Final Fantasy 6: The Eternal Crystals Hack

The Crystals are losing their light, the world has adapted by discovering technology. Mash together the plots of several Final Fantasy games and here we are. (Seriously, I mean it about the plot-mashing: The power is being drained from the shards of the Light Crystals by magitek, which means that the lord of the Dark Crystals will be able to come forth from the Void.)

( What follows is an in-depth listing of what changed and a running commentary about why I wasn't wild about it. )

Overall: The plot is a hodgepodge mess of the original game and tropes/references to the rest of the series. The new monsters and superbosses make playing through the game honestly nigh-impossible. The thing is, there were some genuinely good ideas and a lot of potential here, but I think the hacker tried to turn everything (references, difficulty, changes) up to eleven and it didn't really work.

New World of Darkness:

Mage: The Awakening – Night Horrors – The Unbidden

Apparently White Wolf put out a Night Horrors book for every line, but where Intruders is actually effective at creating horror and presenting Mage as a horror game, this was more paying lip service to the concept in a more generic book of game ideas and story hooks.

Examples are things like the “Lucid”, a bloodline of Sleepwalkers who can sense magic and tend to go crazy and become serial killers of mages. A neat hook, but not really horror as it’s presented. Similarly, there’s an example of an Abyssal “imprint” of a mage that can possess someone close to them, knows their secrets and is resistant to magic. Again, a neat hook, but the presentation makes this less about being scared or upset and more about being punished for hubris. Could these be horror games in the right hands? Sure. But none of them are inherently horrific (or more so than the core game typically is).


World of Darkness: Second Sight

This is basically World of Darkness: Sorcerer updated for NWoD, with full rules for psychic powers and low (hedge) magic; the difference mostly being that psychic powers arise spontaneously and can be used quickly, whereas low magic requires study and a ritual and extended roll for use. (This third major Numina of the OWoD, True Faith, is nowhere to be seen. Unsurprisingly, really, as it was overpowered but very hard to adjudicate.) The third chapter is dedicated to horrors from beyond (and it never says “from the Abyss”, but it’s basically the same sorts of Things from Intruders), though it takes a high-level sort of approach to them and what they could be and how they might influence a story-sized subset of humanity. As keeping with the theme of the book, a selection of rites and powers are available to those who deal with such Things.

There’s an emphasis on a lack of societies and conspiracies, and how comparatively rare these characters are. (Also, emphasis on the fact that these powers represent “lesser templates” and cannot ever overlap with other lesser templates like Ghouls or Proximi; or greater templates like Vampires, Mages or Werewolves. No munchkins!) All of the powers are specifically penalized by the presence of people who don’t believe in them—televising or debunking a power is the best way to see it spectacularly fail. If you’re going to break the masquerade, it won’t be with this power set.

The appendix is a sample story, and they try very hard to pepper the book with sample character and story hooks. Not amazing stuff, but a decent reference.

Comic (and related media) reviews

Fairest, Volume 2 - Have you enjoyed everything else in the Fables universe? This is more of the same, though it features the particularly disturbing life of Rapunzel and bloody mayhem with Japanese fables.

Fables: Wolves of the Heartland - Have you enjoyed everything else in the Fables universe, but felt it could use more naked people? This has 1,000% of your Recommended Daily Allowance of werewolf dong.

Earth-2, Volumes 1 and 2 - While these are mostly origin stories of rebooted golden age characters, there’s some good world building and they’re decent stories overall. I’m interested to see where this characterization of Terry Sloan as Watchman Ozymandias is going. Also credit for rebooting one character as gay (Green Lantern), three as people of color (Hawkgirl, Dr. Fate, Crimson Avenger), and one gender-swapped (Crimson Avenger); and keeping Michael Holt Mr. Terrific.

I, Vampire, Volume 3 - There is not a single plot point in this book that hasn’t been done somewhere else (mostly by White Wolf), but it is delightfully witty. John Constantine appears, and gives the most in-character reason for leaving the protagonists to deal with a problem themselves that I’ve ever seen.

While I’m here, Justice League: Doom was pretty good, about on par with Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths as a decent spin on a standard story. Like most of the other adaptations, this takes a pragmatic approach of cutting out complicating factors and trading in things that work better on the screen. It stands alone better than most comic storylines do, certainly.

The Wonder Woman animated movie, while really violent, works quite well. (Though, I'll admit, I wasn't wild about their use of Etta Candy.) DC could probably make a lot of money filming the exact same movie as live-action for a big screen release.

(Overall, the animated adaptation movies have been good if not great; the ones that vary further from their source material and assume the audience knows less are generally stronger.)

Oh, and we watched a chunk of Big Bang Theory, Season 6. I'm still not crazy about the show, but it gets better as they get further from the original premise and are forced to round out all of the characters and introduce new ones. The episodes that focus on the girls are often stronger than those that don't, and I genuinely enjoyed "The Bakersfield Expedition."