Blog:"Sword of Vermilion" and "Crappy" don't go together, idiot.

Yesterday, I've stumbled upon this video by jedite1, where he shows us the MegaDrive (Genesis for you Americans) title "Sword of Vermilion", already stating that it sucks before the video has even started. As a matter of fact, it was this very video that gave me the incentive to start this blog, so I guess I should give Jedite at least some credit. Credit that's immediately taken away again for jizzing all over this classic.

Just in case you haven't noticed it yet: I love this game. It isn't my favourite game ever, nor do I think it has aged very well, but does that prevent me from liking it? Of course not! So sit back and enjoy (hopefully) as I take my very own riff at this review of his.

You might wanna watch along as I point out stuff, so here's the video:  hqFsPzdZKPg

0:00-0:06 - "Sounds like a promising game, but lo and behold, it sucks." You all should know by now that I strongly disagree with this statement, so let's sit through those 10 minutes of grating voice as Jedite attempts to name his reasons for disliking this game. Gosh, I sure hope he has stopped eating his microphone whilst speaking...

0:14-0:24 - Quite honestly, I was half-expecting that, if his name hadn't fitted into the character limit, he would have been complaining about that. Not a good sign for me to think that, is it?

The next couple of moments is just him summarizing the story, as well as some exposition on the prologue. Pretty boring stuff, so let's just skip ahead a bit.

1:58-2:17 - Shaking my head here. Let me tell you, 200 kims is not a great sum of money at all, and he goes and wastes it on items right off the bat. Every savvy player with at least some common sense would have gone to the weapon shop first and buy a sword and shield (the armor is too expensive yet). Oh, and if you end up not having enough money to buy a sword before even leaving the village? Well, congratulations. You've just made your game unwinnable, unless you could somehow manage to find a chest full of money in the wilderness, which is a hard thing to do, as you cannot attack without a sword.

2:36-2:51 - "I'm gonna buy a Bronze Sword and a Leather Shield... because that's all I can afford right now." Well, if you hadn't gone and waste your money on items like this, you could have been able to afford the Small Shield. Leather equipment is pretty much worthless in this game. Oh well, at least you weren't dumb enough to waste all your money without buying a sword.

3:14-3:34 - Here we go - complaining about the battle scenes. Instead of saying how original they were (I mean, come ON! Before that, all you had was a menu with Attack, Magic, Defend, Run, etc., and otherwise no partaking whatsoever.), all he says is "They suck". We then have to listen to Jedite complaining about the character's walking and slashing speed, which are not too slow, at least not in my opinion. The key to these battles, as far as I'm concerned, is timing, as well as just mashing the C button throughout, so enemies run away from you when you hack at their backs. This allows for some breathing room to go after one isolated enemy and thus decimate their numbers one by one. What Jedite does is run right into them. It becomes more apparent when he shows more battle scenes later on, so let's just move on for now.

3:35-3:40 - "I'm gonna go back to town and regain my health... and I get attacked again!" I apologize in advance for the imminent all-caps... *inhales deeply* YOU FUCKING MORON! YOU HAVE TWO FUCKING HERBS ON YOU. TWO. FUCKING. HERBS! EVERY OTHER PLAYER WITH COMMON SENSE WOULD HAVE USED ONE EITHER WAY IF THEY WERE DOWN TO 1 HP. WHERE THE FUCK IS YOUR BRAIN?!


 * pant, pant* Oh well... at least he makes it out of the battle and safely to town. Seriously. You're not supposed to just go into that cave first thing after leaving town. Oldschool RPGs always required you to gain some levels before going anywhere outside the vicinity of the place you started in.

4:05-4:11 - "Why the fuck is your sword blue? It looks like a giant vibrator!" Counter question: Why the fuck do you complain about the sword looking like a vibrator, due to being blue, but left the people with their green faces alone? Blue is a decent colour for a sword, if not quite realistic. So why are you fine with green-faced people?

4:12-4:46 - For once, a somewhat justified complaint. That is, for someone who didn't grow up in an age where RPGs had a command menu with stuff like "Talk", "Search" and stuff. However, that's just how those kinds of games were like back then. And besides, shouldn't the "Take" option be a dead obvious indicator that you have to, you know, TAKE an item out of its treasure chest? Honestly, there's only two ways to explain how Jedite wouldn't know that. Either he plays dumb, or he really is dumb.

4:48-5:00 - Complaining about candles burning out now, are we? OK, three points. One: Stop fucking complaining and light another candle. There was one in that treasure chest you complained so much about. Two: It's a fucking wax candle. What the hell did you expect? Do your own candles last forever? Three: If you didn't dilly-dally as much as you did, it'd actually be very easy to get through this whole cave with only one candle, two at most. And the next town sells lanterns, anyway, which last for as long as you're in a cave. And don't get me started on the Luminos spell, which makes even lanterns obsolete.

5:04-5:13 - Experience with games should long since have you brought to the following conclusion: Never try to find any logic in video games. Take Phantasy Star, for example. There's a guy who set up a cake shop on the bottom of a cave. And he isn't the only example. There are bums and old men living in caves and towers everywhere in this game.

5:19-5:31 - Only a minor complaint, but didn't you want to save your game in there? Instead he just cancels out of it.

6:00-6:04 - "But let me show you how crippled the magic system is in this game." Go ahead, try and show me. Personally, I didn't have a problem with it.

OK, so first Jedite complains that you can't equip more than one spell at a time. Why should you, anyway? Only offensive spells are equippable (so no healing in the middle of a battle. Kind of a bummer, I gotta admit, but you should be able to get through every battle with your current maximum HP. And if that's not the case, then you gotta level up some.), and there is no elemental system in this game. Sure, you've got fire, thunder, water, wind, time and earth spells, but Hydro and Hydrios don't do any bonus damage to flame-type enemies. Really, you should only ever have the spell handy that covers the most ground. And for that, either Aerios or Chrono/Chronios is what you want.

Um, sorry for talking about such in-depth stuff you wouldn't understand unless you had played SoV, but there's no other way to explain it without writing paragraphs upon paragraphs of text and then not getting anywhere with that video. So, let's jump to Jedite's next problem with magic...

...which is the inability to switch spells in the middle of a battle, to which he goes and compares it to a Tales game. I have no words for this. When you review a game, you DO NOT compare it with a game that came out later. That's just an unfair comparison. Not just in the aspects of graphics and music, but gameplay, too.

Some more exposition and meaningless name-calling later, and he proceeds to showing us how Ferros works in action. Jedite actually has the gall to complain about the first offensive spell in the whole game. Seriously, man! What the hell did you expect? A spell animation like Ultima from Final Fantasy VI or something? The spells may look minimalisitc, but come ON! This is an early MegaDrive title, and possibly (I don't know if Phantasy Star II came first) the first RPG for this console. Give this game a break, dammit.

7:26-7:38 - Jedite now goes to complain about the inability to heal during battle. I already kinda noted how even I found it a bit odd, but I've learned to live with it. And besides, it's actually quite easy to win battles on full HP, or at least high HP. And as long as you conserve most of your MP for Sangua spells, you should do quite well. Conserve his MP he doesn't, though. Really, it's much easier to just hack through those mages with your sword than use Ferros. As a matter of fact, you're actually better off just skipping Ferros altogether. It's way too awkward to use.

7:44-8:08 - Here he goes, listing the consequences of death, pointing the loss of half your money out as the kicker. What bugs me is how Jedite makes it sound as if this game is notorious for taking away half your money after you die. Neither was it the first game to do it, nor was it the last one. Next!

8:14-8:20 - Oh my God! It's actually a justified complaint this time. Yes, I do admit, Sword of Vermilion is pretty repetitive, consisting mostly of "Visit town, go to dungeon, visit town again, visit other town, go to another dungeon, visit other town again" ad nauseum. But you know what? That doesn't detract from its score for me by anything, because I'm just that biased.

8:29-8:39 - Gaze in awe as Jedite gets the exposition wrong. See, this is what really happens: After you got the Treasure of Troy the king was after, he wants you to stop your quest and settle down in his town. You can do naught but comply, but if you visit him again, THEN he gets angry and turns into an archmonster. It turns out he had the real king imprisoned in a basement room in the castle. Ah well, let's take a look at how Jedite bashes the boss battle system...

Once again, instead of commending the game for its variety, he just complains about how you still move too slow. Timing, Jedite. It's all about timing. Especially because most archmonsters hurt like hell. You can't just charge in there, or else they'll eat you. Furthermore, he complains that you can neither jump nor crouch. Has he ever tried hitting the D-Pad down? You CAN crouch, and it's a necessary move in order to dodge projectiles. It was here when I really started to notice he was just nitpicking. "And you can't really evade his attacks"?! If you took your time to learn his pattern, you'd have an easy time evading. Again, don't just charge in! For this particular battle, you have to wait for the head to either rise or lower and then strike it once or twice, then quickly retreat before he lashes out.

Then, some more exposition, as well as picking up a point he talked about already: The game's repetitiveness.

9:54 - Jedite gets into a battle. Remember way back when I told you how he's just running into their backs? Now it gets dead obvious. Words cannot describe how stupid he acts on the battlefield. You just gotta watch it.

"I tried so hard to like this game." Well, what you did try hard to do was die. You kept charging right into the enemies, you were too impatient to avoid getting hit by the archmonster, and (to rape the Rule of Three a bit) you were too stupid to just light another candle when your other one went out.

"It's Sega; they make good games." Ahem... This IS a good game? "They made Phantasy Star, they made Shining Force, they made Shining in the Darkness." Your point? I'd put this game right up in the alley with those you pointed out.

The rest of the video is just him going AVGN with "I'd rather x than play this game" lines. Nothing particularly interesting to write down. Not like I care anymore. I'm done!