Amused Geeks

The Endgame
Let’s just get the endgame/ending stuff out of the way first, since it was by far the single most repulsive part of the game for me.

The entire endgame is bullshit. After you have trudged your ass all over the island doing everything, clearing out all the various temples and ruins and crap, the game presents you with a bunch of fetchquests that have you running all over the bloody island again. Remember all those temples you hated and thought you were done with? SURPRISE! There’s a whole new section for you to explore in 5 of them!

Go get a bunch of armor and weapons, (only 1 of the weapons is even usable on the last boss) which are spread out about as far as they can be throughout the island. If this is not a big enough kick in the nuts when you thought you were just about finished, they also give you mission were you have to go to the Don and ask for his help just to have him say (paraphrased) “Not shit I can do, here have a potion and get away from me”. Well worth traveling all the way across the island I thought.

You have teleport stones (or at least you should have) at this point in the game, which make the travel less annoying, but they don’t take you exactly where you need to go, one of the locations (west coast) there is no travel stone for (just happens to be the furthest point from where you get the mission, yaaaaaay) and on top of that, there’s groups of powerful monsters waiting with immediate aggro and disembowel distance from almost all of your teleport destinations.

Hauled your tired ass all over the island again and gotten all the pieces of armor you need and fought all the ridiculous amounts of enemies sprinkled everywhere on your path? Alright, time for the end, right? No. Now you have to go track down the crazy druid from earlier in the game (All the way on the east coast this time) so that he can take them from you and play a ridiculously short and pointless cutscene to “reforge” the armor. This entire section of the game it pointless. Just give us the armor whole. There’s nothing interesting or challenging about hauling it all the way back to the stupid druid and then back to the area where the bossfight awaits. It’s just annoying and tedious filler at this point.

The Illusion of Choice (Disappearing is still an illusion right?)
Throughout the game, it builds up to this point as if you will need to make some grand choice. Stand with the inquisitor and try to help his plan succeed and save the mainland (and the rest of humanity) at the cost of this rinky dinky island filled with assholes, or stop the inquisitor and save this island, most likely damning all the rest of the world in the process.

The mages hint at this. You might need to “choose” to stop the inquisitor. Hell pirate-girl-vague-love-interest-bartender-that-never-goes-anywhere-subplot-woman even says “well, looks like you’ve got a choice to make”. But guess what. No you don’t! All decided! No choice. You will fight the inquisitor. You will save the island. You don’t get a say. All decided for you, what did you think this was an RPG or somethi… hey, wait a minute…

The Bossfight
Oh god, what a bunch of NES repetitive cheap ass bullshit is this. The boss itself is just annoying. He does 3 or so different types of attacks, 1 of which you have to reflect back at him, which stuns him, then run up and beat on him with a hammer while he’s stunned. Repeat till shitty cutscene.

This is bad enough but on top of this bits of the floor you fight the boss on disappear off and on, adding that wonderful “instant pointless death” factor that everyone loves so much.

Also, you have to hit the boss a certain number of times (5 I think, I forget) with the Titan hammer or whatever it was called that you had to get on one of the fetch quests. That’s right. Pretty much all of your experience, training, skills etc. up until now? Pointless. Are you a super mage? World’s best crossbow shot? Specialized in swords not warhammers (which is sane since there’s about 50 special good swords in the game and like 5 of everything else)? Maybe you have a 200 strength? Well tough shit. You will use the hammer for this fight and you will hit the boss X times, regardless of your strength, skills etc. The only difference between doing this bossfight at this point and 5 seconds after starting the game, in terms of advantages and preparation for your character, is that you now have more hitpoints and you have the armor and weapon required for the fight which the game has prevented you from getting up until this point.

Otherwise, all that other shit, doesn’t matter.

The Ending
So you’ve been forced to choose to probably doom all humanity everywhere other than asshole island by reimprisoning the titan. Your reward? A shitty short voiceover and a cutscene of your guy whacking the floor once with his warhammer in his smileyface armor while the titan suffers something that bears and unfortunate resemblance to a naught Japanese anime.

Loose ends? What happened to the rest of the planet? What happens to you after you leave the boss chamber? Did you at least finally get that girl? None of that shit for you! Credits then main menu! Now fuck off!

Disappointing to say the least.

Allow me to save you X dollars and hours:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eYRa8NHDfI[/youtube]