The Besties - Embracing the Chaos of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins is by no means a Great Game, but we'll be gosh-danged if it hasn't charmed the Lv. 6 Shadow Pants off of us. Also, Justin breaks down the phantasmal weirdness of Ghostwire Tokyo!Also discussed: Tunic, Elden Ring, Drive My Car, Fortnite Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Well, let me welcome everybody to the Wild Wild West. A state that's untouchable like Elliot Ness. Do you, um, do you guys like when I rap? I want you guys to admit that you like it when I rap. Why would we not admit? Like, I openly talk about how I actually tell people you're my favorite rapper and they give me looks of of i would say hatred actually when i say that out loud you should just tell the pack of s for your jimmy

in the city of sex this is a good line pack of s for your jimmy in the city of sex do you feel like you could freestyle for us maybe a little freestyle freestyle for you the state where you never want to dance more empty imprints me on the mission for the... Whoa. That was great, Juice. Well, okay. Give me a topic to freestyle about.

California. Just me. Yeah, I was going to say, I think the brush stick is... Okay. And what? Give me a setting. New York City?

New York City? Okay. A New York City bathroom. And he's at the DMV. He's trying to get his driver's license York City bathroom. And he's at the DMV. He's trying to get his driver's license renewed. Oh, the public bathroom at the DMV. Yeah. Let me welcome everybody to the Big Apple.

Meet the man who always has to take a crapple. He's thin. He's reedy. He's really quite kind. And if you give him a chance, I think you'll find he's not much better once you get to know him. But give him a year and he'll start to grow on you like a fungus or a virus. Meet

my friend, Russell Cyrus. God, I wish your name was Cyrus. Damn it. It would be so good if that would have been a really good name. If you landed it, but that's okay. Frustic rhymes with so much. Yeah.

So many options. Yep. You'll be glad to get rid of him like an uncomfortable bustle. I'd like for you to meet my friend, Russell. What's an uncomfortable bustle? Like a bustle? Like the garment?

Like a bustle? Ooh. I think I like Cyrus better. Yeah. Yeah, that's better. I'm gonna change my name to Cyrus. You wouldn't... I hope that he never gets hit by a bus.

I'd like you to meet my dear friend, Russ. Oh, that's sweet. That's sweet, yeah. It's kind of a nice thing in there, some emotions in my rap. And I think that is actually the first time that you've said you don't want Russ to get hit by a bus. Hey, I can grow and evolve just like everybody else. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I came here to kill chaos.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Froschig and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter-gaming. It is a video game club, but just by my friend You have joined Welcome here's your card Please take your shoes off at the door This week we are talking about Final Fantasy Nope

Nope What? Stranger of Paradise Stranger of Paradise Paradise Man Paradise Man The strange Final Fantasy origins of it Stranger of Paradise Final fantasy origin this is where it

all got started folks before it was final this is how it began every tale has a beginning and i guess stranger of paradise is that uh what is it chris uh the publisher of square enix they said we want to go right back to the beginning of Final Fantasy and who better to do it than the people who do that uh the ninja games the the neo games and the games where the ladies in the bikinis play uh beach volleyball and you take snapshots of them in their bedrooms Team Ninja is back and they're back with a vengeance and this action semi prequel to all of final fantasy sort of remake sort of the first final fantasy game yeah kind of yeah yeah but strap in we'll be right back so who here knows enough about final Fantasy lore to speak to any of it?

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I've played all of them. Cool. Pretty recently. Final Fantasy. I did. I think actually during the pandemic, I replayed all the Final Fantasy games on my various little handhelds.

little old handhelds. Yeah, the first Final Fantasy game harkens back to an era of JRPG storytelling that is so strange. And it's like it's telling a story that it expects you to know everything about the world and the lore before the game even starts, which I guess if you read the instruction manual, that's how those games did it back in the NES day.

Was it really that? I thought it was just like bad guy bad was the extent of the story in the first one. No, I mean, the first one had a wild time travel, time loop, sort of like doomed hero. There was a lot going on at the beginning and ending of final fantasy and then in the middle it's like you gotta take this rat eye to bahamut at the top of the tower of trials and then give it to matoya uh it's just a bunch of stuff uh this

this game i mean you start out in the chaos shrine which is like the first temple in in final fantasy and you fight the boss of that shrine and you're like oh okay it's final fantasy but then like it changes basically immediately after that and i have not played enough of the game i think to point out all of the the uh the differences in in storytelling but it is it is based loosely based on final fantasy one i would say but is that the idea you're because i thought this took place before the first final fantasy and no it is it is a it's a pseudo remake i i really don't know how to they don't really make games like this so much which is like i mean i guess final fantasy 7 uh remake is kind of similar much looser than

that much much much looser um yeah i mean the characters are different in that i guess in final fantasy 1 like there weren't so much characters you made the characters from the game's intro screen and so they had no defining characteristics whatsoever aside from their jobs there's so much to talk about there's so much yeah let's not get bogged down in this game yeah uh the story is the story is wild and clunky and it's like you it's like you would expect from a not great final fantasy story that's the best i can say about it yeah all the and all the uh the cast members have these very boring like very like Jack is the main character and his friends Jed. Yeah. Jack, Jed, Ash, and Neon are the main cast that you will interact with, at least at the beginning of the game.

And it's important for people to know that this is not like a traditional turn-based strategy game. It is an action game in the style. Again, if you've played Neo, that is like probably the closest comparison we can make i know people have been calling it a souls game although it has souls elements it does not feel like dark souls at all to me it is if you're being generous it's neo 3 if you're not being particularly generous it's like nero neo 0.75 in that like there's some there in that there's some stuff here that doesn't work quite as well as it works in Nioh, which if you've not played it, is in the Souls-y vein,

but in a much more action, fast-paced Team Ninja format. Go ahead, Plant. Well, I was just going to say, this feels like Nioh, or in some ways, Dark Souls for, like, beginners. In that it's a very straightforward action game that has little taste of that Dark Souls formula in it. Straightforward is not the word I would use to describe the mechanics of this game.

Sorry, I meant straightforward in the sense that, like, you move straight forward, and you really get lost. No one's ever used that word to mean that, but sure, yes, you do move. No, I'm sorry. See, this would have helped if I was writing it down, because in my head, I had it written straight,

and there was a space. I hit the space bar forward. So you'd say, like, Leisure Suit Larry is also a pretty straightforward game. No! Because oh my gosh, we're not going to get into that. Justin, before we get into correcting Fresh Shake because he's embarrassing himself can you talk about the menus in this game?

Oh my god. The menus are the game as far as I can tell. Guys, I don't at first I really hated this like I really hated it it makes a bad first impression the worst possible first impression it layers on so many mechanics

like from the beginning it is like you know you'll raise your maximum mana it has two different kinds of parries actually i have a character now that's three like it's it's wild and it's not like it layers on all of this so fast and it's like you can do this and if you you can do okay so there's one of your blocks uses like your your poise basically your your stamina block, but you're blocking with magic.

And if you block an enemy's magic attack with this, you'll absorb it and be able to redirect it back on them immediately. Mega Man style. Yeah, it's cool. But it's like one of a thousand different ways that you can attack people. I got so many of the same pants. I got like 12 pairs of the same pants. To give you an idea of how much they're throwing at you at once, I don't know what to

do with all these pants. I don't know where I'm putting these pants, right? I have hundreds of pants. There's a blacksmith that you can break them down and turn them into materials to do stuff with. Real quick pause because I'm sure people want to know the simple thing. Did any of you all

like this game? Because I I'm going to be real, quite charmed by it. I am charmed. That's the second part of my thing, right? It's those little little kicks at you, and I was kind of like, uh-huh, uh-huh, I get it. I have a sword, right? So I'm just going to keep hitting people. And the game's like, oh yeah, that's fine.

You can ignore me. Don't worry about it. And then you get to the first like boss type dude and the game is suddenly like hey remember all that shit that i told you earlier you do need to do all of that right now because you're not gonna get through this fight otherwise so there was a boss like after not doing it all i got to a boss who i counted it i died 23 times jesus i know i know because i hadn't been actually like engaging with the mechanics right i just been like hitting it with my sword and if you engage with the mechanics it's very doable but like you need to engage the the thing that got me about this and the thing that i didn't like it has a sort of job system where you can take on the role of mage or sword fighter or what have you and there's only certain weapons that

work with each thing and then you're building your skills by using these jobs you build skills in them earn skill points increase the power of the jobs and gradually unlock new jobs but what really like when i started swapping in different weapons and just like playing around with it it is not the sort of thing that i'm going to engage with long term but if you did want to there is an incredible amount of variety that you could mess with here to like really customize like exactly how you would want to play. And once I found, like, some different movesets and some different, like, by movesets, y'all, like, you can map. Well, there's four different types of skills in this game. Like, the skills you steal, the combo skills. There's so much.

Can I explain the menu really quick? I got to the point, I don't know, there's a point about an hour in where it's like, hey, you really should check out the menu. And I was like, I don't know, I've been connecting all this loot. This seems like a bit of a sludge. I open the thing. It's like, hey, just, you know, assign the loot to your character, you know, like you change your pants. Like, OK, that's not so bad. You know, we do that and we do that in RPGs.

And it's like, OK, while you're here, we got a skill tree. I'm like, oh, OK, cool, cool, cool, cool. I'm going, okay, that's not so bad. You know, we do that in RPGs. And it's like, okay, while you're here, we got a skill tree. I'm like, oh, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. I'm going to pick that. And they're like, by the way, there's a skill tree for each of your different classes. It's different points. You should assign those too. I'm like, great, great, great, great, great. And it's like, oh, oh, one more thing.

There are special combos that you're also unlocking. And you need to go manually select those from a menu. Yeah, and assign those to, I mean, literally like combo combos, like right bumper, right trigger, right bumper, right trigger. Quarter circle type of stuff. Yeah, combo combos. No, not quarter circle. It looks like a fighting game menu.

Yes, but using just two buttons. I want to hop in here and say that the job system, I am very critical of progression systems in RPGs. I think the job system in this game is very exciting. And any time I unlocked a new or found a weapon that sort of gave me access to a new job, I would automatically just switch to it and start talking around with it.

You level up very, very quick. Yeah, so you unlock a lot of stuff very quickly. It's not like you're going to be really behind by just getting you a new job. And also because you unlock the new higher tier jobs and more specialized jobs. Like get far enough along the mage tree, you can unlock black, white, red mage, whatever. Each job has like a defining ability. And so like my favorite was the lancer class which you can evolve into like the dragoon and the monk i think uh which just throws a big fucking spear that you can like

line up to hit multiple enemies with and charge it up and and like once i unlocked that i never took it off and you can have two uh equipped two classes equipped at a time basically two loadouts that you can switch with the press of a button and you can even string combos between loadouts like you can start a combo as the lancer and then switch to the pugilist to like do some of their skills and switch back seamless like the combat team ninja knows how to make good combat in a game and that is that is no different here like this it's it is a genuinely very fun game to play. Two things I wanted to mention as well. One, there's a story mode,

which is to say there's a mode that's very easy and you can kind of just play it and get a little button mashing. Swept away by the tail of- Well, I mean, if you just want something mindless to like bash at and you don't want to really engage with all the systems, that's an option. I also wanted to mention mention this is actually kind of a cool lord nod thing if you're a huge final fantasy fan all of the dungeons i haven't gotten that far but my understanding is all of

the dungeons in the game reference a different final fantasy installment like they all like pull from a different game so if you're a big big final fantasy fan there's probably a lot to like really dig in this in terms of like easter eggs if you're not that's cool too because the main character doesn't give a shit yeah no he does not this game's got a layer of sort of like dubstep edgelord like the man wears airpods and listens to dubstep while fighting chaos and turns them on dramatically turns them on dramatically. Turns them on and takes them off dramatically. Like, he takes them off the way I take my AirPods off at the airport when someone asks me a question and I'm, like, really jamming to a podcast or something.

I'm like, what? Like, what did you say? Like, that energy that Jack brings to all of the proceedings. It is so stupid. But the dubstep is pretty good uh it's so like the wild wild choice after what okay did you guys see the you could miss it because this is also in the menus but did you see how you can talk to townspeople yes in the you in the main menu of the game there's a place where you go to talk to people and you like choose the person that you want to talk to and then you talk to them in front of a fountain and then there's just like seven other people not an open world where you're walking around

talking to people it's literally like a list of like do you want to talk to this guy that owns a store like yeah sure what's up with them because it's absolutely so many weird things in this game where i have to imagine it was a different game or something and they had made a lot of it and then they change because at the beginning of the game the game starts and you meet three people or two people and you're like okay we're gonna go on an adventure and then it cuts to black and then title cards appear and describe that you went on an adventure and and you're like wait what like that sounds quite fun and then you go back to another cut scene to go catch somebody up on the adventure you had yeah it's weird anyway they did an adventure and then they talked to the king for a very long time it is a it's a mission-based game i think it's important to point

out which me which sort of classifies Nioh, but not necessarily Dark Souls, right? Like the Souls-type games you think of as being fairly open world and you can explore and get lost and go in all these different places. In this one, you have an overworld map and you pick missions off of it,

which is more in line with Nioh. I do not get where the Souls thing comes in. Because they have like bonfires. It's just a of the shoulder buttons That's it There's no death penalty And bonfires They're checkpoints

Touch the cubes Anytime you come up on a checkpoint One of your party members will say I think I see some cubes over there Are those cubes? Finally we found the cubes Leave it in Japanese by the way it's a true it's even better i don't know everyone sounds so much cooler in japanese but the delivery that jack

has for every line in english is pretty spectacular stops you from getting irritated when they say the same garbage that's true thousand yeah that is which is like very common i i also want to say uh because this is like what i do in every final fantasy game because the menus are overwhelming in this one and by menus we mean like the two loadouts you have equipped at any given time including combos and equipment and all that there is another layer of but of commands by the way on the left trigger and the face buttons okay yeah you can do command abilities which is another layer there's an optimize button you just press the optimize button and automatically equips your entire party with the best gear that they have available

oh my god just do that i wish i knew that oh god yes russ you need that but see wait what's the button it's the i don't know man know. I have to look for it. I was looking for it in the menu. It's the share button on the Xbox controllers. Select. Why didn't they just do start and select Xbox? They had to be special. I don't know. I will say, though, that is weird because...

So you're getting so much gear all the time that once you have the optimize button, it's sort of like you press the button and then you're not really appreciating or noting anything that you get. It's just sort of like, oh, weird, I look different now. Anyway, back to game. Like, it doesn't, it

really removes some of the weight of it, but also like, you want to be wearing the best gear, so I don't know why you wouldn't press that button. So there's an affinity system where you can sort of have well no it's i think it's pretty clever you you have a sort of uh percentage point affinity with each of the jobs and at certain break points like it unlocks stronger facets of the job all right i don't think it's that complicated no i'm sorry it it's enough complicated

enough that my brain is officially can we talk about the visuals can we talk about how this game i can't tell what's going on with the graphics in this game i mean it looks like a 20 2004 game well that's true but it also looks like the art direction was can we make a video game look like the cut scenes in like late 1990s Final Fantasy? It does, yeah. It's weird. The CG almost looks like intentionally compressed. Yeah. There's a filter on it to make it look compressed.

It's weird. I should also mention that like technically this thing's a real, real turd on the PC. On PC, yeah. The PC port's pretty rough. It's really rough. I started on my laptop, and I sent you guys a video. It was like, once the actual game started, it was unplayably like.

You have a beefy laptop, by the way. I have a beefy laptop. I think, if I had to guess, I'm not an expert, but I think it was trying to use the onboard video card rather than my dedicated video card. But even on my PC, which is fairly new, I would have moments where it would just switch from ultra wide to regular

and would just cut off the parts of the screen that weren't like part of that. So like all of a sudden I would just lose the, the, the left and right, you know, fourth of the screen. Yeah.

I, I launched it on PC and it was a black screen for three minutes. Yeah. I had the same to the point where I had to DM Griffin and ask him. And he's like, no, no, no. That's just what happens. Just ride it out, baby. It has...

Oh, and my computer made a noise when that was... Oh, did you get... Literally like... Yeah, mine actually... They had to clear the way at LAX. It was... It's so hard not to be charmed by this game, though.

It is. It's so busted. It's really fun. Like, I could see getting into... There's multiplayer. Like, you could get very into this game. Like, it has... Yeah.

It has some... It has many hooks and barbs, right? And especially once you get into... You know, you have customized your character in a certain way and then you start playing multiplayer with other players. We haven't even talked about Frank Sinatra. Oh my God. Oh God. I mean, really the star of the game.

Yeah, they bring in My Way and then the actual Frank Sinatra recording during a cut scene and then it cuts out before he gets to the chorus it's so infuriating it's like intentionally trying to get it stuck in your head or something there's so many like i really feel genuinely bad for people that have to review this because like you could take any system in it pretty much and find a lot of problems with it and like really go to town but like if you can

get past that mindset and just be like just kind of meet it on its own terms there's a lot to like it's like like i said i hated it at first and then when i fought that boss so many times i realized like damn it it's got i i know this trick like i know this is gonna work on me i'm gonna become imprisoned by this game because i'm playing it like it's forcing me to engage with these systems in a way that like uh it really got its hooks in me i i don't know i i there's something like really charming about it i hope it comes to game pass or like this is the case for like subscription service games in general because i think a lot of people would like it but it but it is a little bit tough to recommend it to just like everybody at full price.

It kind of reminds me of, and we don't get a lot of these games, but reminds me of like Ninja Blade. Remember Ninja Blade from 09, where it's like, God, that's a FromSoftware game, where it's like, this is really, really stupid.

And there's a lot that's very bad about this and i'm kind of i'm kind of deeply into it it just sort of i don't know well 50 cent blood on the sand is yeah that's another good really felt like that to me and in the same way that that game like actually killed i think two or three of my xboxes uh hey should we uh should we talk about some Ghostwire? Yeah, I can't wait to hear about this fucking game. Right. Well, we're going to take a break first. Okay.

Right? Yeah, that's fine. Right, okay. Ghostwire. Ghostwire Tokyo. And this is going to be kind of a weird one, because correct me if I'm wrong, I think Justin is the only one who has played through it.

He actually reviewed it for Polygon. I did indeed. Yes, I have not touched it. I think we were torn on whether or not we were going to do a whole episode on it, because it's not the biggest game, I would say, of the spring. But I love Tango Gameworks and want to know everything about it.

Yeah, so Tango Gameworks is responsible for The Evil Within, mainly. And they're working on a game, according to Wikipedia here, called Hero Dice on the iOS, which I don't know anything about it other than that, but I am... The name alone is pretty great. Yeah, that sounds like you just found Besties ASMR.

But, okay, so, Ghostwire Tokyo, you play a man named akito who is in the middle of shibuya when some sort of mysterious i'm going to be intentionally vague about some of these story beats because they're sort of revealed as you go it's very much like an in media res uh beginning but uh a man on the the brink of death named Akito who is in Shibuya when thisito's body, thinking Akito is dead, but then realizes that Akito is actually alive, so the two of them share his body. By inhabiting Akito's body, KK grants him these elemental magic abilities, which very loosely, this is a first person game, very loosely sort

of map kind of, but not really to like first person shooter archetypes. Like you can cast a wind spell. That's like a quick fire sort of deal with like tracking. There's a water spell that has a wider arc, uh, sort of like shotgun ask. And then there's a fire, which is basically like your big explosive like room clearing spell akito has a sister who is in hospital that he needs to check on so he's very fixated on that and kk is fixated on finding the people responsible for the attack that has done this and the two of them need to work together to reach both of those goals um it is

an open world so you're uh that you're gradually sort of like unlocking sections of by clearing the fog um by like print it doesn't matter but you're you're clearing the fog away and uh exploring and as you go you meet there's no living people, obviously. Right. So, like, it's all these, like, very lightly animated ghosts that all have sort of, like, unfinished business on Earth. And those are, like, that's how you do side quests in this game. So, you're, like, there's a woman who can't find her dog, right? And so, you, like, go back into the apartment building to try to feed the dog and lure the dog out. Wait, is the dog a ghost? Yeah, the dog and lure the dog out wait is the dog a ghost yeah the dog's ghost okay um yeah so welcome there's lots of there's lots of dogs and cats running around actually you know what the dog it may not be a ghost because there's

lots of dogs and cats so animals got spared they were okay okay um or is it the opposite like an all dogs don't go to heaven that sounds like nobody does it is like an action game? All dogs don't go to heaven. Sounds like nobody does. It is predominantly an action game. So, like, what are you shooting? Matt, I just... Yo-Kai. I just told you that. No, no, no.

What are you shooting at? Fire and water. I know, but what are you shooting at? Oh, you need a direct object. Yes. So, they're called visitors. And the fog, I think some of the people who were not happy with their life um they're they're this is not a joke like all the characters are modeled

on like sort of like archetypes of japanese society so there's like um a school boy who uh is a headless school boy that is- Wait, why is he- I thought everyone got evaporated in the same- The ghost is headless. What do you want from me? I don't know. I want an answer for why the ghost guy had-

Was his head chopped off in the ghost world? No, there's not that- It's like an emotional head chopping. Yes, exactly. Oh, okay, it's symbolic. Yes. There's a commuter. There's a salary man.

You know what I mean? Sure. Who kind of looks like Slender Man. A little bit. Yeah. A little bit of a Slender Man. And so those people you don't help, you just shoot them in the face with fire.

Oh, no, no, it's better than that. You shoot them with your spells, right? And then you can break them down to like the hobbled, I don't know, stage. And then you rip their souls out. Yeah. And when you rip their souls out, it is quite a cool animation. You do a little bit of that. You do that of what?

You do like a Doctor Strange thing with your fingies. And you draw like a spider web kind of thing and then you shoot that web at them and you pull their souls right out okay i thought you were fighting souls so but no i found that my review because i wanted to pull this exact text this is what it said of the students of pain which are the headless school uniform guys a type of visitor born from the restlessness of young male students forced with hazy futures. They unleashed the full brunt of their frustration upon anyone unlucky enough to cross paths with them.

So that is like all the, all the enemies are like that. It's very entrenched in like Japanese folklore. So like you find yokai that give you like increase your power or you find these Jesus statues that you pray at and like, increase your power, or you find these Jizo statues that you pray at, and they, like, increase your spell ammo. And that stuff is all... That's Jizo, J-I-Z-O.

I'm assuming you're referring to Jesus in a cool way. No, no. We're buds. What's up, guys? It's me, Jizo. Come save at me. That stuff is all very good that like the parts of like Japanese society and Japanese culture that you're sort of getting a little insight to is very neat um the world looks so cool like it's

very richly detailed it doesn't feel repeated every environment you go into feels sort of like the art design is just great it's great it looks great the characters look great um yeah i i'm not saying this just because they're both set in like modern-ish japan but it kind of reminded me of the yakuza games and that it's open-ish but kind of controlled and you're like walking around these like very beautiful detailed exteriors and interiors where they're not making you know a full grand theft auto so they have the opportunity to be more specific with the places that you are visiting the um the the the things that i had a problem with um when i played one is it is i i don't know if it plant did it feel

like unbelievably sluggish to you when you first started yeah i mean yeah i i think i had heard from you to change the uh the the like the what is it the the things in the menu that make it so it moves out and stops on a dime yeah um and even that doesn't really fix it it feels so swimmy um to a point where it doesn't feel like i actually went and checked that something wasn't wrong with my controller yeah it feels like there's no way this is what you intended it to be yeah it's not like a menu fix it it gets better but it doesn't yeah i mean and for people who have like not played it i would compare it to like like it takes a second for you to start to look in a direction and it's's slow. And then when you stop using the controller, the camera just kind of keeps moving a little bit.

So, if you're, like, trying to cast a spell, I don't know. It feels like you are inhabiting. It feels like playing with lag. Yeah, well, I mean, it feels like you're inhabiting somebody else's body. Like, you don't have full control. Which I get, like, I could see how they justified decisions like that in the room. I just don't think it makes a lot of fun. Yeah, it is really, really, really, besides just feeling bad, it's really repetitive.

Almost every mission, despite the interesting story trappings, usually boils down to follow this path until you find a bunch of ghosts and then shoot them all and then you're done and you also like aren't unlocking a lot of new powers as you play there's like the fire and water and wind and that's basically it you get a bow because sometimes you get separated from kk um and so you need something to defend yourself and also you could use it in like a stealthy sort of way if you wanted to but um there's just a lot of like mechanics in this game that don't make sense and also like there's at least three unlocks that i can think of that are just meant to let you skip or subvert the mechanics of the game like it's almost like they know like yeah this is kind

of annoying so you could just like not do this like did it remind you of all your favorite idle games no not that not to that level but like when you finish a big enemy you have to like cast a sign with your hand right which you can use a trackpad for um or a thumb stick but it kind of wants you to use the trackpad or you can just hold a button and kK will do it for you. It's like, because they know like this sucks. Like you don't want to do this. There's another system where, and this is actually genuinely wild. There are these creatures that are high up in the sky that you can grapple up to.

They're basically like living grappling points, right? And they're so important and key that they're actually like on the map. Like you can see where these guys are so you can go and get some height. But then there's an unlock in, just like in the regular skill tree that's like create one of these guys wherever you want. Because like, it's like, we know it's like kind of sucks.

Like, so you can, it's like almost game breaking and it's just like randomly in a menu. So there's like a lot of stuff like that where um yeah it just doesn't feel good it's weird that this game and stranger paradise came out i mean like just right on top of each other because they both feel like the sort of game that we have not seen in a long time where a triple-a game comes out and people are always like why why is every triple game on Metacritic getting an 85? Game journalists are too easy on these things. When the reality is,

there is so much to lose for these publishers at this point. They have to make a game of this scale a certain level of fine. I'm not saying great. I'm not saying good. I'm saying it does all the things saying good even i'm saying like it just it does all the things that people who like video games want it to do and it will sell and the people who love this stuff will love it and both of these games feel like they're from the era where

publishers would you know just make a lot more games in a year and it was like hey you know what we'll make a game called assassin's cre, and maybe it will or won't pop, and it can be kind of a mess, and if people like it enough, we'll go make a sequel. And that's what both of these feel like, and I don't know if that is maybe we're late enough in the console cycle that, you know, games are a little easier to make,

so we're seeing a few more risks, or is this like a mix of business and pandemic um you know ghost warrior tokyo it lost its i believe its creative director midway through ish and it's like a sony pc exclusive from bethesda after the microsoft acquisition it's just kind of weird. And then the Team Ninja Final Fantasy game. I don't know. There's something about it that just feels off.

Like I mentioned. With the title cards. That describe an adventure. That you do not have at the beginning of the game. There's enough going on in the games. Where I don't know. It feels like it's the pandemic. Or something. Interfered with these games. And prevented this usual thing. going on in the games where i don't know it i it feels like it's the pandemic or something

interfered with these games and prevented this usual thing that we see where a publisher just keeps throwing money at a problem until it's not a problem anymore and it's good enough to go make you know it's money back yeah so wait like nine out of ten fun factor's really, it is the most sort of like, you know, if you think that you would get into something like this, like, I think that there's a lot to like here. But you have to push through, you know, some of the little stories are neat. Like, the main story is a little bit unevenly realized. Yeah. But the side stories are cool, and it just genuinely feels really bad.

And you can adapt to it. I did adapt to it, but at the beginning, it felt so bad. I was very... I think it's a great Halloween time game, which is weird, because there's going to be a trillion other great games around then. But you want something that just like puts you in a space and like a mood and it's like a

good hangout game this is it i think it's gonna have i think a lot of people not a lot i think i think it's gonna have some like pretty hardcore fans just off the the world alone um but yeah hey the game will be a lot cheaper by then too probably do we want to do this how many reader mail i have i have one reader mail that i want to make sure that we uh check since griffin said that he had completed all the final fantasy games this one's from chris and not me uh chris asks what final fantasy game would you recommend if someone had never played any previous entry before and they could only play one? Stranger Paradise Final Fantasy Origins.

Got it. Easy. Next, please. I have an answer. Me too. Okay. Me too. Let's all say it at the same time.

Okay. And I bet none of the numbers will line up. Let's see. Ready? Three, two, one. Dragon Quest VII Remake. Whoa. Interesting. Wait,? Three, two, one. Dragon Quest XI. Final Fantasy VII Remake. Whoa, interesting. Wait, what did you say, Chris?

All right, Russ. Dragon Quest XI. That's not... Dragon Quest Builders, if we're doing that. Builders 2, baby. Juice and I agreed it should be Final Fantasy VII Remake. That's the most modern, approachable, narratively cogent game. It is not narratively cogent.

I think even that is still being a little bit... I don't know that it's a great representation of the series at large, though. Exactly. I said... Nine's my favorite of the sort of core series.

It's on iOS, and I think even on iOS, it has like boost just like the developers intended i mean get swept away that's when i most recently played it looks great and it has like a turbo mode so you can make the game just go faster which is a very a very welcome change uh and is is a fucking fantastic game i think if you want to try old school RPGs, you should listen to Griffin. If you are glad that these games have switched to kind of action games,

you should go with Final Fantasy VII Remake. Yeah. I think that's a good place to see if you vibe on it. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, see if it, and, you know, there's a lot of other- Play both. Play both.

Por que no los dos? Hey, honorable mentions. Fresh Dick, I see that you're back on it. Okay, I actually want to hear about this now. Okay. There's some dramatic news that happened. Fortnite doesn't have building anymore. Fucking great.

What? You mean construction. They took building out. Like, you can't build. You can't build anything. Not like there's no buildings in the game. No, there are buildings in the game, but you can't personally build. How does that not lead to the biggest thing in the world?

It's pretty big. Okay, so here's the background to that. The new season of Fortnite launched like a week ago, and with it, they made up some narrative reason why building is removed from the game. But it's out. You can't build. They replaced it with two things.

One, you can sprint now, like actively sprint, which you couldn't do before. And two, you can't build what they replaced it with two things one you can sprint now like actively sprint which you can do before and two you can mantle up to things so you can like jump and then climb up a ledge which you couldn't do before which is pretty cool they it should be noted building will be back because it is so core to fortnite but the response has been so positive for them removing building that i would not be surprised if it just became a permanent side mode that people could do whenever they wanted. They actually were really smart. So they added this feature, which is just like a kind of like a halo style regenerating shield that you always have when there's no building. So that if you get popped, it gives you enough time to like run behind a house or run behind a hedge or whatever it is.

Whereas before you would just like hit B and like build the taj mahal around you you don't have that option now so now you actually have to use like the environment which feels great uh it feels way more aggressive than it's been it's just like annoying to play people that are very good at building because i know i'm not um and that's not an issue anymore so if building has been a thing that you has been scaring you from fortnite good time to try it as somebody who recently like spent a good chunk of time playing fortnite um people who are good at it's hard to expect like people who are good at building it feels like they have a cheat code where they're like that guy just built a whole

fortress in like 10 seconds yeah but i would say I would say there is a counter to that, which is to say frequently I'll just like chill and watch them build a ton of shit. And they get so focused on building this super complex thing that I'll just like pick them off from range. It is surprisingly effective. But I feel you. It can be frustrating.

I would check out Fortnite now. I never, even when we did the episode i did not get into it but knowing that it's just just shooting now uh just like being able to sprint and slide like that combination feels really good it feels like war zone in third person now just in terms of flood i have a quick movie recommendation before we get to the game that griffin and justin are both loving uh and drive my car one of my favorite movies from last year, is finally on HBO Max. And everybody should check it out

if you are comfortable with R-rated movies. Maybe our youngest audience should not check it out because I watched it again last night. Is it a Haruki Murakami adaptation? It is a Haruki Murakami, and it's a three-hour movie. And really, it's kind of like a 40-minute movie followed by a normal-length movie. They're very related, but that first 40 minutes has some very Murakami stuff in it. Chris Plant, I so respect your taste in movies and stuff, but your recommendations, I don't know anybody whose recommendations so commonly feel like, be careful about this, you might accidentally watch it, Justin.

You really need to be cautious about this, because it's really not going to be, it's a dig, you know what I mean? A lot of people make things sound very fun and easy and i like that you say like listen you're gonna have to work for it all the time well you know what i think that's because it motivates people it does it feels like a challenge i know our audience i know our i know all of y'all i know that it will entice you all right um tunic is fucking good yeah it's good yeah we uh plant and I talked about it on Rusty's this earlier, so we kind of went through the, like, baseline of it, but what is your sort of initial impression?

It's really good. It's super good. I mean, it's game of the year material. Like, it's... Whoa! Whoa! I'm not... Whoa!

I mean, it will definitely be on my list. It's going to be on my list. This year is going to have to be fucking good in order for this not to crack the top five for me. Obviously, Elden Ring. I don't know that we've talked about Elden Ring since some of us have finished it. It's a masterpiece. Yeah, we're going to do a spoiler episode. Maybe we can do that.

Oh, yeah. I'm in Elden Ring. That's so good. I'm in love with the ending I got. but man tunic is just so fantastic it is on surface level like a very fun uh sort of isometric uh action rpg zelda soulsie type thing, but with a layer of Fez mystery on it that is very compelling to yours truly. Does Fez mystery carry the, like, I don't think that conveys as much.

So, that's fair. If you could dig into it a little bit. I get what you mean. Right, so in the game, you collect pages of an instruction booklet for the game tuning. And they are necessary because much of the game, all of the important details and some of the signs that you find, and anytime you pick up an item, it is a fictional language that that item or detail or dialogue or whatever is presented in.

that that item or detail or, you know, dialogue or whatever is presented in. So, like, you can't read that and you rely on finding these instruction booklet pages to learn, like, oh, actually these items are what you use to, you know, level up your stats. And here's how you, here's kind of how you do it. I went a humiliatingly long time without realizing that that was something that I could even do and was really struggling with Tunic. But then you've which part which part did you not realize leveling up my stats oh yeah oh yeah um what if somebody wanted okay i discovered it by accident yeah i mean here here's what i'm gonna say justin you can definitely level up your stats right now in the game you should figure it out for yourself.

I honestly think that that is the most satisfying moment. Is it in a menu? We're not going to say anything. We're not going to say anything. I'll help you out if you need it. So these instruction book pages reveal things that are always true about the game and things that your character is always able to do. You just didn't know that you could do it, right? So that's cool.

That's very cool. But also there's notes in the margins of these instruction booklets. to do you just didn't know that you could do it right yeah that's cool that's very cool but also there's like notes in the margins of these instruction booklets like written in scribbled pencil and so there's a whole nother layer on top of it which is like wait a minute like who is writing notes in the margins of the instruction booklet of the game that i'm finding inside of the game the instruction booklet is for. It's so fucking cool. I would also say that instruction booklet, guys,

is fucking sending me. It is full on driving home from the Huntington Mall. My dad is driving and I'm looking through the instruction booklet for fucking Bayou Billy or something like that is like so- It's so good. So nostalgic.

The soundtrack is out of this world. Well, I want to talk about the instruction book real quick. Oh yeah, sure. Someone recently posted a, like a PDF scan of the original Zelda 1 instruction book just as a reference point. What I don't remember about that instruction book is it's filled with like the cutest fucking link you've ever seen.

Like link, like looking at a sword or like holding up the Triforce, but he's fucking adorable. And he looks exactly like the Fox. And it's so obvious. I mean, obviously this is inspired by the original Zelda, but like right down to the art style and tone of the instruction book is

like one to one. Yeah. And it's just like such a loving thing i would also add one more thing about the instruction book i i'm like very very close to finishing it i'm like 99 of the way through figuring out the giant massive puzzle at the heart of this game um there are pages in that instruction book that i have seen and looked at probably 60 times and on the 61st time i saw something i had never seen before yeah because it is so clever in the way it hides information from you i'm gonna ask that is there any use to trying to all of the writing in the game is in a different okay so here's what i'm gonna ask that is there any use to trying to all of the writing in the game is in a different

okay so here's i'm gonna say i i have not looked up anything but very recently i did i was like i need to know how realistic it would be for me to actually crack this language i can tell you it is an actual language and i looked it up just to confirm that it is an actual language. And I looked it up just to confirm that it is an actual language, but it is not. Wait, it's an actual Earth language? It is an actual Earth language. What the? And it is far more complex than any video game or book language I've ever fucking seen. Jesus.

Great. The presentation's amazing. The game is tough. I don't think you need to know the language, though, is what I would say. The game is tough as nails. Like, I have genuinely... It's gotten a little bit easier since I learned how to fucking level up. But it's like, you slip up in combat a little bit and you can lose it.

It is not very forgiving. I adore this game. I'm really... It's really good. I wish we had done a full episode on it. I'm sure we'll be talking about it as we go. How about this? How about when we do the Elden Ring spoiler episode?

That's A segment. B segment, Tunic. I mean, we'll see. I think Elden Ring will have plenty. Tunic will also come back for Game of the Year. Yeah, absolutely. Plant, what have we talked about this week? This week, we have talked about Stranger of Paradise,

Final Fantasy Origins. We talked about Ghostwire Tokyo, fantasy origins we talked about ghost wire tokyo uh fresh dick uh return to fortnite now that you don't have to construct stuff i uh recommend you check out drive my car on hbo max and tunic i mean y'all love tunic and we'll be talking about tunic a lot more for the rest of i don't know our life year like we'll be talking about for a while next week we're going to be talking about Kirby and the... Forbidden? Forgotten Land, I think is the full title of it?

Forbidden. You said you had it, and you didn't have it. I mean, I knew it was a Kirby game. That's all we need. Okay, next week, we're going to talk about Kirby. And that is it. Thank you for joining us for another episode of The Besties, where the world's best friends talk about the world's best games. Becauseies where the world's best friends talk about the world's best game

because shouldn't the world's best friends because shouldn't the world's best friends best game the world's best games besties Besties!