This game is an RPG developed for Nintendo DS by Square Enix in 2007. The purpose of the game was to provide an RTS (Real-time strategy) gameplay in which you control your main characters and also their summons. It is also one of the games with the most high-quality cut scenes and gameplay graphics considering the DS specs. I won't cover the story details, instead I will focus on describing and criticizing gameplay elements and design, the usage of assets and techniques.
1 - Gameplay
1.1 - Controls
The RTS gameplay really works with stylus (just make a selection square or click the unities, its pretty much smooth). A bad thing, however, is that as soon as you defined an action for your troop/character (move or attack), their selection will be canceled, making battles a bit uncomfortable and repetitive mechanically speaking. The characters are also too slow (only Vaan and some summons can move in a good speed), so you need to be a very patient gamer during larger levels.
1.2 - Goals and Tasks
The level goals are very well varied: from the traditional "defeat all enemies", to "protect an ally" or just "reach the X point in the map", the game's level design progression is difficult to get bored of.
While achieving these goals, the player will defeat monster mobs, open chests, find and press switches to open doors and many other traditional features. Beyond that, you can extract materials from certain sources in the map. Those materials help you to create weapons in the shop. Although it sounds interesting, many of the weapons you make won't be as useful or strong as the ones you could buy on the normal shop (also the recipes to make stronger weapons takes time to be enabled and that time frame might not follow your character needs, mainly when you are training a lot to level up).
1.3 - Training and Progression
Leveling up, different from other Final Fantasy games, is an easy and not much time-consuming task: when replaying a mission, you continue to receive good amounts of both experience and gils (gold), so training is very smooth. If you find small missions (with few monsters and a small map metrics), you can get a lot of experience and money in little time (I could level up from level 20 to 30 in a matter of 25 minutes, because I found "that small mission" that took only 2 minutes to accomplish). And there are enough experience for all your 5-6 characters.
It is also a RPG in which leveling really matteqrs: not only your character stats get improved, but also your summons’ default level will increase. Summing all your unities, you get a lot of additional damage and HP by leveling up.
Other than that, the missions are very well balanced in terms of field metrics, enemy settings and treasure boxes / material sources positioning.
2 - Gameplay Features/Systems
2.1 - Skills
The main characters have a set of skills and the famous Gamble mode (a skill can be set to be used automatically as soon as it is recharged). The skills do not consume MP - instead it has a reloading time to be used again, which is a better design choice for the RTS dynamics implemented. As expected, new skills are enabled when reaching a specific level.
2.2 - Behaviors
The AI of the characters can be poor on path finding from time to time (being stuck), but in terms of prioritizing targets, they are pretty good. Also, sometimes if you do not go fight some enemies, they start following your troops.
2.3 - Summons
You make your army by assigning summons to follow your main characters (by using a portal in some missions you can make new ones, but in the beginning of the level you already get a good amount of them summoned by default). To unlock new summons you have a tree progression in which you spend points to unlock the different summons, and these ones will enable a new slot to be unlocked in the future. They are divided in 4 categories: warrior/tank (hp and resistance), magician, healer and flying unit, so if you unlock a flying unit type A, the type B will only be available after unlocking another warrior/magician type before. There are also different elements for them: water, fire, shock, earth and so on. This way, a significant amount of strategic elements are available for the hardcore player who wants to be perfectly aligned with the mission's challenge.
3 - UI Design
As many of the recent Final Fantasy titles, the UI design is very appealing. The mini-maps are beautiful and location icons are easy to understand: It points out the next mission's location in the world map, and during the combat you can know what units are monsters and which ones are real challenges (like a subboss). The click sounds are great and blend well with the artwork and actions involved. It is fast to access your options, change equips, see stats and so on (you can really operate in high speed). Although in the combat your selections are cancelled after setting an action for a troop, all the rest of the functionalities are simply smooth and blend perfectly with the combat mechanics and mainly with the configuration stages (for summons, shop panels and so on). It also does not require much management on inventory/skills since these are very automatic (skills are enabled by level, stats are automatically distributed, making weapons is very straightforward and so on). However, selling loot can be a bit boring because there is no quantity configuration for identical items.
Large narrative scenes are no longer scary: the game always ask you to save after a long narrative part or cut scene segments, so if you lose the mission, you do not have to rewatch anything. It is a very must-have design element if you cannot skip cut scenes, but that was absent in games like The World Ends with You, which involved lots of cut scene rewatching after dying.
4 - Cut Scenes and Storytelling
Square Enix's CG planners/designers used the 2 screens of the DS to create a new camera technique: in a scene where Vaan's airship is flying, you can see the airship in the lower screen with the beautiful sky and clouds surrounding it in the lower screen while also seeing the characters' faces and gestures zoomed in the upper screen.
This means you can experience detailed character emotions in the upper screen and also feel the environment they are in the lower screen, at the same time, which is an exclusive experience on the DS.
The cut scenes do not have voices: there are only character gestures and action movements of vehicles and environments. They are also very small in time length (from 10 to 20 seconds), but that is not related to the cartridge’s space limitations.
The idea was to use the CG's for beautiful enemy appearing scenes or location discoveries instead of including heavy narrative (dialogues and so on). And that narrative is made of gameplay assets: although the characters are pixelled, they are very expressive and animated, making the narrative fun and interesting without needing voices or 3d character meshes. In general, the dialogue sequences are not too text heavy as other FF titles and include scripted actions that are in great sync with the scene. You can notice that the scenes and narrative content were checked rigorously from start to finish.
5 - Graphics and Asset Specs
The cut scenes follow the notable Square Enix's CG quality standards on all areas: models, textures, motion design, animation and scene sequencing. You can even thrill thinking: "Is this for real? it is only a DS!", but remember that it is only a recorded video that is easy to reproduce with DS' video codecs from the market (like Act Imagine), so the sky is the limit when pushing boundaries on beauty. The color schemes are very harmonious and lively as well (both on cut scenes and on level environments).
A lot of pixel art assets were developed for the rich expressions of characters during cut scenes. The environmental elements are very well polished and well texturized. The sprite scaling of the camera is well executed and make the 2d assets feel in sync with the 3D environment while the camera moves.
6 - Music and Sounds
The soundtrack was composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto, who was in charge of music for Final Fantasy Tactics for PS1 and DS, among others in the FF series. Revenant Wings uses the same themes from FFXII PS2, but in my opinion the DS version of arrangements are worse in comparison to the PS2 version (not meaning the quality, but the sound schemes used and the new rhythms are not as nice as in the original versions).
The sounds for UI interaction are fun to hear, the battle sounds and boss screams are well made and they really give meaningful feedback when the screen is full of sprite overlapping (due to the high number of units fighting each other).
Conclusion
Even for people who are not addicted to the FF series but enjoy a direct and rich RTS experience on the DS will enjoy this game to the fullest. The sum of its wonderful features compensate its small failures, and every single experience is well executed and in place with the rest of the design elements. Well balanced mechanics, engaging boss battles and involving storyline makes gameplay a lot comfortable for both hardcore players who seek challenge and for those who just want to concentrate on the journey.
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