Whispering Rogue

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Final Fantasy XII- Revenant Wings for DS

Therewas much deliberation over whether I was going to buy this game, as Iabsolutely hated the original Final Fantasy 12 for PS2 but I got it forcheap so I thought what the hell.

What the hell indeed.

Whenwill Square Enix learn to stop making bloody sequels???? Final FantasyX-2 was so bloody atrocious and then they assault us with this spin offof Final Fantasy 12. And before you get ahead of yourselves, this isNOT the same as Dissidia or Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus as inthose games, they were telling the story of something completelydifferent, rather than just crapping on after their predecessors.

Hey, if you were absolutely enamoured with FF12, you might enjoy this… Hmm… No, don’t even try, it was just too bad.

GAMEPLAY

Theworst of the worst. The controls do make great use of the Styluscontrols, despite all of it’s other short-comings, and my hands-already suffering from RSI- were cramping up 60 seconds every minute,but you could use the directional pad to navigate if you so chose. Letme break it done for you: All you do is wander around small islands,performing various missions- either story specific or grinding- maybego onto your ship for supplies and.. and… Oh, that’s it. At thebeginning of each mission you start at one end of the battle area, andselect the leaders of your team and all the little minions at yourdisposal, then you charge down to the enemy at the other end hack hack,you win. There was supposed to be some tactic to fighting, as indicatedin the tutorial- melee conquers ranged, flying takes down melee, rangedtakes down flying- but if you try to implement these strategies inactual battle, you get deaded before you know it. So all you have to dois make sure you have the biggest army and go kill the bad guys. Rinseand repeat. There are some ‘summoning portals’ around the place whereeither side can replenish their minions- either good or evil’ but theyreally don’t matter once you start the killing.

GRAPHICS

Isuppose these were OK, not great based on other DS games, but notterrible. If you played FF12 before, you’d be used to the charactersbeing roughly 18 and older, but you could swear to whatever deity youbelieve in, they were at least 7 in Revenant Wings. They look likesmall children, they speak like small children (in dialogue, no voiceacting here, that would be too cool for this game) they act like littlekids- It had a slightly incestuous feel to it all. Not good.

MUSIC

Thiswas pleasant enough, not wonderfully spectacular- it never got my heartpumping or boogeyiing in my chair, but it was OK. If it were better,actually had adrenaline-pumping music for battle and so forth itmight’ve been a little more interesting to get into but that wouldn’thave taken away from all the bad shit anyway

STORYLINE

Youfly into the sky, have to rescue the flying people from the bad guyswho are stealing all their crystals, kill some mini-bosses *Insert longarduous yawn here* That’s basically it. Was not deep, clever, grippingor fun in any way… So come to think of it, it is the PERFECT additionto Final Fantasy 12!

I just hated this game.Well, maybe not ‘hate’ per se, but it was awful, SO REPETITIVE, weirdwith all the little kids and everything, and it just wasted all mygaming talent. I had great strategies worked out to dispatch certainenemies but none of that was needed. Hack ‘n slash, hack ‘n slash, youwin. Whoopee. NEXT!

TTFN- Ta Ta For Now!

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