Corpse Run 358: Would smell as sweet
LIVESTREAM UPDATE:
Alrighty, the next livestream is this Friday, October 25th at 9pm est! I’ll be doodling your suggestions, and will continue the Tales of Symphonia playthrough afterwards!
Were we last left off in the game, some major, spoiler-y type stuff went down… where will Lloyd and the gang end up next? Find out on Friday!
You can view the stream either here or here.
See you then!
END LIVESTREAM UPDATE!
Most of you are probably aware of this already, but in my world, no game is ever too old to have a comic made about it.
Especially games as stellar as Final Fantasy 9, which happens to be my favorite in the series.
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of playing the game; very early on, the freshly kidnapped Princess Garnet comes to the realization that if she’s going to be wandering outside the castle, it’d be in her best interests to adopt a fake identity.
After picking up a dagger dropped by the thief/actor/ladies-man/contracted-kidnapper Zidane, she declares her new name to be…
whatever you want it to be.
Seriously, you can actually ‘rename’ Princess Garnet “Garnet.” You’d figure the game would have a set of dialogue in which Zidane chides the princess for picking the worst possible secret identity and forcing her to choose something else.
Then again, it is in Zidane’s character to let pretty much anything fly, so maybe he would have been ok with it anyway…
On a slight tangent, I just want to say that one of my favorite character relationships in any game I’ve played is that between Zidane and Steiner. This might just be a case of my imagination running away with plain text, but I always felt that the two really hated each other at the beginning of their journey before eventually lightening up… their dislike for each other was so much more than say, Squall and Seifer, who are supposed to be super badass enemies.
Final Fantasy 9, despite all its silly trappings, feels the most human.
End tangent.
Quick story from work:
I was talking to a coworker yesterday about keyboards, and though I don’t remember how, the conversation arrived at Twitter. I saw his account and made a mental note to follow him (which I since have), but when he saw mine, he let out a little laugh.
I’m paraphrasing here, but he said something to the effect of, “Your last name is Di Stasi?”
“Yeah.”
“Well…” he said, “there’s something interesting about that name…” another coworker overheard us and upon hearing my name, laughed also.
Apparently “Stasi” is/was slang for a politically oppressive German police organization that was dissolved in the early 90’s after decades of illegal acts.
Aren’t I just the luckiest?
FF9 for me storyline wise is the worst game in the series, the love story is horrible written and the game pretends that the love story is one of the main focuses when it isn’t, the story is FULL of plotholes, some of the characters are obnoxious, and some of them make really stupid decision (especially garnet) and has a really unsympathetic character that the game acts like is sympathetic (kuja). In a top 10 list that lists everything wrong with 9:
10: the trance mode
9: necron
8: the eidolons and Brahne
7:Freya and fratley
6:alexander
5: terra, Garland and zidane’s angel of death powers
4: beatrix
3: kuja
2: garnet’s disk 1 and 2 actions (returning to Alexandria)
1: zidane and garnet’s love story
I won’t get into too much detail because I’m better at explaining this when I’m talking on a video I plan to make, but I’ll say some things. The only reason for Necron’s existence was for him to serve as a cheap excuse for kuja to try to redeem himself, because kuja completly deserves to redeem himself (being sarcastic), kuja was an unsympathetic monster the whole game and then during terra the game pretty much pulls out of nowhere And forces to make kuja out to be a “tragic and sympathetic” character despite there being no build up before, and the game pretty much started treating kuja like a draco in leather pants (term for character who has his negative traits down played), and NECRON was just something the writers pulled out of their rears as a forced attemped to make kuja atone.
Beatrix is an annoying God-mode Sue who never looses a fight, which is especially annoying because the guy who fights her each time was zidane the guy who was created to be the most powerful person in 9: the shadow the hedgehog/mewtwo of 9. In the final fight with Beatrix; Zidane should have transformed into a more powerful incomplete angel of death trance mode and curb stomp Beatrix and actually have Beatrix loose a fight, there’s a bunch of other problems I have with Beatrix but I won’t state that here.
And Zidane and Garnet I consider the love story to be the worst done in the final fantasy series, people act like it’s so great but I don’t understand why, it’s supposed to be a spin on the classic peasant princess love story but it’s not very well written, there’s barely any chemistry between them, Garnet spends more time wangsting about her mother and kingdom than she does focusing on Zidane, let’s not even get started on the mute segment (and people think Cloud and Squall are emo). and Zidane barely ever gets upset over what happens to Garnet, personality wise Zidane is a mary-sue, Zidane is WAY too optimistic, Garnet has TOO MUCH angst and zidane has too little, and then there’s Garnet’s stupid decision during disk 1 and 2, she completely betrays Zidane’s trust, stabs him in the back, and abandons him, and end up making the intire beginning of the game (the kidnapping and trip to lindblum) and first several levels of gameplay completely pointless, what kind of thing is that to start off a love story or even put into it? The player is pretty much forced to play through her section of stupidity with an extremely obvious conclusion, you pretty much Hand over the eidolons to the antagonists, and Garnet is responsible for all the city’s getting blow up due to her ridiculous behaviour, not to mention leaving a scar on Zidane and Garnet’s love story, I consider that to one of the worst moments in the final fantasy series. The game acts like the love story is one of the main focuses, the main musical theme is a love song (melodies of life) that plays consteadly throughout the game and even serves as the world map theme! Yet there’s barely ANY focus due to Garnet barely focusing or having chemistry with Zidane aside from random scenes that come out of nowhere and then are immediately made irrelevant and pointless afterwards and never mentioned again.
And honestly Garland should have been the main antagonist he was really interesting and unique with his moral ambiguity and instead he has to play second Fidel to Kuja and Brahne, two really 2d and cliche characters who are overhyped, and personally I think Beatrix should have garnet’s adoptive mother, it wouldn’t have sent out the unfortinate implication that ugly people are bad. And Kuja shouldn’t have been a straight up antagonist but a complex character that was basically a darker version of Zuko, from avater the last air bender.
Both halves of ff9 were pretty badly witten. I think 9 would have been better told as an anime, in fact most of the ff games should be retold as animes. FF9 in my opinion should have been a deconstruction of the nes and snes FF games. You should also check socksmakepeoplesexy’s review of the game. And Final Fantasy Whatever’s review.