#i've been listening to the OST on repeat again and I love this little bit of foreshadowing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

autopotion · 3 years

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saw this floating around tumblr and thought i would fill it out myself for funsies. specifically challenged myself not to repeat anything from the same game (same series / remakes are okay) 'cause otherwise half the answers to this would be something from FFT and that's just not fair lol. if any of my mutuals do this tag me in your post i want to see your answers!

full list & descriptions under the cut

favorite game of all time: final fantasy tactics, obvs. picked the psx one to represent because i do prefer it to wotl. don't take that as me hating on wotl though, i think it's still good and brought some good stuff to the table, i just like the original a little bit better.

favorite series: yeah it's dragon age. once upon a time i would've said final fantasy, but while there are a great deal of final fantasy games i love, i'm not really compelled to seek out the ones i haven't played before and i'm not really following new releases much (except to make fun of them ghsdfnds). meanwhile i like every single DA game and have replayed each one mind-boggling amounts, and i actively seek out news for DA4. it's clear which series i'm more into, even if there are individual FF games i like more than DA as a whole

best soundtrack: final fantasy vii (original). this one's kind of a normie answer because i think there are other OSTs within FF itself that are objectively better than FFVII's, but if i'm going to listen to any video game music for funsies and outside of actually playing the game itself, it's pretty much always going to be FFVII. zoe and i were marveling about how FFVII is basically just one huge prog rock album. it's fantastic. hang on i'm gonna go listen to the boss fight music again

favorite protagonist: velvet crowe from tales of berseria. i actually answered this one last because i had the hardest time deciding, somewhat because of the "no repeats" rule, but also partially because i am often more compelled by side characters than player characters. anyway ToB is a mixed bag where i don't like the combat, hate the fanservice, and find the world to be kind of uninspired, but the characters are absolutely incredible and might be one of my favorite RPG casts. velvet herself stands out, i find her story incredibly emotional, and while i think her writing suffers from some usual video game misogyny she's easily the most attached i've been to a player character from the outset instead of needing to get to know her (save for maybe luke fon fabre, also from the tales series lol)

favorite villain: kuja from final fantasy ix. i almost put chaos vyce (of tactics ogre), but that is absolutely 100% recency bias, especially if i compare my month-long phase of being really into chaos vyce to the years of thinking about and writing about kuja. i like kuja a lot and find him to be really emotional, and i like FFIX's conclusions about him, i.e. if a sympathetic character is worthy of redemption if he commits absolutely heinous and evil atrocities and is also generally a narcissistic asshole. ultimately the game's conclusion was "no," IMO, because "redemption" is a complicated concept and eventually you hit a point where no good actions can make up for a lifetime of evil ones, but it still gave kuja the opportunity to do one good action that saved the player characters, and his existence gave the rest of the genomes and the black mages something to ponder WRT their own individuality. also i just think he's neat

best story: outer wilds. this might seem like a weird one because it's not like "lore"-heavy, which i think a lot of people associate with "story," but a story is just as much about in the way it is told as its basic content. the way outer wilds tells its story is unparalleled tbh. every mechanic exists to support its concepts & themes, and it's some of the strongest video game storytelling i've encountered for that reason. also the story it tells is extremely emotional IMO

have not played but want to: hollow knight & disco elysium. i picked two games: one that i own but haven't started (HK) and one that i haven't bought yet (DE). of the two, i'm most excited to try DE, but i'm waiting until zoe and i can play it together.

you love everyone hates: octopath traveler is not greatly liked among the audience it intended to cater to, i.e. people who love old pixel rpgs in the vein of FFVI. it deserves every bit of criticism leveled at it, from its shallow narratives to the disconnected and poorly written arcs of the travelers, but i also really enjoyed playing it and found it charming.

you hate everyone loves: crisis core (from the compilation of FFVII). god i hate CC. it is undeniably a fun game, and the first time i played it (as a teen) i sobbed during the ending, but the older i get the more this game sours on me. i consider it the biggest affront to the themes of og FFVII. what if shinra was "morally gray" and had lots of good people working for it! what if zack fair was actually responsible for key character traits of female characters, like aerith's ribbon or the name of tifa's bar! what if tseng was a creep who took pictures of aerith! what if it's actually really sad and difficult to be a cop for a megacorporation! )': what if i bashed genesis's head in with a rock. at least CC introduced cissnei.

best art style: hades. not even the gorgeously detailed (and highly sensual) character portraits, but the sprite work is really beautiful, the little icons for the boons & items are very cute, and the environments are gorgeous. all the movements are incredibly fluid and pleasing to look at.

favorite ending: tales of the abyss. there is so much to love about TotA, but the ending sequence is one of my favorites in any game. the final dungeon is extraordinarily bright, and if you have the right party combination for the final battle it turns into this amazing invincibility mode while tear sings in the background. also i love my personal interpretation of what happens with "luke fon fabre" at the end.

favorite boss fight: i cheated and picked two again lol. the main boss of arbiter's grounds in the legend of zelda: twilight princess was the first boss to introduce me to the concept that maybe... boss fights... could be fun?? riding around the spinny wheel while you're attacking the big skeletal dragon head was really cinematic and tense, to the point that i was almost kind of sad when it was over.

my other answer for this is the first boss fight against reno in FFVII remake. oh my god i loved that one. not even necessarily because of the mechanics, but the sheer adrenaline of finally getting to aerith, to the church scene, and then all the banter during the fight while you're trying to parry that weaselly asshole... i wanted to do it again the minute i beat him lol.

childhood game: also two here. rhapsody: a musical adventure and the first kingdom hearts i consider to be my quintessential childhood games (outside of FFT). they informed my taste in video games pretty early on. rhapsody's really cute, if not especially deep, and i want to replay it someday; when i was little, my sister told me to start with rhapsody before FFT because its very basic tactical battles would teach me how to play FFT, which is much harder lol. and of all the KH games, i'm most likely to come back to the first one, for nostalgia's sake. even though that game is incredibly linear, i cite it as the game that got me into "open world" games as a concept, since what i loved about it was its seemingly endless expanse to explore, when in reality it's pretty tightly confined.

relaxing game: stardew valley. i was gonna do this one and animal crossing: new horizons, but i came to the conclusion i find SV more relaxing than ACNH. time doesn't pass in SV unless you actually play the game, unlike AC, and the gameplay loop in SV is very relaxing and gentle to me; since days are so short, i can only complete a few tasks per day, and that's kind of freeing. ACNH is also relaxing but i can get more quickly stressed out if i'm trying to plan some big landscaping project.

stressful game: vagrant story. i don't think i've started and stopped a game as many times as i have this one. it requires so much detail-oriented attention that i only have it in me to play for an hour or two at a time before i get tired. (i was also considering putting tactics ogre for this one, but i'm actually about to beat TO pretty soon and have grown accustomed to its style, so VS is definitely more stressful.)

game you always come back to: this one was also really hard, in part 'cause of that "no repeats" clause, otherwise FFT or skyrim would be the obvious answer here. but ultimately i picked undertale. like a lot of people, i was really emotionally moved when i first played it; the massively expanding fandom kept me from engaging with it as much as i wanted to (i like my fandoms pretty small, or, if it's big, i like to curate my blog so i don't see a whole lot of it all the time), but i honestly think UT changed the game for video game storytelling. it's difficult not to compare other games to it, in part because it's in conversation with games as a whole.

guilty pleasure: i don't really feel "guilty" about any games i like, but i selected 999 for this spot because like, as i was playing it i had a ton of problems with it. i complained about the music, the misogyny, some of the puzzles, the dull environments... but it's also one of the most interesting games i've ever played. the story has stuck with me. what it does with its medium, its characters, and its narrative is kind of unique for video games TBH. so, despite all of my complaints about it, i kind of like it a lot.

tons of hours played: skyrim, no contest. i have easily over 1000 hours in that bad boy, across my various saves on various systems, soundly beating any other game i've played in terms of hours sunk into it. it's kind of embarrassing ghsdnfshg.

#long post #in case the read more doesn't work #cr personal

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