Level Up! Seize the Experience!

I had planned to have the game finished by the end of March, but at the rate I’m going, I won’t have it done by April. I’m flying through Lost Odyssey, but FFVII is dragging along. As much as I love the story, love learning little nuances about the characters and the like, the gameplay makes me dread playing it at time.

I don’t mean the turn-based play. If that was true, I’d hate Lost Odyssey just as much.

It’s how archaic the game is. I’m having so much difficulty in manipulating Cloud without the analog stick. I hate having to press the X button to make him move faster than a snail. I get him stuck sometimes, because the graphics are so pixelated I can’t perceive textures or the depth of objects. And when I get him stuck, I’ll get attacked. Repeatedly. If I step back to try to take in my surroundings, I’ll get attacked at the first step Cloud makes. I find myself holding my breath to see if I can even walk across the hallway without stepping into a battle.

My experience last night frustrated me so much that I was cussing out Cloud and I wanted to chuck my controller into the TV for the first time since Super Mario Bros. 3. I’m at Shinra Manor, and I want to get the basement key to unlock Vincent. But I have to find all of the codes. That takes me about an hour thanks to Cloud not being able to walk down a hallway and running into several fights and I have to count paces after finding a creaky floorboard to find the third combination number. If I got attacked while counting paces, I had to start over. I have the code, but I feel like I should go save. Where’s a save point? Oh, there isn’t one. I have to leave the town to save in the open world. I leave, save, head back, and start the funhouse of battles again. Oh and opening the safe is a not-fun mini-game. I lost count of how many times I tried to open the safe. When I finally did it, a lovely boss pops out of the safe. Oh goody.

I thought I was doing well, but then he killed Aerith. Tifa followed close after. I couldn’t even flip through my inventory fast enough to find a Phoenix Down before Cloud was capped in one swing. I thought about trying again, but then I remember where I saved, so I’d have to run through the Manor again, get Cloud stuck on something again, and flip through that safe combination mini-game again. I didn’t have the energy. Game was turned off and herbal tea was brewed.

I really think that if I had played this game back when it came out, I would feel differently. The d-pad wouldn’t bother me, because that’s all we had back then. I would have thought the graphics were ahead of their time. The textures and pixelation wouldn’t make manipulation that tricky for me. I knew going into this game that it was archaic and I might have difficulty with it, but I didn’t count on the level of frustration.

I’m not going to quit, but I need to obtain a fresh new level of patience and understanding that this game will take me longer to complete than possibly any other game I’ve played.

I may burn a figure of Cloud in effigy when I’m finished, though.