Back from the SE show. So I'll give my thoughts on everything there.
New trailers reel: First of all, FFXII's latest trailer is incredibly awesome. The game looks (gameplay aside) like it could definitely be the greatest rpg ever made. In fact I've basically lost interest in G3 and ToL and upcoming rpgs after watching the ungodly holyness of FFXII. It's hard to even get excited about any next-gen games after that trailer. Ashe is a fucking badass; she's introduced as she's killing guards left and right in her sword and armor. She has a lot of scenes in the trailer and she definitely seems like the best female character ever in an rpg. The Judge CG stuff is pretty sick too and when you see them appear in the game you know you're gonna go "oh shit" ^^; What makes the game look so awesome is that every NPC general or story character is a realistic looking manly man with tons of facial hair and dirtiness to them. It looks like a gritty dark war rpg and I hope to god they aren't going to tone the story down with Matsuno off the project. Lots of in-game cutscenes and CG and battle scenes in the trailer. Basically it looks awesome and everyone is marking 3.16 on their calenders after that.
Front Mission V looked kinda nice. Seemed like Front Mission IV graphics but with an emphasis on a huge war feeling. So you have tons of human characters in 3d cutscenes (looks kinda like FMO) and tons of mecha in the battle cutscenes. No gameplay footage, but FM4 was pretty good so I'm definitely interested in FM5. Also the voices were all in Japanese which makes me wonder if they're going for a more serious epic tale so they don't want goofy English acting this time.
KH2 trailer was long and nice. Pirates stuff looked great in motion and the opening scenes with the new kid were really nice. Since it seems like they've fixed their mistakes from KH1, it should be a really great christmas game to hold the Japanese gamers until FFXII. The Japanese voice-acting for the non-disney characters was top-notch again so I guess I'll need to get both versions (No Johnny Depp =
)
Code Age trailer looked ok (I hate the character designs though :\), but the actual hands on of the game was not so hot so I don't really care about it.
FFVII AC trailer was pretty spoilerish and mostly old footage but still looks like a lot of fun.
FFVII DC trailer looked pretty solid. I think the character designs on the new guys is awful and the environments are kinda sparse though.
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Hands-on stuff:
Grandia 3: Only checked it out briefly to confirm the framerate. Walking around it's 30fps locked like most rpgs, but in battle it's a unlocked 60fps that dips here and there when lots of action is going on. Game seems like Grandia which is a good thing. On the main field you could rotate the camera around you so I'm not sure where famitsu was complaining about locked camera angles.
Code Age: Only played briefly but it's like KH1 except you only have like 2-3 moves and one of them is this really long 1000 hit move which is reptitive to watch after even the first 5 mins of the game.
FFVII DC: Hmmm, the game is ok I guess. The nice part is that it's a constant 60fps that never dips. Even the cutscenes are 60fps which is nice. Controls are pretty simple with a shot button and a magic shot (like grenade) button besides jump/dive/punch. Toggling between gun drawn view and not-drawn view works pretty well but can still be a bit disorientating. The actual shooting is pretty cookie-cutter. I'd compare it to something like the Fullmetal Alchemist games where it's a pretty standard shoot-em-up as FMA is a pretty standard beat-em-up. If it wasn't for the nice CGs and potentially good story/cutscenes (due to Kitase directing it), it would be a C-grade game. But maybe that stuff will make it a B-grade rental that's at least worth playing once. One of the CG sequences in the trailer has all the FF7 AC crew except Cloud shown.
FFXII: Hmmm, since I played it at E3 like 15 months ago it's changed a tiny bit. The animations have improved a lot and look downright amazing now. The enemies are all animated incredibly lively and are some of the best looking enemies ever. The summon system is new to this demo and is kinda lame I think. You summon a creature and your other party members disappear leaving just the one character + summon who walks around punch and killing enemies for a limited time. Hmmmmmmm, dunno if I like that. Also just like the previous demo the game is really shallow and easy. Like you don't even need to hold the controller whenever enemies are near, you just point at them and put the controller down and you'll fight and heal yourself until the enemy dies. Now back at E3 I didn't mind this because with Matsuno on board there was no way the game would end up easy and shallow; he'd make challenging boss and enemies that would require you to constantly be pulling up menus and ordering commands like a turn-based rpg in order to survive. But with him gone I'm a little worried about the gameplay. Also the E3 demos were waaaay better. You had like 4 areas with full on cutscenes and story which gave you a background to what you were doing in the demo. You also could walk around town and talk to people. But here it was just 2 empty dungeons with a few enemy types and a boss, so you just walk around and watch your people hit things. So yea....I dunno. Until the game actually comes out I doubt anyone will be able to tell whether the gameplay and the battle system are solid, so we just have a long 9 months of waiting.
Didn't play KH2 as I assumed it was just the E3 demo and skipped waiting in line 60mins to play Slime Mori 2, so that's about all I can comment on.
