot, and you get all these new special gauges; Because if you were to actually defeat kevka at this point, it would probably mess up the game, the game makes sure to give you a damn good challenge. When a boss fight occurs, your teammates can suddenly join the 'battle sphere' which is a large area surrounding the boss. Joining it gives you your command queue;
Once the fight starts, everyting happens in REAL time, but slowed down about 10 times; so you can see everyone attacking at once; thinking quickly is the only way to survive. Kefva had a revolver like the joker, and luckily missed cloud but killed two people in the immediate area (battles don't "transport" you somewhere else, you exist in the world at all times, so your fights can fuck up the world!) cloud tried to hit him but got stabbed in the gut (Kevka had armor on under his white suit) so he backed off; Kevka ended the fight by default, so we couldn;t fight him. Apparently, he had no idea who we were, and was actually delighted we tried to kill him. Something about "I haven't seen such fire in a long time! Cecil, get this man to the recuiting station!" And just continue on, laughing manically after hitting shocked cloud on the shoulder, knocking him down. Kevka's bodyguards never entered the fight, indicating they knew you were no match.

There is so much detail in this dream, but I can't really remember all of it. Point is, if it was written out correctly, I sure hope that someone makes a RPG like it. Woudl be awesome.

-Z