To commemorate *huge sigh* Vay Day...
- If you'd like to learn a little more about the circumstances of this game's production, Shaun Musgrave at Touch Arcade has you covered. Musgrave is quite possibly the best-played, best-spoken game writer out there, and his weekday column on new Switch releases (and Patreon) has become my most reliable source of gaming news.
- As I noted on Tumblr, one of the trailers functions basically as a showcase for the game's soundtrack - which was a good move, since it reminds you that Vay does, despite its faults, have some bangers: the overworld theme, the boss theme, the final (well, penultimate) dungeon.
- Speaking of that not-final castle: its organic horror provides the most memorable location in an aggressively nondescript game. It took years before I played FF5 and discovered its predecessor in Exdeath's Castle in FF5.
- I'll agree with those in the thread that announced tidings of Vay's revival in that a) HD fonts do not mesh well with non-HD titles and yet b) even the resuscitators of Vay chose a better, more-readable font than was used for the FF Pixel Remasters.
- One of the villain's lieutenants is an engineer named Betty June, who captains a ship called the Charnel. That was memorably badass to me. I'd always thought the name "Betty June" was a reference to something, but I guess not.
- Vay was my first exposure to the Hitchhiker's 42 joke, via an NPC. I thought Working Designs had written a pretty good joke. I no longer think that.
- Vay's voice acting (with exceptions, noted below) usually sounds very stilted and oddly-timed against the in-game anime cutscenes. That's not unique to the Working Designs version, though: the original Japanese release, oddly, has the same problem.
- Apparently, though SoMoGa just inserted the Harmony script for their version of Silver Star, they capitalized on Vay's lesser prestige to create their own Working Designs-style comedy localization. ...That sounds dangerous. Fans who think that kind of stuff is funny generally aren't good writers.
- One thing that is top-rate: the opening narration in the Working Designs version. It's excellently-written, perfectly timed to the visuals, and superbly-narrated. (Don't let the unique premise get your hopes up, though; Vay wastes most everything it's given. I remember how Robert Schmitz, author of the Shining Forth fanzine, lamented that it was a crime there was no animation once the hero reactivated that legendary armor. There is a part, though, where one of the medieval characters is talking about the dread "legendary" technologies they don't understand and mentions that the old world was destroyed by "New Clear Power," which I thought was pretty good.)
- Switching to spoilers for this last bit, so highlight to read: the most memorable event for many was the death of the child mage Pottle, who's shot through the heart with a crossbow by the evil emperor and subsequently falls off a bridge for good measure - which was indeed a gutsy move, killing the child character. The boldest and most memorable death for me, though, was not Pottle but the hero's love interest, Elin. I've wanted to write about it, but, particularly for such a visually-klutzy game, the presentation is uniquely memorable - Elin falls silently dead in the hero's arms, no sad music, no twee visuals - it's slow and respectful, but set against a black void and silence, with nothing answering his protagonist's bewildered, shocked, and then frenzied and anguished calls. He's screaming at Elin to fight the villain, fight for her life, and there's, with disconcerting realism, just nothing - she's already gone.
