Author: 72.8% Water

Samuel Vines-Stancill is a digital marketing professional born in the early 1990s and living in northern England, and the founder of Great Adventures Review. He plays JRPGs, CRPGs, action-adventures, and shmups on the side.

JRPG Collection Screenshots

Final Fantasy VII Screenshots

Post author By 72.8% Water
Post date March 11, 2023
No Comments on Final Fantasy VII Screenshots

This is a collection of 20 high-quality screenshots from the Playstation JRPG Final Fantasy VII.

They were taken in RetroArch and the Beetle PSX core, with no shaders.

These are simply shots from my last playthrough that I found interesting. It’s not a comprehensive look at the game, and most pictures are either from early on or very late in the game.

Feel free to use these screenshots on your own website or in your own project. If you do, we would greatly appreciate a link back to Great Adventures Review.

Tags Main Articles, Screenshots

Commentary

100+ studies show action games improve perception, attention and multitasking

Post author By 72.8% Water
Post date March 11, 2023
1 Comment on 100+ studies show action games improve perception, attention and multitasking

Instead of simply accepting video games, is it time we encouraged them?

A metastudy has been newly published by the journal of Technology, Mind and Behaviour that gives a very strong indication that playing action games strengthens some mental functions.

It was found that:

AVGP [action video-game players] were observed to have superior cognitive skills, on average, compared with individuals who engage less in video game play.
Effects of Action Video Game Play on Cognitive Skills: A Meta-Analysis

The data used to reach this conclusion came from 104 studies that have been published over the last 20 years.

The types of cognitive skills tests where action game players had the biggest advantage were:

Perceptual (spot something accurately and quickly)
Top-down attentional (stick with a goal to find a target)
Spatial (such as mentally rotating objects)
Multitasking (switch between goals with less performance sacrifice)

Though it may seem intuitive that a session of playing games might “warm up” a brain, and mean better results in a test taken immediately afterwards, this study avoided looking at only short-term effects:

In line with our focus on long-term training effects (as opposed to acute physiological arousal effects), the training had to be equivalent in both experimental and control groups in terms of duration (minimum 8 hr) and number of sessions (minimum 8 days) and posttest performance measures had to be performed at least 24 hr after training.
Effects of Action Video Game Play on Cognitive Skills: A Meta-Analysis

As this research looked at many studies, there were many different methods for measuring the traits. To give an example of one, a method for measuring “top-down attention” is an object tracking test, which looks like this (try and follow the dot that starts green):

The authors looked at studies that took different experimental approaches: some observed existing players and non-players (cross-sectional study), others gave subjects action games to play and compared the results to a control group (intervention study). The positive relation between playing action games and performance in the cognitive tests was observed in both types of study

My thoughts

I was impressed with the breadth of this research, and the conscientiousness of the authors, who take pains to keep the data reliable and to avoid publication biases and outlier statistics.

There is more I would like to see studied in this area. Do videogames build resilience to failure? What skills do strategy and puzzle games improve? How does game difficulty (perceived and objective) affect the outcomes?

Naturally, I am also curious about what undesirable traits are increased by playing videogames, and where an ideal balance might lie.

What next

Some will read this, pat themselves on the back for their wise choices in gaming material, mouth “I told you so” to the world, then play another round in Dustbowl. But I don’t highlight this research so that gamers can bask in the glow of group superiority.

Rather, it makes me curious about what roles games might play in benefitting society in the future.

The typical perception today is that games, while an acceptable use of leisure time, are still basically unproductive. This research suggests to me that an hour of videogames is sometimes better than an hour without videogames.

We recognise the importance of reading and physical education in human development, and parents and schools make time for these activities. Is there room for the right games, deployed in the right way, in schools?

If that is taking things too far, instead of treating games purely as unproductive leisure, can we say that, sometimes, videogames are a form of exercise too?

My mind is open to these possibilities, though I think it will be a long time before they are considered seriously.

If you’re interested in the positive outcomes of playing games, here is a recent podcast on the subject:

The surprising effects of video games with Ash Brandin (TED)

Tags Main Articles, Misc

Oddworld Collection

Games like Oddworld

The special traits we are looking for

People fall in love with Oddworld for different reasons. The gorgeous, cinematic vistas and character animations. The non-human characters and the bizarre world they live in. The sense of humour. The messages about environmentalism and corporate greed. The mix of real-time puzzles and tense chase scenes. A unique range of abilities including possessing your enemies and leading other characters with speech commands.

Best picks!

All the 20+ games on this list have a one or more of the above traits and are good games besides. Our top picks have several of the above traits as well as being amazing games. So if you’re an Oddworld fan, any of the following five is likely to be a game you fall in love with.

1. Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Ori approaching Mt Horu in Ori and the Blind Forest

Abe’s Oddysee is packed with high-resolution natural environments and tense chase scenes. The Ori games nail these qualities too: the layers of detail in Nibel forest are unique among 2D games today, just as Abe’s Oddysee’s scenes were in 1997, and the escape sequences will have you gripping your controller as if there is a Scrab behind you.

The cat-monkey-spirit-thing Ori, like Abe, is a vulnerable character who scurries through woodlands and ancient temples to save his land. His game doesn’t have much dialogue but it does tell a good story. It can be light hearted and charming and it can be dark, errie and threatening, and that’s a combination that any Oddworld fan will appreciate.

Here’s a one minue clip that shows off some of what Ori and the Blind Forest has to offer:

2. Psychonauts, Psychonauts 2

If a psychedelic colour scheme seems like a hundred miles away from the tones of Oddworld, don’t judge it yet. The strange worlds of Psychonauts exist in the minds of the strange characters, and that level of strangeness can’t fail to tickle the fancy of an Oddworld players.

Other than all that, it’s a creatively designed platformer, has a great sense of humour, and a story that will keep you gripped.

Mind-control is a key tool in Abe’s arsenal, and it is much more deeply explored here, with the main character Raz delving into the psyches of various characters where he is threatened by figments of their anxieties, ambitions and past traumas.

Here’s an quick example from an early cutscene:

3. Another World

Here’s a game that inspired Oddworld! Both Another World and the first two Oddworld games feature challenging puzzles and tense platforming chases that require precision and timing. The games share atmospheric and otherworldly locations, like the eerie alien planet of Another World and the oppressive factory of RuptureFarms in Abe’s Oddysee.

What makes this predecessor to Oddworld even more impressive is that almost ever scene is unique. Challenges and obstacles are very rarely repeated, making the game feel timelessly cinematic. Oddworld takes you to another world, and so does Another World.

Even in this clip from very early in the game, you can see where the level designers of Oddworld were getting some of their ideas from:

4. Inside

What blows me away about Inside, something that few games have managed since Oddworld, is how it makes you feel like you’re in a fully 3D world despite having entirely 2D mechanics. In Oddworld, the camera would seamlessly disconnect from the screen and fly over Mosiac Lines or whichever location you were in, in an FMV sequence that showed off the breadth and detail of the world in which your adventure takes place. Inside also indicates depth, also by clever use of the camera, lighting and background elements. It all looks totally natural.

The gameplay of Insider revolves around puzzle solving and platforming that require creative thinking and precision, similar to Abe’s Oddysee. Both games also have a dark and oppressive atmosphere, with unsettling locations and characters that keep players engaged. Neither game is afraid of a cynical ending, either.

5. Trine series

There are two game franchises that do detailed 2.5 better than any other, and those are Oddworld and Trine. The latter game’s fantastical setting, with its castles, caves, and forests, creates a sense of wonder and immersion similar to Abe’s Oddysee and Exodus. The aesthetic of both games is utterly charming and that draws players in.

The Trine party cross a bridge passing a waterfall

Both games feature challenging puzzles and platforming sections that require creativity and problem-solving skills. Trine allows players to switch between three unique characters with different abilities. It’s not quite the same as leading Mudokons to safety in Oddworld, but the party-based puzzle solving has a similar ring to it.

Even more

There are 10+ games below that we think have a good flavour of Oddworld to them. For some, this was based on their mechanics, for other on their visual design, and others on their sense of humour. In all cases, we have linked to somewhere relevant (usually the Mobygames page) where you can get an impression of what that game is like.

Classic cinematic platformers

The first two Oddworld games were part of a genre called the cinematic platformer, which most people consider to have started with Prince of Persia in 1989. The first designers of Oddworld were inspired by these titles, and the ones we have selected here

Modern eerie cinematic sidescrollers

It’s not like cinematic platformers stopped being made. Here are newer examples that capture the feeling of creeping your way through an oppressive enviroments, leaving you at risk of Rupture Farms flashbacks:

Single-screen puzzle sidescrollers

Many of the early cinematic platformers were described as “single screen” meaning that the screen did not move with your character, but was static until the player reached the end of it, causing it to scroll. In other worlds, the world was make up of a sequence of “single screens”. Here are some more extremely well designed puzzling adventures in this style:

Worlds full of strange characters

Point and click adventure games can rival Oddworld in well developed worlds, empathetic characters and comedic writing. Not all of them are as strange and fantastical as the following, though:

Wild cards!

These ones might seem to have only tenuous similarities to Oddworld. Nonetheless, they are great games and they might be the new experience that you are looking for. After all, Oddworld was nothing if not novel!

Played one of these that stood out to you as especially Oddworld-y? Another game you think deserves to be on this list? Let us know in the comments.

Tags Games Like, Main Articles

JRPG Collection

Persona 3 Screenshots

This is a collection of 50 high-quality, (hopefully) exciting screenshots from the Playstation 2 game Persona 3 FES.

They were taken in PCSX2.

This is not a comprehensive tour of Persona 3, but it does feature a variety of areas including some from late in the game.

Feel free to use these screenshots on your own website or in your own project. If you do, we would greatly appreciate a link back to Great Adventures Review.

Tags Quick Info, Screenshots

JRPG Collection Monster Taming Collection

What is Jade Cocoon

An RPG about the coexistence of humans and nature, with a cocoon master who traps monsters in a cocoon.
Katsuya Kondo, artist for Jade Cocoon (Interview)

Jade Cocoon in One Minute

Key points

This fondly remembered series started with Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu on the PS1 in 1991, which has one sequel.

Jade Cocoon 1 Japanese box art — The Japanese box art for the first Jade Cocoon game

This eye-catching box art shows off the first thing that made people fall in love with these games, which is:

The art of Katsuya Kondō, a character designer from Studio Ghibli

Considered a top animator in the Japanese film industry, helping bring classics such as Kiki’s Delivery Service to life, the Jade Cocoon duology are the only games Kondo has lent his talents to.

Jade Cocoon art book cover by Katsuya Kondo — The cover image of Katsuya Kondo’s Jade Cocoon artbook

In addition to the artwork, the first Jade Cocoon is loved by fans for:

Monster fusion based on dynamic merging of monster polygons and textures

The first monster selected to be merged contributes its shape, and the second monster contributes its texture, and additional modifiers also affect the final monster’s appearance.

The monsters that you fight with are therefore not ones that have been entirely hand-crafted by the developers, but ones that have been generated uniquely according to your choices.

To this day, this system of monster generation is something no popular monster raising game has attempted.

A rich fantasy world and an emotional story

Pokemon and Shin Megami Tensei games were set in the real world, but Jade Cocoon combines monster raising with a more traditional JRPG narrative and aesthetic.

Jade Cocoon running through grasss screenshot

This new combination was a stated goal of the development team:

We had two goals. One was to create an immersive story world, and the other was to provide compelling monster-raising gameplay. In this way, the game would be both stylistically and technically unlike anything else on the market.
Gaku Tamura or Shinya Kozaki, director and scriptwriter respectively (Interview)

The characters of Jade Cocoon start the game at the cusp of adulthood, and face life changes including marriage and undertaking dangerous work for their town. The people they meet are grappling with their own situations and pasts.

The story concerns the events of a single town and the surrounding woodlands, the perils they face and the suffering of the characters for the sake of their fellow townspeople.

Clashes between the town and forest occur throughout the story, sometimes with tragic consequences.

If we pursue the theme of people and nature, we have no choice but to be conscious of “Princess Mononoke.” You can’t help but be affected.
Katsuya Kondo, artist for Jade Cocoon (Interview)

Exploring the forests of Jade Cocoon: Story of the Tamamayu

In keeping with the theme of humans coexisting with nature, forests are the dungeons of these games. They are rich with natural variety and detail.

These forests, where the majority of gameplay takes place, are where the player meets the monsters, called “divine beasts”, which can be captured in cocoons after they are weakened.

The monsters grow in size as they level up. They have an elemental attribute, be of the earth, fire, water or air elements (or a combination).

Here are four monsters, one for each element:

The atmosphere the forests is enhanced by the music of Kimitaka Matsumae, who says:

The world of Jade Cocoon is a wonderland like Asia and Africa, so I tried using Asian and African techno.”
Kimitaka Matsumae, composer (Interview)

Jade Cocoon 2

Jade Cocoon 2 was released in 2001. In Japan, it had a subtitle that can be translated as “Insect of Destruction” but lacked a subtitle for international release.

Both Jade Cocoon game have their own strenths and weaknesses, though they also have a lot of shared themes.

In general, these are some of the common views on the sequel compared to the first game:

Less focus on story, more lighthearted, questionable voice acting quality
Lacking dynamic monster fusion
Adds a more interesting battle system where three monsters at a time take action, and in total a ring of up to eight monsters are brought into battle in total

Both games have an endless endgame dungeon called the Eternal Corridor where the player can continue to raise and fight their monsters to their heart’s content:

Series at a glance

Fandom

Even 30 years later, Jade Cocoon has remained in in the hearts of fans as a unique experience that other monster raising games have been unable to repeat. You can find those fans online in the following communities:

Similar Games

If you like Jade Cocoon, you will probably like:

Persona 3, 4 and 5: “mature” JRPG stories with monster taming

Two monsters about to be fused in Persona 3

Ni No Kuni 1 and 2: “Studio Ghibli style” visuals in a monster taming JRPG

Tags Main Articles, What Is

Movies Marvel Collection

MCU Phase 4 Complete List (Combined Series, Films and Specials)

Post author By 72.8% Water
Post date February 23, 2023
No Comments on MCU Phase 4 Complete List (Combined Series, Films and Specials)

In Phase 4 of the MCU, for the first time, Marvel Studios made television series (streamed on Disney+) that were tied to the stories of the films as much as the films had been with each other. They set up storylines for the movies and even shared actors.

Most lists of Marvel Cinematic Universe stories are broken into separate lists for the cinematic releases, Disney+ series, and the special short films. I think it is more useful to see the full combined list arranged only in order of release date. This shows us the order that dedicated fans will have watched all of the stories of Phase 4, and potentially the order Marvel Studios intended them to be watched.

This also helps give a different perspective on the phase than seeing only a list of movies. For example, the first movie in the phase, Black Widow, does not reveal anything about the broader storyline of the universe. However, the first Disney+ series of the phase, WandaVision, did.

The last story in the list, Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special, is described by the director James Gunn as “the epilogue of Phase 4”. Maybe you will agree that it does a better job of this than the last film in the phase, Wakanda Forever.

Some have argued that Phase 4 was weaker than the previous three phases, but this argument is always based on the cinema releases. When all the stories are considered, you could come to a different conclusion.

Tags Quick Info

Souls Collection

Why Everything is Dark Souls

Post author By 72.8% Water
Post date February 22, 2023
No Comments on Why Everything is Dark Souls

Every film wants to be a cinematic universe, and every game wants to be Dark Souls — according to some.

The cynic inside us already has an answer to why: the games of From Software have a large, paying fanbase, and other studios want a slice of that pie.

A manager who sits at least three floors away from the creative team (if not in a different office entirely) measures the correlation between different Steam tags and estimated sales, and concludes that if they can slap the “soulslike” label on the company’s next game, potential earnings increase by 74%.

A PowerPoint presentation may have been used to convey the message.

If the omnipresence of romantic teenage vampires was the telltale sign that the book market was riding on the popularity of Twilight, there are a few tropes in which we can see a dedication to the From Software formula in the videogame industry:

An intimate, close-up, over-the-shoulder third-person perspective
Weighty combat actions with a long wind-up, long recovery
Bonfires that save progress but reset enemies
A stamina bar that is drained by all actions, including dodges and basic attacks

It’s hard to deny: these things are common in action games where they were not before.

In God of War

God of War III vs God of War (2018)

In Darksiders

Darksiders II vs Darksiders III

In games by Team Ninja

Ninja Gaiden vs Nioh

Some studios seem to have built their entire business model on the trend

Lords of the Fallen by Deck13, also the developer of The Surge, another Soulslike.

New action games love to use Hidetaka Miyazaki’s masterpieces as a blueprint

Upcoming Black Myth: Wukong and Lies of P.

However, to me, this does not represent creative laziness, but creative passion. The altar that Miyazaki built is revered by creators as much as consumers. Developers have played Dark Souls, been inspired by naturalistic level design, eye-catching art direction, high level of tension and rewarding combat encounters.

If you’re not a fan of Souls, this might not sound so great. There are many elements of Souls that are like marmite: you either love them or hate them:

Backtracking
Unexplained mechanics
Save points that work like bonfires
Runbacks before boss encounters
No difficulty settings
Stamina management

But it’s not like every third-person action game is moving in this direction

My view is that the third-person melee action genre, a genre that I love, has been reinvigorated in recent years, and Dark Souls had a part to play in that.

Yes, there are more games out there that look like Dark Souls, but also more games in this genre in general. There might even be more diversity in the genre than ever before.

As a closing word, remember that trends come and go. I fully expect more studios to drift away from the Souls style within a few years.

…though, as these cycles go I, expect it will come back again. Love it or hate it, Dark Souls has cast a spell on the industry, and to get rid of it entirely is a challenge that goes far beyond Ornstein or Smough.

Tags Essay, Main Articles

JRPG Collection

Xenogears Screenshots

This is a collection of 75 high-quality (and hopefully interesting) screenshots from the Playstation game Xenogears.

They were taken in RetroArch with the crt-easymode shader applied.

This is not a comprehensive tour of Xenogears, but it does feature a variety of areas including some from late in the game. To find out what makes this game worth playing, read my Xenogears review.

Feel free to use these screenshots on your own website or in your own project. If you do, we would greatly appreciate a link back to Great Adventures Review.

Tags Main Articles

JRPG Collection

Evolution of Healers in JRPGs

Post author By 72.8% Water
Post date February 15, 2023
No Comments on Evolution of Healers in JRPGs

Magical healers have had a role in mythology, religion and fantasy literature since forever. You’ve heard of Jesus of Nazareth? Total healer.

We will come back to him later. In role playing games, healers were there even before computers. The first edition Dungeons and Dragons (1974) gave rules for three types of characters: fighting men, magic-users, and clerics. It is the latter that concerns us.

The roster of curing classes expanded in the expansions. In Dungeons & Dragons Supplement I: Greyhawk, the paladin made his RPG debut. In Supplement III: Eldrich Wizardry, we meet the druid for the first time. Rangers and bards also had restorative spells or abilities, to a lesser extent.

These classes were the foundations for in early CRPGs. Thus in the Ultima series we find Dupre the paladin and Jaana the druidess, some of the earliest named healers in videogames.

We can draw a line from these healing trailblazers to the world of JRPGs — starting, as many things do, with Dragon Quest.

Moonbrooke: The start of an archetype? (1987)

Princess of Moonbrooke from Dragon Quest II

This female princess cleric establishes norms many other would abide by, yet most people don’t even know her name.

At least, not a consistent one. She is known as the Princess of Moonbrooke, and in later appearances has the name Purin (after “pudding”), or Princessa in the west — usually.

In the game she hails from, Dragon Quest II, her name is randomly generated, a holdover from pen and paper RPGs where parties were rolled, not pre-written.

What the game does tell us about her is that she is a princess of Moonbrooke castle, she is beautiful, and before she joins the party she is stolen away by the game’s main villain. And if that all sounds about right for a JRPG healer, well, we’re off to a flying start.

The JRPG healer stereotype

In Moonbrooke we see a number of traits that make up the stereotypical main healer of a JRPG party. Such characters, which pop up all across the genre, have most or all of the following traits:

a young adult women with striking looks
with a kind and timid personality
with low physical attacking ability but high magical power
has royal lineage or some other destiny by birthright
is often the love interest for the male main character

How did this stereotype come to be? We’ll explore that, but first let’s look at some other examples that show that not all early JRPG healers fit into this box.

Minwu: The first white mage (1988)

The primary healing class in Final Fantasy is the white mage. The white mage has had a place in the series since the very first game, in which they could be promoted into a white wizard, who, though nameless, had a vaguely masculine look to them.

The first named white mange in the series debuted in the sequel, Final Fantasy II. Winwu is a very different looking first healer than Moonbrooke in Dragon Quest II — and why wouldn’t they be? In the context of the the non-prescriptive nature of Dungeons & Dragons character creation, which these games were inspired by, the ranks of clerics would be filled by all types of people with all backgrounds.

Winwu is experienced in battle by the time the party meet him. He is a mentor to the party and willing to lay down his life for the rebel cause. This committed and hardened character feels uncommon for somebody in his role.

A battle medic needs to get their hands dirty; Minwu is one of the few healers in the series that makes us believe that he would.

Expanding casts (1990-91)

As the size of the casts of JRPG expanded — from a measly one in Dragon Quest (1986), to eight in Dragon Quest IV (1990) — games found room for multiple healers. In Dragon Quest IV, we see two very different, but equally traditional, archetypes: that of a paladin and a cleric.

Kiryl: A paladin appears

Games and stories often feature a connection between healing and religion: the skill is the domain of priests. This connection is intuitive, as such professions centre on supporting members of their community. It is somewhat mystifying that fantasy communities do not have dedicated doctors, but only religious men moonlighting — but I digress. Let us introduce our first priest.

Kiryl is steadfast in his devotion to his god, which contributes to the main joke of his character: the tension between his physical attraction to Aylena and his commitment to purity. In battle, he is a paladin through and through, with access to the full suite of healing spells as well as buffs to defence and a firm sword arm.

Kiryl is not the best practical choice of healer, though, because due to a quirk of the game’s AI he prefers to cast instant-death spells. The better healer in the game is one of the twins.

Meena/Porom: Yin and yang

The duality of white magic and black magic sometimes arises in the form of characters, too. In Dragon Quest IV we have Maya and Meena. One, a rambunctious, dancing mage, the other a reserved, fortune-telling healer.

Funnily enough, a very similar dynamic appears in Final Fantasy IV with the twins Porom and Palom. In both games, one twin casts offensive magic and the other heals the party.

Porom and her brother are just five years old, not typically a ideal age to undertake dangerous adventures. Magic is what excuses this questionable choice in companions. We can accept that magical aptitude can outpace physical development in this fantasy world.

And though small in stature, Porom and Palom are both large in heart. Once again, the black mage of the duo is the unruly one, the white mage more calculating, but neither is reserved: Polom is quite willing, eager even, to clip her brother around the ear when he deserves it, and make decisions for the group, who trust her judgement.

Porom is a reassuring early sign that healers can be proactive, full of energy, and take key roles in the story.

Rosa: The purest

The other main healer in Final Fantasy IV is Rosa, the first female white mage to be introduced in the Final Fantasy franchise.

Rosa’s character is simple and pure, denying ornamentation or complexity. She is the centre point on a love triangle involving the main character, Cecil, and his rival, Kain. She is not a princess, though is familiar with court life in her hometown of Baron. Her primary character traits are kindness and devotion to her friends (to Cecil especially). She rarely causes waves in the story except when she is immobilised by desert fever, or kidnapped by the villain — she is generally a passive character.

Rosa does not challenge our stereotypes but sits comfortably within them. Not all love interests are active characters. Rosa plays her part adequately, and can be seen as the foundation for many similar characters for decades to come. She is an important character in the franchise history. though not the most exciting one.

But now let’s try and answer a question: why “white mage” is a commonly chosen class for the female love interest?

Women and healing

Traditional ideas of femininity dovetail into the female healer archetype easily. The female physique doesn’t seem to fit a class that relies on big muscles, but there is no reason to disregard a magical class. On the same line of thinking, stereotypical female nature lends itself to a supportive role.

In 1996, we see these stereotypes in action. Princess Peach had been playable in an RPG before Super Mario RPG (1996). She could have become anything. A mage? A tank? But of course, Princess Peach is the healer. Resembling Moonbrooke and Rosa, she is a shoo-in for the role, ticking all the boxes of the stereotype.

Thankfully, from the start we see examples like Minwu, or Myau from Phantasy Star (1987) — in which game the only female character had a more physical role in battle. The stereotypes were not widespread or rigidly adhered to, but they did appear to have some staying power.

Cecil and Rosa: The cure couple

We’ve already seen how Final Fantasy IV contributed to JRPG healer lore, but there something important we haven’t even touched on yet: the main character is also a paladin, making a very rare example of both the main character and the love interest of the game being part of a healing clas.

It’s not too uncommon for a main character to have some healing potential. It’s a good way to balance the early portions of the game, when you might not have access to all characters. Alice from Phantasy Star was another capable healer. But usually the balanced main character can delegate to a dedicated (and more capable) healer later on, allowing the game’s poster character to show off more of their offensive abilities (and take more of the glory).

However, it’s unusual that the main character to be the party’s main healer. This trait is part of what gives Ness of Earthbound a unique flavour.

Aggressive healers (1994-2001)

With Cecil and Ness, we saw healers taking more mixed, offensive roles.

In Marle in Chrono Trigger (1995), we have a typical ranger, sporting a bow, a suite of healing spells, and complete with a feistier personality than any healer before her.

But why bring a crossbow when you can bring a gun? One of my favourite healers, Billy from Xenogears (1998), perfectly demonstrates how a character can be a “healer with a nasty bite”.

Make no mistake, he is kind, he is rational, and he is even a man of the cloth — a cleric in the most literal sense. On the other hand, he wields a pair of pistols like a cowboy, has a rather impressive damage output, and is certainly not afraid to take charge of a situation.

These are examples of healers becoming more active and less one-dimensional. The final examples in this article follow the same trend but take it in a different direction, resulting in one of the most popular healer subtypes.

A new archetype: the summoner

Once upon a time in the series, Final Fantasy summoners were an alternative black mage. Your summons were elemental bombs in a monster-themed wrapper. In Final Fantasy IV your strongest black mage, Rydia, was also your summoner, because why not: it’s roughly the same role.

However, Rydia’s descendants in spirit, Garnet and Eiko of Final Fantasy IX (2000), took a totally different approach. They were a healer/summoner hybrid, allowing them to do massive damage as well as massive healing. That made them a bit of a safe, more alike with Tellah than Rydia.

This new archetype proved popular, and was repeated in the very next game, for Yuna in Final Fantasy X (2001).

Up to this point, we have expected healers to have limited damage output, so giving them access to the most destructive abilities in the game is a pretty radical twist in itself.

But it goes a bit further than that: it gives the archetypical main female character something more to do in the story. Both Garnet and Yuna are similar in this respect, summoners in games where eidolons/aeons have more significance than in any game before. A very welcome change.

Yuna: The healer-saviour

You don’t have to look hard to see that Yuna could be an analogue to Jesus. She heals wounds, she is a preacher of sorts, and she is instructed to die for our sins — literally, sacrifice herself to defeat a monster called “Sin”. Yuna also walks on water and guides people’s souls to the afterlife.

She entirely fits the healer conventions, too. She is a princess (the daughter of high summoner Braska), she is quiet, kind, devoted and beautiful. She is Rosa in all these respects.

What makes her interesting is what she adds on top of those conventions. She does fight against a potentially tragic destiny, and she does wield unimaginable destructive power. It’s the combination that makes Yuna such a compelling character, and one of our favourite healers of all time.

Conclusions

So we haven’t come very far in 2000 years, but we came quite far in 20. The role of healer in 1991 was one-dimensional, but over time hybrid classes were allowed to flourish and the characters become more complex and had a greater role in the story.

Healers are as popular today as ever. One of the most popular characters in Final Fantasy XIV is Y’Shtola. One of the most popular characters in Overwatch is Mercy.

As long as there are games with combat, there will be a need for specialists to patch up our heroes. And sometimes, they are the heroes themselves.

List of Healers

These are the healers that appeared in this article. All are candidates for the best healers in JRPGs:

Princess of Moonbrooke/Purin/Princessa (Dragon Quest II, 1987)
Myau (Phantasy Star, 1987)
Minwu (Final Fantasy II, 1988)
Kiryl (Dragon Quest IV, 1990)
Meena Mahabala (Dragon Quest IV, 1990)
Porom (Final Fantasy IV, 1991)
Rosa Joanna Farrell (Final Fantasy IV, 1991)
Princess Peach (Super Mario RPG, 1996)
Ness (Earthbound/Mother 2, 1994)
Garnet Til Alexandros XVII (Final Fantasy IX, 2000)
Eiko Carol (Final Fantasy IX, 2000)
Yuna (Final Fantasy X, 2001)

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Movies

What Avatar: The Way of Water did to me

Post author By 72.8% Water
Post date February 7, 2023
No Comments on What Avatar: The Way of Water did to me

Avatar 2 recaptures the magic of the first film without feeling like a retread — mostly.

With the world of Pandora and the way of the Navi explained in the first movie, the sequel seems like the time to build on those foundations and tell a new, more complex story.

I wanted Avatar: The Way of Water to do Star Wars: expand in a far flung, arms sweeping sort of way. Flamboyantly. Big space politics, new sentient species, strange ideas that are more than a step away from what we’ve already seen.

Instead, Cameron meanders pleasantly to a nearby island cluster, where the locals still have blue skin, but a slightly different shade of blue.

If this sounds like criticism, wait until you see it in motion. The world of the water tribe is worth a film to itself. It is not with dramatic, superficial variety that Cameron is expanding his world, but in the aggregate of many meaningful details.

The lands of the Metkayina clan are sometimes less fantastical than locations from the first film, but as these suspended wicker abodes show, they are still exotic and beautiful. Image from Pandorapedia.

In a way, it is the opposite of Star Wars, where you can cross a billion miles in a second to meet a thousand interchangeable aliens. On Pandora, you leave your forest and the other blue people laugh at you for having a different shaped tail. Honestly, much more realistic.

Deeper fidelity, deeper sentimentality: those seem to be the goals of Avatar 2. Sully’s new children (some biological, some adopted, each with a personality of their own) make up the emotional core of the film.

The multiple times I got choked up, the children were to blame.

When the film took a few seconds to slow down and lovingly explore the details of the new environment, it was Kiri’s unique connection with this nature that elevated these affecting moments above similar scenes in other movies.

When the danger ratcheted up, it was the heightened adrenaline of the children and the parents that totally encompassed me in the action.

I’m a sucker for a family dynamic in films, and The Way of Water does it well.

Kiri, one of the new generation of Navi. The fidelity of the hair, the subtlty of the expressions and body language — truely the most lifelike computer generated characters in a film yet. Image from Pandorapedia.

In some regards, Cameron doesn’t move far enough away from the first Avatar. In particular, the villain, Colonel Quaritch, who is no more interesting that he was in the first film.

He learns the way of the Na’vi, which seems like a great excuse for a redemption arc. This would have left a vacancy for a new antagonist at the end of the film… but alas. This film, as did the previous one, resolves itself with a showdown between Sully and Colonel Quaritch. A good fight scene, but a tedious narrative repetition.

Another disappointment is the scale of the conflict. The sequel starts well in this regard, jumping immediately into a new planetary war. But at the height of the third act, the stakes are no greater than Sully’s family, a few tens of water tribe warriors, and a school of large fish.

I’m happy for a sequel getting more personal, but when the conflict is already similar to the first movie it is hard not to make comparisons. In Avatar, the fate of the whole forest was palpable. In this film, does the fate of the ocean hang in the balance? It doesn’t seem so.

At the end, we are left with open conflicts for the next film to deal with. The sacred words of the water tribe state that “the way of water has no beginning and no end”. As a middle film in this franchise, that is unfortunately what this feels like.

In the one-day complete Avatar five-film epic cycle, if The Way of Water hadn’t introduced new characters then it would have risked being skipped in marathons. That’s how little has changed in the broader conflict by the end.

But’s it’s not the franchise building that matters. It isn’t the climax that makes this film a worthy sequel and blockbuster. It isn’t the wit of the writing or even the plot, which frankly requires Sully to make some very questionable decisions. It is the slower second act, which once again transports us to a fantasy world that no other film has the ambition to attempt. Love it or hate it, Avatar did it, and The Way of Water did it again.

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