BenoitRen wrote:You misunderstood my point. I was talking about it from a series point of view, not from a game's merits point of view. What I was countering is that PSIII should never have existed as part of the series.
Maybe so, but it still ends up sounding like "No one should complain about three for being bad because it's possible that it led to four being good." Perhaps I really don't know the goings-on of SEGA at the time, but I still can't accept that PS3 helped the series that much.
(Wren-types)
Considering that the team that made PSIII was totally different, this is extremely unlikely.
I'm not too convinced here. They might not have made more Wrens, true, but given the prevalence of robots in PS2, even just as enemies, makes it likely that future installments would have robotic companions. Heck, even PS1 had Hapsby.
This I can agree with, but we mostly think that way because the concept was explained in a hurry. It's not like we knew what was going on on Palma. We never get to visit it in PSII.
Yeah, it's a plot point that the whole series is content to ignore, so, hell, I don't even know what to say about it.
Except that it's not a genuinely bad game. For the time, it was an average game.
To elaborate:
- The music is not universally bad. It's hit and miss.
- The gameplay was the same as PSII, and I don't see everyone complaining about it.
- The characters had about as much characterisation as PSI and PSII, which you can't really call bad.
- The plot itself was not bad, just not executed that well.
- The graphics were not bad. What you probably mean is that many places look the same, with many empty spots, which is a valid criticism.
Most of the ingame music was painful. Perhaps this is subjective, but I have a wide and varied appreciation of music, especially in the Video Game genre. As you pointed out later, I did like some of the songs (and the something awful swear filter for guests amuses me), but the ones I liked hardly ever play. Hell, my favorite only plays on the title screen, which most players will see for all of three seconds.
The gameplay is different, though. While the dungeons are long and painful, they're also boring in PS3 now, and composed almost entirely of the 'ship underbelly' dungeons which may be the laziest and yet convoluted places I've ever had the misery of plowing through. Techniques that aren't for healing are completely useless. And far as I know, no equipment has any special effects. This may not seem like all that much, but, since PS1 and PS2 both excelled in this area many years prior, and many other RPGs of the time were also comparable, it's quite damning of PS3 for it to be a step backwards.
While the characters of PS1 and PS2 only had one scene each, if that, they still managed to have more personality and uniqueness to them than the lurching mass of generic NPCs that PS3 tosses at you. Again, yes, I like Mieu, but that's only for superficial reasons. I'll be honest there. Lena, on the other hand, is surprisingly good for this game, but only because of background information
not even presented in the game itself. Clearly, the whole game had potential, but since it didn't act on any of it, how am I supposed to care?
If I recall right, the plot is "We've been on a spaceship for a few generations. Most of us forgot that somehow because no one is capable of reading or writing. The ones that didn't forget are either living with Dark Force or have all the means to stop him but just feel like sitting around. Also, Dark Force is in a box not doing anything." And, since the whole cast is interchangeable for this, it's even
less capable of being interesting.
I do mean they are bad, though. The vibrance of previous games is lost. The character sprites may seem a bit more detailed, but they're also significantly uglier than the sprites of 2 or 4, especially the blank faces. There's also the repetition, yes. Monster sprites were also more detailed, but, again, significantly uglier than any other game in the series. Even their animations were a tremendous step down from previous games in the series.
If it really was a genuinely bad game barely anyone would have enjoyed it. But that's not the case. You're painting the entirety of PSIII with black, which is closed-minded despite your claim to the contrary and this is what I have a problem with. The game does have its merits.
Look, if you have a problem with me having quality standards in the games I play, I'm not really sure what to tell you.
Actually, the bigger problem, which is present on most gaming message boards, is the substanceless complaining. Instead of person X making a case and explaining why (s)he didn't like the game or parts of it, that person just says "it's bad". Doesn't exactly make for good discussion.
Thing is, though, I do give reasoning. Quite often, in fact, if serious discussion is involved. I've played through the game at least twice, so you can know I'm not just basing all this on five minutes of barely paying attention.
Really, I'm not trying to be confrontational here. But you seem to take grave offense to anyone that dislikes PS3, regardless of how deserving of that hate that many, many people feel it is.
So, perhaps yes, it's really only terribly mediocre and not quite the Genesis edition of
Stargazer, but that doesn't mean I should be holding it in high regard, either, especially if it's part of a series that normally delivers quality and innovation. For jRPGs, anyway.
EDIT: Seriously, though, I'm enjoying myself here. It's so rare to get a good PS debate going on these days.
LOL! I'm just kidding...... regarding your post Benoit, its like that with pretty much every game out there. One example out of a billzillion is the Final Fantasy games... FF2 and 3 (4 and 6 in japan) were some of the best RPG games back in the days... but people that started the genre on FF7 will never understand that.. they will just go into just how bad they look. Nothing else.. Wait 10-15 years when FF18 comes out and the generation of people that play THOSE GAMES will look at FF7 and will think to themselves how HORRENDOUS these games are!!!
