Elvis Lazlow: Precious Moments Wizard

Above: how shocked you're not.

This may come as a shock to you, but sometimes I have strong, perhaps even too strong opinions about video games. I know, I know. I probably should have asked you to sit down first. Do you need a minute? Maybe get a glass of water or-no? Ok, great. I'll continue. So I mentioned this because I want to talk about what I think may be a needlessly strong reaction I'm having to the art in a video game. A video game I'm not even sure I care about, and you almost certainly won't. But this being the internet, a functionally limitless void into which we all toss our irrational opinions, I'm going to press on and opine.

Pictured: A slime and a--get this:
cruelcumber from Dragon Quest XI. See?
Whimsey. It's practically unbridled.

I've been playing a demo for a game called Bravely Default II, because JRPG naming conventions are a traditionally fever dreams of nonsense. And it's ok, not sixty-dollars great, but it's a current generation take on old fashioned turn-based JRPG's and-sorry, Japanese Role Playing Games. As opposed to Western RPG's. I guess it's the difference between something like Dragon Quest, with its anime aesthetic and whimsey, and something like Skyrim or Dragon Age with their grimdark and thinly veiled copyright infringement of Game of Thrones.

Anyway, this game's art style is...well it's not a strong choice so much as it is a strongly weak choice. Let's say that. The characters are cartoony, but in some ways weirdly proportioned. It's I don't know, Precious Moments figurines as manga?

What I'm saying is that nobody wants to save the world looking
like the crap you have to throw away when your great aunt dies.

Some kids learned instruments or 
did sports...I...played video games.

It's uh...it's not good, right? And sure, maybe it's just not for me, I mean, I am, ostensibly anyway, a functioning adult and not necessarily the intended audience. I think. Although the Bravely Default series is published by Square Enix, a company made up of two formerly rival companies who collectively produced all the RPG's that consumed most of my misspent youth. And Bravely Default II is a kind of spiritual successor to classic Final Fantasy games from the 8 and 16 bit eras, so I don't know, maybe I am the target audience? 

"What's even happening?"

-Everyone who played 

Final Fantasy XV

The mainline Final Fantasy games moved away from the series' turn-based roots and experimented with all kinds of weird gameplay mechanics before settling on impenetrably confusing. So while I appreciate that they're still making retro-style RPG's, I just wish they didn't feel the need to be so dull with the art. It seems like the whole point of doing a throwback game like Bravely Default is to recall the RPG's of yore, so why does everything have to look like an iPhone game?

And look, I'm not saying that they need to play it safe and do SNES pixel art every time--although, yes, they should absolutely do just that, please--but what I am saying is that there isn't a tilt-shift filter yet devised that can hide bland 3D character models. Wow...see what I meant about strong, irrational opinions?

But on a positive note, the tall guy, second from the left, is a wizard
 named Elvis Lazlow. What this game lacks in interesting art, it almost makes 
up for in naming a character Elvis Lazlow. And did I mention he's a wizard?