My first Final Fantasy game was FFX, which my grandmother bought for me when I was in middle school. I knew little to nothing about the series beforehand, and I was completely blown away. I absolutely loved that game, and I still do today. I got interested in checking out the other Final Fantasy games after watching my friends play FFVIII. Unfortunately, the games tend to be both expensive and hard to find, so it wasn’t until this last Christmas that my grandfather managed to find me FFVIII, and not till recently that I ordered myself a memory card from online (since it’s pretty hard to find those too these days).

I’m only on disc two so far, but I’ve found the differences between the older and newer games interesting. Obviously there are some expected differences like the graphics not being as good and the characters not having voices, but there are also ones I hadn’t thought about.
For one thing, the pacing of the story is slower in FFVIII. I’m not completely sure why this is, but it seems like you have to do a lot more in between plot development than in FFX and that when plot development does occur it happens in much smaller increments. It’s possible this was done to make the RPG more story-based, which is supported by the fact that there’s a lot more non-combat tasks you need to complete. It would also make sense since the other thing I noticed was that the combat aspect of the game (aka, the ‘don’t die’ aspect) is really easy. I’ve only died once, and that was against something that could kill me in one hit. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be much strategy involved since you can take out anything with a few hits from the GFs. As I said though, I’m only on disc two, so perhaps this will change later in the game.
The last thing I noticed was that the gameplay tends to be a bit vague and confusing at times. For example, a character will tell you to do something and then walk away, and because nothing suggests you should talk to the character again you try to do the task and wonder why you can’t. I’ve also spent a few times running all over the map looking for a place I’m supposed to go to before discovering the map button (which was never introduced to me) and realizing my destination was right next to my starting point the whole time.

Neither of the games can really be said to be better than the other. There aren’t any bad points I’ve found in FFVIII that I wouldn’t attribute to it simply being an older game, and you can’t hold that against it. After all, for its time it was pretty darn awesome. Personally I’m more a fan of FFX, but that’s based heavily on the story and my history with the game.

Now I’ve got to go figure out where that darn Captain is sleeping.

Here thar be spoilers. You’ve been warned.

Last night I FINALLY saw Pirates of the Caribbean 3. My father and step-mother (who are analytical and learned in the way of film) told me that it wasn’t that great, but that it was worth seeing. I think this was a good mindset to go into the movie with: wanting to see it but not expecting too much. It let me accept the not-so-great so I could really enjoy the good parts.

I really liked the concepts in the movie. The twisty turny map, the journey to World’s End, and the story behind Davey Jones and Calypso were all, to overuse an adverb, really cool. I also liked that the Davey Jones and Calypso/Tia Dalma plot was suggested previous to the third movie, since (as I noticed before Dylan blurted it out to me in the theater) we’re briefly shown she has the same music box necklace as Jones in Dead Man’s Chest.
Another thing was, of course, the references to the ride. Geoffrey Rush was the perfect person to deliver the lines, and the part where they went over the waterfall and the sounds from the ride started playing was brilliant. Granted, it didn’t fit with the movie, but it was still brilliant.

One of the things I didn’t like was the Jack hallucinations. They were annoying and unnecessary. I half think they did it just so they could have that shot of Jack all barnacle-y to put in the trailer. I also agree with makani in that this would have been a much better way for Calypso to go all goddess-y rather than just making her big. Something I’ve noticed with the PotC movies is that they try to make the effects look more real by using magnification, such as with octapus tentacles for Davey Jones and the Kraken, rather than creating the whole thing through computer graphics. In some scenes this works really well. In others…. not so much.

Another thing was that this third movie had a lot more crude humor, which surprised me because it’s a Disney movie. Yes, it still fit within the PG-13 rating, but it was sort of odd all the same. There was also the fact that the storyline was all over the place, but like I said, I went in expecting that.
It did disappoint me that Jones and Calypso’s story was just discarded after Jones was killed. You would have thought that killing the man she loved would have made the goddess even more angry. Which brings me to another point. Calypso charged Jones with ferrying the souls that die at sea to their final resting place. He was the one who cut out his own heart so he wouldn’t have to feel the pain of love. So why would the new captain of the Dutchman need to cut out their own heart? Sure it’s all convenient and symbolic for the story, but it wasn’t part of the original deal.

The whole “Barbossa! Marry us!” bit was kinda silly, not that there isn’t plenty of that in the film, but I did like how once they were back in sync with each other they actually fought in sync. I also thought making Elizabeth a captain and the pirate king and then making Will the captain of the Dutchman was, while convenient, an interesting way to solidify their place in the pirate world. I also liked that their story got closure, even if Jack and the other pirates’ stories didn’t.

Oh, and the whole Jack being smart and pretending to be dumb in the first movie and being dumb and pretending to be smart in the second and third? Completely true. Which is why the first will always be the best. I haven’t decided whether I like the second or third better. The second is more contained, but the third has some really cool concepts and imagery.

While this isn’t even attempting to be a real movie review, I’d say that overall the third film, while not necessarily put together that well, was really good for the imagery and learning more about the pirate world.
And hey, it was better than fanfiction.