Worldly Weekend: Final Fantasy II (NES/Famicom)

Not even one game later, and we've already arrived at Final Fantasy's infamous identity crisis. The game we are reviewing today is not the Final Fantasy II hailed as a SNES classic, but the Famicom's Final Fantasy II that released in 1988, never left Japan's shores, and is often cited as one of those experimental black sheep sequels that plagued the NES. For the moment, let us put aside the fact Western fans wouldn't experience the same frustration bestowed by Zelda II and Castlevania II until roughly a decade's time, and hone in on a more well-known source of frustration -- that, of course, being the name discrepancies exchanged among the first six Final Fantasys. With three Final Fantasy games -- Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy III, and Final Fantasy V -- skipped over at release, Square had no choice but to dub their Western localizations of Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI as Final Fantasy II and III, respectively.

Needless to say, what resulted was an endless source of confusion regarding Square's retconning as they made their Western debuts via PlayStation, Game Boy Advance and DS incarnations, be they altered ports or elaborate remakes. And yet, in the case of Final Fantasy II, I cannot help but feel this was the correct decision: whereas Final Fantasy IV is a series masterpiece, II is certainly its retro nadir, filled with antagonistic design decisions that smother any goodwill it sought to bring. While hardly the worst JRPG, said decisions render it a slog of mediocrity as opposed to the prestigious, glorified adventure established from the very first game.

Worldly Weekend: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days

Note: Merely discussing the content of this game -- or even just looking at the below cover -- paves way for some early spoilers regarding Kingdom Hearts II. If you're planning on going into the series blind, you'd best skip ahead.

And so begins not just Kingdom Hearts further wedging itself into the realm of indecipherable names, but spawning what remains its biggest folly: an endless line of "bridge" games consisting of side-stories, prequels, and pseudo-sequels, all for the purpose of either divulging a particular interim  between certain games or setting the stage for Kingdom Hearts III. Be it the fault of a developer (Square-Enix) caring only to capitalize upon a successful brand or the burgeoning over-ambition of a short-sighted director (Tetsuya Nomura), it's vital to discuss why, exactly, this direction was problematic, beginning with the most obvious reason: it's been eleven years since the first three spin-off games (358/2 Days, Birth by Sleep, and Re:coded) were announced, and we're only just getting Kingdom Hearts III this year. Whoops.

This past decade's worth of wasted time and frustration is more than enough for fans to jump ship, especially when factoring in cost: over the next six years, engaging in the full Kingdom Hearts experience required the purchase of a Sony PlayStation 2, a Nintendo DS, a Sony PSP and a Nintendo 3DS. Being an episodic series, this is not like Final Fantasy's individualized entries where one can simply pass, say, Final Fantasy IX on PlayStation and pick up Final Fantasy X on PlayStation 2 without missing any context; nay, you must at the very least engage in Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance to make any sense of the series hereafter, and for the most dedicated of Kingdom Hearts fans, that potentially means shelling out cash for systems you don't particularly want (or, in my example, you're lucky enough to know someone at college who's willing to let you borrow their PSP and copy of Birth by Sleep).

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

As this review's been nearly six years in the making, it's only fair I cut to the chase: I still intend to bury The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Admittedly, I embark on this task with some trepidation: it is not a game that is outright terrible, as I have implied in the past. This is not the so-called sorcery of the previously-discussed Zelda Cycle; a carefully-evaluated 100% run does reveal it is a professionally-designed title with your typical Nintendo polish and all that, and like Twilight Princess before it, there are some good moments I dare not wish to minimize.

That does not, unfortunately, dissuade me from believing Skyward Sword is possibly the most underwhelming output from Nintendo's own studios in their entire history of game development. This is not to say it is the worst -- Donkey Kong Jr. Math and Urban Champion have endured three decades of mud-slinging for a reason -- and this excludes second-party efforts and third-party collaborations (Metroid: Other M, being worse in every way that matters, would obviously be the runaway winner).