#ps2 jrpgs

[anarchic-miscellany]

Conflicted tales from physical media: "Persona 3" got a re-release, and the dubbing job was redone pretty much entirely from the ground up. On the one hand: hooray, no more of the terrible (and honestly kind of always overrated, I never got the hype. Kirk Thornton was where it was at) Vic Mignogna as Junpei, so well done there guys. But no Tara Platt (best actor, playing best girl), no Michelle Ruff, no Karen Strassman, no Liam O'Brien (though honestly, dude must be exhausted by now!), no Grant George, no Dan Woren (great as the villain, damn!), and no more credit to the (rather unusually) unknown actor who played Fuuka. Hell, even the Wikipedia article on the characters doesn't credit a lot of them from the original (for the record I think it was Mona Marshall who played Ken, if memory serves). Kind of sad really. "Hey, here's some great work, some wonderful performances, some from actors who we don't even know, and some from actors before or around the time they were really hitting their stride! Well, gone now!" I appreciate the remaking of these games to update the jank and keep them around, but games are honestly kind of a time capsule and should be preserved as all art should. Kind of sucks man.

[anarchic-miscellany]

I love the original ".hack" games because they do that thing I adore with JRPG parties: let me use only the least consequential characters to the plot. Oh, a giant mega monster running rampant in an online game is trying to gain sentience and is sending players who cross it into a coma? Cool, allow me to recruit a dude from Dakota who wants to learn Japanese and collect digital swords, and an introverted highschooler just here to make friends, and my bae Gardenia, who just wants to chill and vibe. I adore the idea of kicking in the doors, approaching this monster to push its shit in, and doing it with a party of people who just logged on for a good time. Plus Sanjuro is an absolute fucking tank, and Natsume and Gardenia are delightful.

[anarchic-miscellany]

In "Wild Arms 3", there's a moment where your quartet move into a dungeon and follow a mysterious, shady woman to the exit. She keeps avoiding the traps which spring up on you, and is playing it like a simple innocent ditz. Jet and Gallows, two of your male party members, are smitten with her, whilst Virginia is perplexed and Clive, who is happily married, is completely indifferent to her. When you get to the end of the dungeon, she reveals herself to be a femme fatale and betrays you, talking about how you all fell for her beauty. When Clive says she's not that beautiful, only his wife is, she is enraged. In the ensuing boss fight, she'll ONLY attack Clive. I fucking love this game.

[anarchic-miscellany]

Finally playing the first generation of ".hack" games for the Playstation 2 ("Infection", "Mutation", "Outbreak" and "Quarantine"), as they're a bastard to get ahold of and I was obsessed with the anime ".hack//sign" The real world stuff as you're reading messages and checking email and looking up the news on your computer browser is a cute touch, and could make for an EXCELLENT horror game. The news stuff I expect to be great foreshadowing, and a telling of the plot in the real world as the MMO blurs over. It's good, great touch guys! The camera stuff is a bit janky (used to the Right-Stick camera movement as I am), but smooth enough so far. I appreciate the plot detail of having Orca stupidly high level this early on and carrying you through the dungeon as a tutorial - it illustrates how sweet he is as a character, helps you get through the dungeon without hassle in the tutorial and, spoiler I guess, shows how hardcore and evil the villain is when Orca gets taken out. It also gives our protagonist Kite a motivation, to avenge his friend put into a coma by this weird monster who took him out in game! Good writing, good job game! Looking forward to the game proper.

[anarchic-miscellany]

In "Wild Arms 3" you control a party of 4 characters, one of which is Jet Enduro - the cold, stoic, selfish edgelord.

Or at least, he would be that if the makers didn't put in a lot of effort to making all of the characters ascend their stereotypes, and poking fun at such a cliche. Jet is constantly doing his "I work better alone." shtick, asking why they bother doing tasks if they're not paid, that sort of thing. But they keep ripping the piss out of him in the process, and pointing out how he's achieved basically nothing by going it alone, and Virginia (who is wonderful) leads this. But there's never a mean-spirit behind it. When you find the only fertile garden in the world, and thus a chance to bring life to this post-apocalyptic wasteland, Jet is seemingly disgusted with the lack of payment on offer for helping the lady to run it, and we get this from Virginia: "I'm sorry he's so rude, you'll never hear anything nice out of him. He's had it rough. But he's not really a bad guy, okay?"

Even Gallows and Clive mock him for this attitude, and he cheers up over the course of the story, especially when he discovers the truly horrifying nature of his past.The message and tone within this game is always one of kindness, sweetness and being decent people.

I love this game

[anarchic-miscellany]

In "Wild Arms 3", one of your characters (Gallows) is their version of a Native American, and is easily the best at using magic.

But the game, weirdly, subverts the old kind of racist "Magical Native Americans" by revealing that his tribe/people are not the "true rulers of the planet" or "in touch with nature" but are simply a bunch of hippies who settled down and just chilled with nature, and that the actual "Native Americans" of the planet are long since dead and these guys are merely following in their footsteps, with gaps in the knowledge and their own weird interpretations of stuff. A lovely little commentary on how Native Americans are treated in fiction, I feel.