Hey! I reviewed Revenant Wings. A couple of days ago, in fact. Sadly, this review score is much too close to the median to incite hatred or wrath.
I have to say, this is a game of ups and downs. My feelings about it have been all over the place: from high hopes (a sequel to Final Fantasy XII!) to atmospheric hopes (a sequel to Final Fantasy XII emphasizing gambit and summons!) to grim foreboding (it actually looks to play like Heroes of Mana) to crushing disappointment (it does play just like Heroes of Mana) to pleasant surprise (it’s actually quite a bit different after you clear the first chapter or two).
So if you enjoy having your emotions toyed with, I can’t recommend this game enough.
I probably won’t play this, but I am in constant awe of Square Enix’s compact yet beautiful handheld fonts.
I particularly love the one they used for Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition!
I thought Heroes of Mana was going to play much, much better than it actually did; sadly, I didn’t feel like I was in control of anything for the few hours of the game that I experienced. I would try Revenant Wings, but I don’t need my heart broken again.
And if I had to assign Heroes of Mana a score, it would be less than a 5. You can probably see why I don’t review games for a living.
Whoa whoa whoa – can you play as that Tonberry?
“I particularly love the one they used for Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition!”
-parish
Haha, that sounds familiar. :X That looks like FFTA’s font to me though.
You know, if I didn’t already love FFXII in the worst way, that adorable tonberry picture probably would’ve been enough to sell the game for me.
If only Squenix would extend their wonderful fonts to Front Mission…
The whole “plays like Heroes of Mana” thing has me worried. Does playing Revenant NOT involve moving at a snails pace, horrible pathfinding, and looking on as your units wander aimlessly around the enemy right in front of them? Or is Revenant different in some other way. Which would make me sad since what I’ve seen looks a lot more interesting than Heroes.
I probably should have mentioned in the preview that the pathfinding is much better. Units can still get snagged behind others, which is occasionally annoying, but they’re not constrained to a grid and don’t automatically choose the most circuitous path possible.
Really, the two games are only alike in the general sense. Revenant Wings plays much better.
glad to hear it! after Heroes of Mana I mostly gave up on this game, but it sounds like it ain’t half bad!
8.0? Wow, that’s pretty good. On my personal scale, 8.0 would be an A-, but that’s kind of beside the point.
Anyways, so I take it that HoM is a take it or leave it game, while this is a buy?
Pretty pictures…
How did you manage to take such crisp images? Did you use one of the l33t press-only screenshot taking devices that cost a kidney and eye?
Those images are almost DS part deux crisp. Now with the feature that does not let me play my GBA copy of Breath of Fire II.
Actually, those are just official screenshots from Square Enix. We do have capture devices, but I think you need to use an emulator to get images that crisp.
Awesome. I wanted to get whichever of Heroes of Mana/Revenant Wings was the better game and I’m glad to hear that Revenant Wings is actually a good game.
Glad they improved the pathfinding. Trying to get more than a few units anywhere in Heroes was maddening. I got to mission 7 or 8 and then it went on indefinite hiatus. Normally the story would pull me through some bad spots of gameplay, but my hero accidently dying at the end of a mission, forcing me to start over, made me put the game down for now.
Part of me wants to try this game badly, just because I’m somewhat in love with Ivalice… but an Ivalice without Matsuno? I wouldn’t know.
Would anyone recommend this game if I haven’t played FFXII?
It has some spoilers on FFXII, but it’s the better of the two games so you can just consider that bonus backstory.