Final Fantasy Alpha IX: Fall of the Sinistrals II: Tellah's Revenge

Or, "The first ninth sequel to the Final Fantasy series: where the Sinistrals don't quite make it (part deux): where in the process, Tellah gains revenge from that kid with a Yo-Yo who beat him up a while back."

Developer: Natsume, Square, and Capcom Publisher: A guy in a garage with $20 in his hand Genre: Sequel Extraordinare Players: 1-2 Memory: 1 Discs: 5 Analog: No Dual Shock: Oh yeah! ESRB: M Difficulty: If you found it hard to stay awake through Secret of Evermore, forget about this game!

Square, Natsume, and Capcom have united to come up with one of the most rediculous sequels of all. FFa9:FotS2:TR takes place before the Final Fantasy series, yet is the 9th in the Final Fantasy series, even though it has nothing to do with the series. In a "What if Brian didn't get rescued and had to live through the winter?" type case, Natsume examines "What would happen if the Sinistrals tried to use that sword to take over the universe and were beaten by a boy with a Yo-Yo?" The plot further thickens when Tellah reappears courtesy popular demand to open a can of WHUP-ASS on this boy.

Gameplay--The game play is quite original, yet unoriginal in many aspects. During battle, the traditional FF system is used, only now the camera is fixated behind the characters. Triangle is now confirm; Square, cancel; X, menu; O, switch characters. Certain characters learn magic, while others can't. Counter attacks are now mysteriously called "Alpha Counters" and the targeted enemy will always spin to the ground, no matter what you do. The limit break concept has been carried over, only it has been modified so that you can either do limit breaks, or you can combine them into an ultra-cheap combo where purple shadows trail your caracter at every move.

SNC Inc. (the alliance of Square, Natsume, and Capcom) did a piss poor job of combining all of the elements into this game. Not only are the elements of each game poorly combined, but so is the plot. The plot is so marred with subplots (the search for the Dual Yo-Yo, defeat the Ultima Daos, the Iris summon materia, Tifa bromides, etc., etc.) that you can barely tell what the story is.

The characters include: Strife Squall, Artea (Artea was COOL!!!--he's the best character in the whole game!!), Sagatendr, Ryu (a guy who can transform into dragons & throw fireballs), Rena (for some reason, Natsume got to use Enix's character from SO2 because she was supposedly Artea's daughter), ChuChu, and Erim--who looks reminiscent of Rose from SFA2. These are just a few!

Graphics--The battles consist of SFA2 type look with SaGa Frontier 2 type backgrounds. The spells, rather than borrowing from FF's hit graphics, are taken from Lufia II, and look completely out of place. The Alpha Counters and Limit Breaks look a little too flashy--for example, a huge explosion that fills the screen shows up when ChuChu pinches the enemy, followed by the enemy being sucked into a black hole. The overworld backgrounds are in story book form like Yoshi's Story. Remember when a chunk of the world disappeared when you moved a step in FF7? They've used the pop-up story book excuse to cover this. You'll just be walking around and all of a sudden a huge tower with pink patches all over it pops out of the ground!! The graphics are pretty pathetic, overall.

Music--Remember what revolutionary music Secret of Evermore had? Square seeks to improve on the quality of that music in this game. Music was actually taken from a funeral!!! Also, some of the nature tunes are replaced with complete silence, or maybe a daffodil russling in the wind. There's also a track that's all bagpipes. Other than these few, the music is just plain awful! For example, when you win a battle, a horrible tune plays--the winning song of FF8 and Lufia II overlapped! During boss battles, the bus theme from Earthbound is played backwards! On another note, Nine Inch Nails' song, La Mer (that's French for umm... the sea.... I think), is played during the final battle.

Fun Factor--Hmm...well...I'll have to think about it... Okay, I'm done. Imagine having to watch EVERY SINGLE spin-off TV show ever made, then play SoE using only one hand, then go get every Backstreet Boys album and listen to it precisely 23 times, and maybe once more for good measure. That's completely NOT what playing this game is like, well... maybe the spin-off part is. You'd probably wish you were battling forever, because it's the only cool part. Natsume tried to "borrow" some elements from Zelda again, but combined with the horrible jumping that Square took from Xenogears, things just didn't work out! The mini-games, such as Go Fish!, Dominos, playing Hoola-Hoop, and riding a car that has flat tires try to add some flavor to the monotonous play but only make the game more of a torture.

Overall Satisfaction--Non-existent. Only by this game if you're (a) a Hollywood spin-doctor looking to make some money (b) someone who liked Secret of Evermore (c) someone capable of enduring 200+ hours of pure 100% torture (d) someone who is SOOO demented, they know not the meaning of "fun" or "enjoyable".

Highs: The battle system, the music
Lows: The controls, the plot, the subquests, the mini-games, the game itself, IT SEEMINGLY NEVER ENDS, there will be a sequel to this game out 2 days after this game is released
Score: 2.31