Resonance of Fate (Xbox 360 game)

The Game Room
1

I bought this game full of hope and eagerness some months ago.

Let me explain first that we are very cautious in buying games. When I am looking for a new game, if I haven’t already been looking forward to it anxiously, I :

[ul]
[li]Find out the rankings on several sites.[/li][li]Read 3-4 reviews on gameplay, story, interaction, combat.[/li][li]Watch the intro on youtube.[/li][li]Watch some of the actual gameplay on youtube.[/li][li]Think about it for weeks.[/li][/ul]

And then only maybe I will buy it. So generally I don’t fail and almost always buy games I adore.

And then there was Resonance of Fate. I did all of the above, and it all sounded good. The combat, the style, the look of the game.

And I hate the game. I won’t even play it anymore.

One of my major issues is the literal dribbling of the plot. I have no idea what is going on at any given time. The three protagonists are not annoying but I know almost nothing about them, except that one got shot in the head, one tried to commit suicide, and the third is the leader.
I stopped somewhere in Chapter 3 and still hadn’t figured out what the focus of the game is. Or where it was going. I need more plot than that.

The battles are insanely hard. But if I was anxiously looking forward to “what’s next” I wouldn’t care and I would love fighting through the fights, if I got some real reward. It almost feels like they just made it Nintendo Hard. And the cut scenes are just more baffling.

And this game has shown me some of the differences between a gamer like me and a Nintendo Hard gamer. I play RPGs like I read, or watch movies, or whatever. While I like playing some games for the sake of playing, RPGs are for the same reason I follow any fiction - to find out what happens next.

And this game just hasn’t given it to me. Disappointment!

2

Yeah; I approached this one extremely warily, and I found a bunch of little signs that, in fact, it probably wasn’t for me. A number of people gave it the “I don’t have a clue what’s going on, but the battles are fun” seal of…er…not really approval, and that set off little warning bells.

I don’t really know what is going on this generation, but I fear we are reaping what we’ve sewn in terms of years and years of focusing on graphics and pushing story off to the side. There hasn’t really been a top notch JRPG so far this generation. Dragon Age and Mass Effect are all well and good if you like that sort of thing, but they don’t really hit the same buttons for me.

Maybe it’s time to go rummage the PS2 archives for some forgotten gems.

3

I feel your pain. Like you, I read all the glowing reviews and when I found a cheap copy for £20 decided to give it a go, and find it utterly baffling.

I’ve played my share of JRPGs over the years so I have a certain tolerance for impenetrable plot and strange battle system, but I think this one has defeated me.

The main problem is the battle system - which appears to be a mixture of incredibly hard and incredibly hard to learn. I’m probably doing something wrong, but my willingness to persist and work out what that is is non-existent.

4

And it cheats. Like, I finally got the hang of not losing all of my bezels, but sometimes the enemy can hurt you a LOT more than usual. And he can heal with your dropped bezels, whereas you can’t.

As for Dragon’s Age and Mass Effect, I love those two games! The real joy for me in Mass Effect is I can finally play a tough, badass woman, who isn’t a mother, or a wife, or has to be something, she’s just a woman who happens to be a tough soldier, and it proves it can be done. It’s such a different experience and it makes me want to play a woman instead of always playing a man since they get better options.

I thought Assassin’s Creed II was pretty good, too. I is not so great.