TheBranca18 said:
Frontier Village is a nightmare. I love the town, the music and the inhabitants but man it's frustrating to have to return to someone after getting a quest. Finding them is almost impossible without wandering around for half n hour or googling.
I'll get to why I quoted that post in a minute, but I will say that post is the absolute truth about Frontier Village.
After putting 90 plus hours into the game, (A LOT of that being for side quests and mapping out areas fully, I'm still not even half way through the story!) I feel I can give a fair assessment of it. As for the game itself, it's totally and completely been worth every penny of what I had to pay to import it from Game! Probably the best RPG I've seen in 10 years easily. None of the RPG's I've played in that time have been terrible in my opinion, just not as good as this one. It basically takes all the standard JRPG conventions, ideas, along with general concepts and it either does all of it right or in some cases improves upon them greatly.
Visually, I've had an interesting experience with this game. Personally as far as I'm concerned. While I am not a "graphics freak" by any stretch and am not ultra picky when it comes to graphics, it looks fantastic on my 42 inch TV and has some of the best visuals on the Wii. A lot of the areas graphically are jaw dropping. But everyone certainly has their own opinion on it. As soon as my Dad saw it he commented that the graphics are mostly early PS2 level and in some areas late PS1 level stuff so opinions on the graphics are going to vary but I've been impressed personally.
Musically it's some of the best video game music I've heard in 10 years as well. Even though my favorite game composer always has been, and still is Mr. Uematsu, while this game is not an Uematsu scored game musically it is excellent. A lot of memorable songs that will stick in your head long after you've turned off the Wii. So they did great there.
For everything this game gets right, and it gets probably over 90 percent of what it does right there is one really huge minus, it's not a game or deal breaker by any means at all but this game's worst flaw has to do with quests. While in almost every case you will be given a general idea of where to go, it's almost always a situation of "Go to this area in general-what you're looking for or the monster you need to find is definitely in this area, but hey we'll just give you the general area you need to go to and after that you're on your own". That to me is a poor design choice. At the very absolute least, it should say the specific smaller area you should be looking in along with the general region you need to be in. Also, while it does show you a ! for all quest givers, and some of the items you need to find have a ! in their locations, you need to be RIGHT in the area of the quest giver or item you need to find. Also, the "Here's the general area you need to be in" thing strikes again with the named NPC's. It will tell you the general region they're in but then you gotta find the exactttt spot on your own. Again, it's not a game or deal breaker but it will cause many people a lot of un-necessary frustration and you'll spend a LOT more time in some areas than you might want to.
The last big point I want to make is the frickin scope of the game size wise..Good God they sure didn't leave a whole lot left out that's for sure. These areas are just huge, massive regions. It took 3 to 4 HOURS to map out each of the major regions I've visited so far, just because I wanted to make sure I found every secret location as well as nook and cranny. Here's a huge piece of advice that will help a lot of people just starting out:
Take the time to fully map out each area as soon as you possibly can, because you're going to thank yourself for it, and I mean really thank yourself for it later. The huge benefit to mapping each area out asap is when you need to get to a specific spot for a quest, all possible locations in an area will be open and you'll have a MUCH easier time getting from point A to B. Also, as you map out each area you'll most likely get more than enough of the collectibles/items needed for quests that require those. That's when you'll really be thanking yourself later.
The reason I quoted the post about Frontier Village is..well..that area is a bitch of a nightmare as far as quests are concerned. You're not just dealing with 2 or 3 floors-you're dealing with 8. So, that's 8 layers of places where NPC's and quest givers are and you need to know the exact spots they are in and the exact times they will be there. If you're gonna come up short 5 starring any area of the game that's probably gonna be it. Just a total nightmare. There's 85-ish possible side quests there, I've done about 70 of them, and I'll just say a few times I've thought about giving up on that area but I'm so close now I may as well finish it. But I cannot blame those who just say screw the side quests there. 2 or 3 bigger floors there would have been much much better than 8!
Overall though, I'd give the game a very very high A rating..the only real minus I'm seeing has to do with the vagueness of some quests but other than that, if you haven't imported the game go do it now! Best gaming experience in quite a few years.
