Hey guys, I apologize in advance for the wall of text, but I thought I'd share some more unintentional, unmalicious reference-point-usingness. I googled a couple of suspiciously well-written sentence fragments clumsily and ungrammatically incorporated into "Andrew Ramsey's" review of FF4: The After Years, and found Nintendo's press release and this Nintendo Life review by Corbie Dillard.
I'm going to take a look at some of his other articles.
EDIT:R amsey's description of Noitu Love 2: Revolution in his review was taken from the official description. He makes a few slight changes to Joakim Sandberg's description....
His Neves Plus review looks like it was cribbed from this IGN review by Craig Harris; the words are changed, but both reviewers express the same ideas in the same order.
Andrew Ramsey said:The story of Final Fantasy IV: The After Years of takes place many years after the original and centers on a young man named Ceodore, son of the paladin Cecil and the white mage Rosa, who, along with their loyal and steadfast friends, once saved the world from evil born of the second moon. Now, monsters are reappearing in a world that had finally attained peace. The second moon has returned anew. What tidings does this ominous harbinger bring? Familiar faces and new allies join the battle to save the Blue Planet once more. This is the meat of the story in part one, while having multiple other story lines through the form of character DLC which is being released in the future along with a final DLC which wraps all of them up together.
Ninty said:Description: FINAL FANTASY IV: THE AFTER YEARS is the sequel to the hit RPG FINAL FANTASY IV. The story takes place many years after the original and centers on a young man named Ceodore, son of the paladin Cecil and the white mage Rosa, who, along with their loyal and steadfast friends, once saved the world from evil born of the second moon. Now, monsters are reappearing in a world that had finally attained peace. The second moon has returned anew. What tidings does this ominous harbinger bring? Familiar faces and new allies join the battle to save the Blue Planet once more.
Corbie Dillard said:This main game is the meat of the story, but if you want to experience everything the game has to offer, you'll have to purchase the add-on Character Tales in order to experience the storyline in its entirety. While this offers a huge amount of added game play to the main title, it will also cost you an extra 300 Nintendo Points per Character Tale, not to mention another 800 Nintendo Points for the final story add-on. That means if you want to play through every part of the game, it's going to cost you a whopping 3700 Nintendo Points to do so - certainly not cheap considering this is, after all, a WiiWare release.
Andrew Ramsey said:Speaking of the moon, it actually plays a big role in the gameplay, Moon Phase function. Not only is time kept through the phases of the moon, but it also affects your physical and magic abilities. You need to pay attention to what conditions are occurring. This adds another level of intuitive gameplay to the mix. Also new to the game comes in the form of the Bands attack. If you ever played Chrono Trigger this will be familiar to you. Bands attacks are basically attacks done by multiple characters. Mix and combine different attacks and battle commands to come up with new combos.
Corbie Dillard said:One of these is the Moon Phase function. Time is kept throughout the game using various phases of the moon. These phases also affect your physical and magical abilities as well, so you always have to be aware of what moon phase you're currently playing under when you take part in battle. Another new element comes in the form of the Bands attack. These special attacks involve multiple characters and can be particularly effective against large groups of enemies. You'll learn some of your Bands as the game progresses, but you can also try various combination of characters and battle commands to stumble upon new Bands during battle. Once learned, you can then make use of these Bands at will during combat as long as you have enough MP points to execute them. So as effective as the classic game play system is, these new additions do a lot to add a nice layer of freshness to the overall experience. If you're feeling adventurous, you can even get three other players to take control of each one of the other characters in your party during battles and have a little cooperative multiplayer action.
Andrew Ramsey said:Unfortunately, the visual style is from the SNES era and not the redone version that was released on the DS. This isnt a bad thing, it just would have been really nice to of had some kind of updated visuals to keep up with the times. Same can be said about the music score. While it is a nice score, it just doesnt give the punch that some of the other Final Fantasy titles have had.
Corbie Dillard said:The visuals in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years look like they were plucked straight out of the 16-bit era, which is a good and bad thing, depending on your viewpoint. For some gamers, the nostalgic look of the game will be more appealing than to those who've become a bit spoiled with the recent updates that have appeared on the DS system. It would be difficult to fault Square Enix for keeping with the classic look considering that's really the main draw of this release in the first place, but a bit more visual flash still might have been nice. There are at least a few interesting special effects strung around various part of the game, so they tend to keep things interesting during those times when certain sections start looking a bit bland.
Final Fantasy titles have long been revered for their amazing musical scores, and while there are plenty of the classic Final Fantasy tunes strung throughout this title, the original compositions lack some of that catchy appeal found in the retro tracks. There's plenty of variety in the musical pieces, with everything from uptempo numbers during battle to some of the more moodier compositions during some of the more dramatic moments of the game, but ultimately they just feel a bit uninspired and generic at times. It's nothing to get overly bent out of shape over, but it's something that seems to stick out when compared to the amazingly high quality soundtracks of past Final Fantasy titles.
I'm going to take a look at some of his other articles.
EDIT:R amsey's description of Noitu Love 2: Revolution in his review was taken from the official description. He makes a few slight changes to Joakim Sandberg's description....
Ramsey said:The story is simple set 100 years after the events of Noitu Love 1 the new star of the Peacekeepers is Xoda Rap, there is a sudden resurrection of the Darn armies and she is going to have to put an end to that, unfortunately the city is also turning into places from the past! You need to find out what is causing this entire ruckus to occur and put an end to it. Doing so will be the fun part.
Konjak said:100 years after the events of Noitu Love 1 the new star of the Peacekeepers is Xoda Rap, and what she has to endure is a sudden resurrection of the Darn armies, but adding to that the city is locally turning to places of the past! What could be causing this?
His Neves Plus review looks like it was cribbed from this IGN review by Craig Harris; the words are changed, but both reviewers express the same ideas in the same order.