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Reply to Re: Crazy Old Tim plays all the DMODs of 2000

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January 6th 2014, 06:23 AM
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Kyle
Peasant He/Him Belgium
 
Ah, Friends Beyond 3. It made ripples with its twin map system. Unfortunately, I could just NOT get into it because almost every single screen is nearly empty. Now, aesthetically this ruins things, it ruins immersion, but worst of all I felt it made it impossible to navigate the large distances you travel between points of interest. I think I finished it though, eventually, because I wanted to write a review of it (as I did often back then). I think I ended up comparing it to Stone of Balance or Pilgrim's Quest, and I shouldn't have done that.

I used to be completely in love with JRPGs so I should have loved this d-mod as it does replicate many of the genre's tropes. The music was all from the 16-bit era as well, which I should have also loved. And yet... It felt like it was drawing from my nostalgia instead of delivering its own thing. I'm easily emotionally triggered by music, so many of the old songs carry a memory with it of the game it originates from. Take Aerith's Theme from Final Fantasy VII. No point in using it for other games or d-mod, because it is intrinsically connected to a character and particular scene from that game for me. This is the feeling I had all the time while playing FB3. It's hard to blame this on the author though, it's more of a personal thing.

Anyway, I did like the gameplay and cutscenes. I think it was one of the first d-mods that tried to do cutscenes in a fashion that goes beyond talk scenes (like the example cutscene you mentioned). There was also a ton of stuff to find (if you could navigate the map) and explore. I feel that if the map had actually been smaller, it would have served the game better in the long run. Smaller, but more focused.

Nice write up Coco, I enjoyed it as always