THIS IS HOW THE GAME GOES

couple new games

2009-09-30T18:56:00.000-07:00

re: Jeanne D'Arc
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: something like 12hrs so far

Okay so this game is kind of like FF Tactics, but only in the way its maps look and the level up method. Like FFT, each level consists of 100EXP points, so none of this cumulative stuff. However, unlike FFT, when you reach the 100EXP mark, the extra overflow of EXP actually counts and isn't just wasted. This is really nice, except that it's much more difficult to earn EXP in this game. I think the EXP system is pretty broken in a way, cause I can earn the same amount of EXP killing LV3 enemies as I can killing LV30 enemies. And so unless I'm farming better skills, it's faster to just fight in the LV3 area and only deploy a single character.

There are a few nitpicky things I have to mention: like the broken EXP system, and also things like how I'm not allowed to rearrange my units. And the bonus EXP that is distributed at the end of every battle automatically is split between ALL my units, and there's no way for me to change this. I'm not allowed to dismiss any units no matter what small part they seem to have in the story and so they just sit in there taking up space. I can only deploy 5 units in the free battle maps, but some story battles let me deploy 6 but because I've only been training up 5, I only have 5 that are really useful and the sixth one is a liability and I usually end up just ignoring that extra space cause that last useless guy can cause me to lose an entire battle depending on the winning requirements.

Also it's REALLY difficult to train up in this game! Unlike FFT where the enemies grow stronger with you and therefore you earn about the same EXP for free battles and not much for story battles, in this game the story battle difficulty increases much more quickly and the free battles EXP dispensing is really pitiful. I don't get to do very many things and I can't just randomly use spells and I can't attack my own party members so I have to deal with fighting enemies and enemies die quickly and I only get 5exp per battle. It's not a very impressive system.

I'm not very far in the game so far, I think, but I'm not quite sure if I like it or if I'm extremely disappointed in it. The box cover is really pretty, but the in game animation art isn't nearly as nice looking.

AND THAT BRINGS ME TO THE STORY. The story is...well it's about Joan of Arc; using her original French name if you were wondering. But IDK, they've changed things up and made it all about mystical armlets that just RANDOMLY found Jeanne and yeah I know Jeanne was considered insane for hearing the voice of God and shit in the original legend but it's just gotten really kooky. England is really evil and the 6 year old Prince Henry has been posessed and they're sending demons to invade France and the story is just fairly ridiculous. IDK man, it's...maybe I'll like it more the further I get into it? But it's fairly tedious at the moment.

re: Fate/Unlimited Codes
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 1:15-ish

I'd like to mention how disappointed I am that the world is starting to make PSN download exclusives. I personally like the UMDs, and I don't just like having data stored in a harddrive that could be easily lost. It's a bit bothersome, I am not very impressed. That, and my memory stick is only 8Gigs and I want to put more info onto it but it's just not enough space and those memory sticks are SO EXPENSIVE.

In any case, I ended up downloading Fate/Unlimited Codes cause I'm such a loser for Saber, and with it I downloaded Patapon 2 (which I raged about being a PSN exclusive as well) but I haven't played that yet so I won't talk about it.

Fate/Unlimited Codes is the action fighting game that's based on Fate/Stay Night, which was an Ero doujin game that became extremely popular. There are missions for you to do (I haven't really done any of those though) which basically tell you a goal and you fight through it and try to accomplish the goal they've set out. The goals get harder as it goes along of course ahaha. And the arcade mode, where you choose a character and fight through 8 levels. There's some story inbetween but not very much.

I really like though that they've kept the original Japanese voices and just translated all the text. I haven't seen an option to change to English voices or anything, but then again I haven't unlocked very much yet. I only just unlocked the option to change the voice of the Narrator from Kotomine to Saber so we'll see. Not very far in it at all, but I only got it yesterday.

Very fun so far though! (Shiro is still a whiny little bitch.)

re: Itadaki Street SPECIAL
PS2 • JPN RELEASE
play time: 2hrs

I bought a Japanese PS2 the other week and with it both Final Fantasy X International and Itadaki Street SPECIAL. My brother stole my Itadaki Street PORTABLE from me, but I've been wanting to play SPECIAL because it has Tidus in it. :)

Itadaki Street is basically the Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest crossover monopoly game. And I really, really, really suck at it. That's all I can say really. D8 Need to practice more...

re: Batman: Arkham Asylum
PS3 • USA RELEASE
play time: 3-4hrs

I picked this game up the other day and ohgod it is so good. D8 But I'm a horrible coward at this sort of game, I got scared in the very first fight. But it's really beautiful and I was watching my friend play it and it looks just like being in the middle of Batman The Animated Series. *3* So cool~ And ohgod Batman KICKS SO MUCH ASS.

PATAPON, so much awesome you wouldn't believe.

2009-09-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

re: Patapon
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: (way longer than) 14:09

Brothers and I JUST finished Patapon. It's kind of an amazing game, seriously. It won several Best Game of 2008 awards from IGN and Gamespot, and I can see why. It's not really any type of rhythm game I've ever played before, since it also doubles as a real time strategy game. You play as the god of a tribe of eyeball creatures called Patapons, and you direct their actions through a war drum (your sony playstation buttons). By inputting certain commands (songs), you can tell your little army of tribal warriors to do various things like...march forward, attack, retreat, defend, etcetera.

You fight bosses and hunt animals for food and other type of things, and because you're god, you can create more patapons to man your army. They concept and design of the entire game is so very simple, but so very effective. It's really quite impressive. Especially the art design. The entire game is practically levels of single colored silhouettes, but the colors and the shapes work together to illustrate a lush landscape and a very clear world. It's quite brilliant, I was extremely impressed.

The story is fairly simple; these eyeball people were driven out of their homeland by the evil Zigotan eyeballs, and you play their god as you lead them back to their home and to glory. Despite the really simple plot and the even simpler characters, both work together well and I'm glad the story isn't more complicated because it only would have distracted the player from the main point of the game: the rhythms!

It's really worth the buy, and so, so much fun to play.

Overall: 9.7
9.5 Story
10/ Characters
9.0 Plot
10/ Graphics
10/ Gameplay
9.0 Sound
10/ Replay Value

I couldn't bring myself to take off more than a point for the plot, and any at all for characters despite how simple they were. While not really having any sort of character at all, you grow rather fond of these little black and white eyeballs.

YES FINALLY GODDAMMIT

2009-09-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

re: Star Ocean: Second Evolution
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 29:17

I take it back, I said before that I quite liked Claude? I take it back. He's...he's so obsessive and jealous for no reason whatsoever. I like to think this is Rena's fault, because he seems perfectly fine when she's not around (which is maybe 2 scenes), but while he left a good impression on me when he first appeared, this good impression did not last. And the longer I was on Nede, the more annoyed I got with both him and Rena. (Though Rena is a given.)

The game in the end managed to be Just About Rena And Claude. My other characters didn't really even SAY anything in cut scenes (that were ENTIRELY TOO LONG, LET ME TELL YOU). They just kind of stood there and let Claude and Rena (mostly Rena) do all the talking. In fact, their only purpose was to get me through dungeons. Otherwise they could have not been there and the story wouldn't have changed at all. This is not called good character design. I am not impressed.

SO, I managed to beat Star Ocean 2 with quite a bit of difficulty after playing for some 12 hours. I had hoped to beat it in 9, but extra training and equipment upgrade had been necessary to beat Michael and Haniel (easily the most frustrating battle in the entire game) despite having already been around LV85.)

Due to my extreme dislike of Rena Lanford, I refused to train her up and left her at LV12. She would have been left at LV2, but I needed her to get some SP so that she could learn Pickpocketing. And that in itself was so that I could manipulate the affection levels of everyone else in the party towards her. That, unfortunately, gave me a huge handicap because Rena is easily your most powerful healer in the game. I used Noel to substitute her, but he's just not very good. He's the only character that can both be a healer and an attack magician, but he's not very good at being either one. At LV100 he could still only heal my party about 3500 using Faerie Light, whereas Rena should have been able to heal quite a bit more. Also, Noel cannot learn the Resurrection spell, while Rena can. This was a huge, huge, huge problem.

Still, I managed to beat this game. The story... I think Star Ocean's biggest problem, as a series, is that it tends to try too hard to be epic. Especially when the characters leave whatever underdeveloped planet the story originally started on. It tries too hard, and often ends up coming off as just plain ludicrous. Like in this game, when the symbol of annihilation (again created by the super special and awesome race of nedians, and only they can do it of course because only they are capable of producing a power strong enough to destroy the entire universe) was supposed to be set off, they try to counteract it using something called the symbol of divinity. But the SoD doesn't actually neutralize the power, no, it just redirects it elsewhere.

This power to destroy the universe, accessed on Energy Nede, already in Energy Nede, is diverted TO Energy Nede and destroys this bubble of matter instead of the entire universe. Tell me how this makes sense? EXACTLY, IT DOESN'T. It's just...things like this. I actually thought Star Ocean 2's story was more interesting than Star Ocean 1's, but Star Ocean 1's story wasn't nearly as ridiculous, and stayed fairly believable the entire time. SO2 was interesting and had a lot of potential while they were still located and traveling around Expel and I enjoyed it. Then I guess Tri-Ace ran out of ideas and decided to pull a lot of bullshit out of their ass and the entire game just went to hell for me.

So, I'm done with this game. I got the Claude and Ashton, and Dias and Noel endings. Rena, Celine, Bowman, and Welch got solo endings.

Overall: 6.3
5.5 Story
3.0 Characters
6.0 Plot
8.0 Graphics
8.0 Gameplay
7.0 Sound
4.0 Replay Value

This game got dinged really hard on the character and plot. I couldn't stand the two main characters, and the other characters were practically background fodder. The plot was entirely too ridiculous after we entered Energy Nede, and fairly predictable as well. And while I said in Star Ocean 1 that I couldn't ding Star Ocean too hard for replay value just because I didn't like the game that much, due to the million different endings and all the different characters to recruit, just one play through on this game tells me I'd never want to play it again. None of those other characters I can recruit would be any different from the extra characters I recruited in this game = they contribute nothing to the story, and therefore are unnecessary. So replay value is completely dependent on how the two main characters interact with other people, as well as gameplay, and you already know how I think about that.

About this girl named Rena Lanford.

2009-09-03T19:44:00.001-07:00

re: Star Ocean: Second Evolution
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 17:13

Okay, so Star Ocean 2 is a game where you have two main characters. And this game is unique in the fact that you can choose either one of those two main characters to follow in the story. You still end up with the two of them as your main, but you see one person's point of view throughout the adventure. You can choose between Claude C. Kenny, a human boy who is also the son of two of the main characters in the first Star Ocean game, or you can choose Rena Lanford, a girl who lives on the planet this story takes place on. I wanted to recruit this good looking character, and you can only do that while playing Rena's storyline, and so that's who I chose.

Let me explain my issue with Rena. My dad played Claude's side of Star Ocean 2 and thought she was a pretty decent girl, and so when I started playing the game, I was expecting to come to the same conclusion, as I have a hefty amount of respect for my father's opinions. However, I've come to realize that in Claude's game, which is all from Claude's point of view, you see Rena in rose-tinted glasses, as he very quickly (Titanic quickly) falls in love with her and can see her do no wrong.

But Tri-Ace is trying very hard, far too hard to make you like this girl. Everything she says, everything she does, is an attempt to make you think she's God, that she's the light of everyone's life and without her, you would be lost, with nowhere to go, and this game would have no reason to exist. I recently just finished watching a 45 minute long story scene where I was basically told about (there are spoilers, but really, it's not that much) this planet called Nede. It's an amazing planet full of Ultra Super Special people who are Ultra Super Special, Amazing, All Powerful, Geniuses, Ultra Highly Advanced, and Can Rule The Galaxy If They Wanted. They live in a utopian society, are peace loving people, but so technologically advanced that if they put their minds to it, they could take over the universe and rule it at their fingertips. In fact, they DO rule the galaxy, but no, not with an Iron Fist, they RULE IT THROUGH TRADE (I'll give you a few seconds to think over how stupid that sounds) and PEACEFUL NEGOTIATIONS.

Unfortunately, even in this Ultra Super Special Utopian Society Of Amazing Ultra Super Special People, there were still some Evil People, come to be known as the Ten Wise Men (I think their definition of "wise" needs looking at), and these Ten Wise Men wanted to rule the galaxy with an iron fist. They tried to destroy the Ultra Super Special Nedians who fought back with all their might, and in the end managed to seal the Ten Wise Men away into a prison that had no exit (lo-and-behold, at this point of the game they've managed to escape (probably through the entrance /shot/), and are back to take over the universe again). But this epic battle against the Ten Wise Men made the Ultra Super Special Nedians realize just how much power they had at their fingertips, and they were horrified that if one day something happened, they could turn the entire universe into a war zone because of all their Ultimate Most Advanced Technology and Magic and Science In The Universe.

I am not joking, it was like 20 minutes of "we are the best" info dump. But NO, WE'RE NOT FINISHED YET, realizing just how much power the Nedians wielded (peacefully, mind you), they decided that they would seal themselves away and destroy their own planet, and relocate to a bubble of power called Energy Nede. And they all came to this unanimous decision because they're Ultra Super Special, Selfless, and JUST ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.

AND GUESS WHAT?! RENA IS A NEDIAN. SHE IS ALSO ULTRA SUPER SPECIAL BECAUSE SHE BELONGS TO THIS RACE OF ULTRA SUPER SPECIAL PEOPLE. It's absolutely ridiculous. Like her!, Tri-Ace begs us, Isn't She Amazing?! She's the coolest heroine ever! You'll never see someone more amazing!

Throughout the entire game this Rena girl SAYS things. It's like oh, Claude (who I think is pretty human (well, he is Human, he's from Earth), and actually a really nice guy and I'd REALLY prefer to be playing his game if it weren't for Dias) isn't really that great. Claude has less patience, Claude should be happy I like him, etc., etc., etc. Like, there's this one kid in the game named Leon, he's a child genius and can only be recruited in Claude's game (and I don't like him really), and he's kind of a total brat. Every time he shows up in a scene, he says something that belittles others or is really arrogant, and is totally thankless when the group saves his life while he's on a mission to get something that he can "do by himself in two days and has to babysit the group for." Well, Claude gets annoyed and says out loud, "What a brat!" And you know what Rena says? Pure, patient, darling Rena, "Oh, I think he's kind of cute!" It's TELLING ME, "Look at this girl, she likes little kids. She's so patient even though he doesn't deserve it, and Claude just gets mad. He's not as good. Don't you like her yet?"

NO, NO I DON'T LIKE HER. The more she does this, the more I dislike her. I don't think I've EVER disliked a main character this much. Before I said not since Gon, but she goes WAY past how much I dislike Gon. She's HORRIBLE. I just want her to DIE.

AGHHHHH.

Aside from that though, the story is fairly interesting, the game is more difficult than Star Ocean 1 was, and I think aside from Leon and Rena (!!!!!! AGH), I like all the characters. Production I.G. has done a really good job with cut scenes and character animations, and overall I like this game. It's just, Rena is making playing it really, really hard.

(Btw, EVERY character likes her. EVERY boy likes her. EVERYONE thinks she's cute. A LOT OF PEOPLE WONDER IF SHE'S HAVING SEX WITH WHATEVER BOY CHARACTER SHE'S TRAVELING WITH. AGHHHHH.)

re: Patapon
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 1:17

Contrary to my irritation with Star Ocean 2, I'm finding myself really pleased and amused by Patapon. It's really different from any rhythm game I've ever played, and really innovative. If by innovative you mean the person who came up with it was probably smoking something, but it really works.

It's a little war game where you use rhythms and drum beats in order to do things like advance and attack. Yes, advance, and attack. You control a little army and you're on a quest to go back to your homeland and you have to do things like hunt and fight wars and it's just absolutely adorable. It's also not very easy, but after you figure it out it's fairly intuitive. (Even if I do completely SUCK at it.)

So far though it's tons of fun. I can see why it won Game of the Year last year. :D I might even consider playing #2 after I finish this one if I like it enough. (My dad and I weren't going to do that cause you have to download data. Do not want.)

About Dissidia...and Star Ocean 2.

2009-09-01T16:52:00.000-07:00

re: Dissidia Final Fantasy
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 15 minutes

Kura's brother: You got a package!
Kura: YAY!
Kura's brother: It's from Amazon!
Kura: YES. FINALLY, DISSIDIA.
*starts playing it*
Kura: ....Here dad, you can have it.

I'll be buying Universal Tuning anyway.

re: Star Ocean: Second Evolution
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 4:06

I'm playing Rena's story because I have plans to recruit Dias. I cannot stand Rena. AT ALL. AGHH.

Hatsune Miku and Star Ocean 1

2009-08-31T19:41:00.000-07:00

re: Hatsune Miku: Project Diva
PSP • JPN RELEASE
play time: 28:06

I picked up Hatsune Miku: Project Diva last week. I was pretty lucky, cause it was the last one in the store and I didn't want to pay shipping and handling and the store's website was sold out (huh....?) But still I picked it up because while I got DJ Max a few days earlier, I didn't really get into it, and my brother took it from me almost immediately anyway.

In any case, this game is really a lot of fun to play! It's got a fairly interesting button pattern and while not possessing as many buttons as say, well, DJ Max, it still manages to be really difficult at times. The songs are a lot of fun, which I wasn't expecting because I'm NOT a Vocaloid fan. I mean, it took me a long time to figure out what Vocaloid even was, and then I wasn't too fond of the songs I was told to listen to. But the songs they made/included in this game were pretty fantastic. In fact, I can say I genuinely liked almost all of them, and there were just two or three that I thought were only okay in comparison. I didn't dislike any of the songs, which is a rare thing for me.

But I played it pretty obsessively for several hours, especially trying to get the Kaito costume, and eventually I think I got pretty decent at it. Despite having failed the very first song (World is Mine), three times in a row on easy mode when starting.

I really want to import some Kaito version songs and edit them so that Kaito can dance and sing to his own voice, but... I just cannot figure out that rhythm editor. Not for lack of trying. I've read a bunch of tutorials and still can't really figure out how it works. I mean I know how the separate sections work, but it's just...kind of add. Bahhhh. I'll figure it out one day!

Overall: 8.75
--/ Story
--/ Characters
--/ Plot
8.0 Graphics
9.0 Gameplay
9.0 Sound
9.0 Replay Value

I didn't give a rating for story because this game doesn't have one. Being pure rhythm game, it seems unfair to rate it on something that it doesn't have. So this score is just four categories this time. :)

re: Star Ocean: First Departure
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 26:41

AND I also finished this game, just now. Overall, the game is pretty fun, I did enjoy it. I liked a majority of the characters I recruited too (Roddick = pretty cool, Ronyx = pretty cool, Ilia = cool, Ioshua = I like him, Cyuss = I really like him, Mavelle = er, Millie = just, no.) It was pretty straight forward, but it was a little....too easy. Of course, I was playing on the normal mode (is that Earth? Or Galaxy? the default one.) But damn it was just, too easy to play on that mode. There was no challenge in the game at ALL.

The story was also a bit droll, but fairly interesting. It was just weird at the beginning, but got better as the story went along. I really liked Ioshua and Cyuss, who I thought added quite a bit of flavor to the game. Ioshua was easily my most powerful character, and could usually clear the entire field of enemies before my melee fighters (Roddick, Ilia, and Cyuss) could even get to the enemies. His search for his sister and quest for vengeance for his murdered parents is also a trait I generally seem to like in characters, despite him being an angel boy, which is generally a ummmmmmm well, I generally find angels really fucking boring.

Mavelle on the other hand...she just kind of comes in, "I hate the Crimson Shield blahblahblah," but they never really expand much on her sob story. In fact, the Crimson Shield himself just comes along and he's such an...unnecessary addition to the story. He adds nothing, really, and I think they just kind of threw his story in there cause there was really nothing else left for the makers to put. I think the story would have been better if they had either focused more on him spent more time explaining everything than just an info dump after he randomly attacks me and I kill him. :|

And MILLIE. Millie was rather on the extremely dislikeable side for me. All she ever did was get mad at people and need rescuing. She was constantly throwing tantrums and jumping to inane conclusions and in general being an Anime Girlfriend Stereotype. Do not want. I kicked her out of the party immediately after getting her. PBBBBT.

But Cyuss was great! I really liked him a lot. *3* He was great to use and his part in the story was interesting and didn't detract from anything. In the end, I kept Ilia, Roddick, Cyuss, and Ioshua on my team and only bothered training those four up.

OH, and I have a bit of a gripe about the characters intelligence. They're........not. Quick thinkers, I mean. They're kind of REALLY SLOW. There's this one point where I spend a few hours traveling back and forth across the planet trying to collect the emblems from the different kingdoms and then when it finally comes that I have to USE the emblems to open a fucking DOOR, and the door CLEARLY STATES that I need to put the "Emblems of Tradition" into the door to open it, everyone goes, "What does that mean?" "OH, MAYBE IT'S THESE THINGS WE JUST SPENT THE LAST SECTION OF THE GAME COLLECTING?!" NO SHIT SHERLOCK. I just. Headdesked. It was just SO STUPID. Not impressed, no.

But overall, the gameplay was fun, if unchallenging, and I really liked the skills I could learn. They were cool and made the gameplay a bit more interesting until I mastered all of them. Then the game got EVEN EASIER.

Maybe one day I'll play this game on Universe difficulty or something, but I feel the story and characters didn't grab me enough to warrant a replay.

Overall: 7.7
7.5 Story
8.0 Characters
7.0 Plot
8.0 Graphics
8.0 Gameplay
7.0 Sound
8.0 Replay Value

I didn't ding on replay too much, because the Star Ocean series is notorious for all the effort they put into giving the games a lot of replay value. Limited character recruitment choices per game, a million different endings, etc.

re: Dissidia Final Fantasy
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: --

So I completely misunderstood about the Universal Tuning. Turns out it's just fancy Square-Enix speech for "International Version", as in, the version they're gonna re-release in Japan on November....5th(?) that will include all the fancy add-ons that the US version has. And it's the Universal Tuning version that will let you use your original JPN game files. So yeah, I'm probably giving the US version to my brother, and buying the Universal Tuning version when it comes out. Oh, Square, you do this on purpose but I still let myself (and my wallet) get sucked in...

In other news, I recently purchased Final Fantasy X International, as well as Itadaki Street Special and am greatly looking forward to playing them! And now that I'm done with Star Ocean 1, on to Star Ocean 2!

Final Fantasy Tactics - so much A++ you have no idea.

2009-08-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 88:38 + approx 6hrs unsaved

After finished Crisis Core three weeks back, I pulled out Final Fantasy Tactics and proceeded to play it obsessively every spare moment I had. I finished it last night and it is just such an excellent game. I'm not a huge fan of strategy RPGs, but I might be converted after playing and finishing FFT. I played the PS1 version a long time ago, but I didn't ever really finish the game. I think I at least finished the third chapter, but I never got around to even recruiting characters. The story isn't the longest story, but it was really well executed. It was also really challenging. D8 I died countless times at the beginning because I was obsessively leveling up, only to realize that my equipment still sucked, and the random encounter monsters leveled up with my highest level roster character. D8 It was rather horrifying to discover. Mustadio was crazy useful later on in the game though. And then when I got Balthier I owned the entire thing so hard. On the undead maps, using seal evil and legshot made it really easy for me to train up my weaker characters.

Though, when I say I "finished" the game, I really mean I finished the story. I have a few separate save files so I can go back and do the last few subquests and the Midlight's Deep bonus dungeon that opened up. I also want to re-level Ramza in order to increase his stats. I mastered a lot of job classes, but Onion Knight is still only at LV5 so you can tell from there how many I mastered haha. But yeah, when leveling Ramza, a lot of times I let him level without making sure he was in a strong class, and so his stats could be better. I'm planning on spending a couple dozen hours dropping his level using degenerator traps and then re-leveling him up to LV99. It'll almost be like the transmigration system in Disgaea! Sort of.

BUT ANYWAY, the game was really excellent. I even purchased a second copy so I could play melee and rendesvous with my little brother. And then I purchased the Japanese version. There were some fairly interesting differences to see! I feel a lot of the text is cleaner in the Japanese version, and less fuzzy, especially in the introduction. But none of the scenes are voiced, and there are other slight differences. Like Ramza's bravery is only 65 and his faith is 71 at the beginning, instead of the 70/70 in the US version. And Agrias and Gaffgarion don't hit as hard in the introduction battle.

So yeah, I think that's all I had to say about FFT. It's such a fantastic game I didn't interrupt in the middle every few hours to type up blog reports, hahaha.

Overall: 9.3
9.5 Story
10/ Characters
9.0 Plot
8.0 Graphics
9.0 Gameplay
10/ Sound
10/ Replay Value

I had to ding on the graphics slightly because while the graphics are great for the pixelated sprites and especially considering that this game was first made in 1997, the remake could have been better. For one thing, they should have redone/fixed the graphics instead of stretching the original PSX aspect ratio sideways to fit the 16:4 ratio of the PSP. Bad decision, guys. Bad decision.

re: Star Ocean: First Departure
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 4:03

...It's kind of weird right now. But okay. The voicing is a bit choppy and awkward at times, and Millie is rather on the side of annoying. Also, Dorne = Naruto, Millie = Sakura... Roddick wasn't really a Sasuke though. But srsly, Dorne looks a lot like Naruto and likes Millie who likes Roddick and is always beating up on Dorne, etc.

Yeah, I don't have much to say about it. It's pretty fun though. We'll see how it goes.

re: Dissidia Final Fantasy
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: --

I hear there might be a Dissidia Final Fantasy Universal Share? Or something of the sort? It's just a rumor, but if it does, I might not have to retrain all my characters! XD Which would be AWESOME.

Anyway, I purchased both Tales of the World 2 and Tales of VS the other day. I probably won't play them for real any time soon, but from what I've tried of both, it seems like it'll be quite a lot of fun! (I REALLY suck at Tales of VS.)

Talk of Final Fantasy VII.

2009-07-31T00:37:00.000-07:00

re: –Crisis Core– Final Fantasy VII
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 28:26

So...so I finally finished it. Instead of finishing up missions and things like that, I decided to take the game to the end. If I ever decide to do a more complete game, it will be done in the JPN version instead of the English one.

I didn't baww at the end because I was busy making inappropriate cracks at Zack's slightly chubbier looking self. ("He seems like he's gained some weight before dying. HAHA, get it? Dead weight? I am an absolutely horrible, horrible person.") I still think Cloud being hyped up on ~~drugs~~ mako is no reason for him to completely misinterpret Zack's words. What. Also, Genesis works hard at making every game he appears in exceedingly lame. Honestly, I think the game would have been a lot better if Genesis wasn't such a huge part in it. Most of his scenes had me trying to skip them (no such option, unfortunately), and Loveless isn't well written enough to interest me after he quotes it for the nth time.

Still, I absolutely, absolutely adore this game. Zack is a far greater hero than Cloud ever was and being that I'm playing Final Fantasy VII again now, it's even clearer. It was tons of fun and the DMW actually grew on me fairly quickly. The story was heartbreaking, as we knew it would be, and omg Zack and Aerith at the end broke my heart more than Zack dying did. I will ship them so hard forever. FOREVER.

...So it only took me nearly 2 years to complete a game I preordered the limited edition PSP for, but it is a beautiful piece of work and I will treasure it forever. A++ man. A++.

Overall: 8.6
9.0 Story
9.0 Characters
9.0 Plot
8.0 Graphics
9.0 Gameplay
9.0 Sound
8.0 Replay Value

The replay value dropped slightly because of how sad it is. HAHA. And I couldn't give it a 10 in characters and plot because no matter how much I adore Zack, the addition of Genesis was thoroughly unnecessary and rather lame. I can't bring myself to give it lower than a 9 though, because Zack was just so excellent. ;_;

re: Final Fantasy VII
PS1 • USA RELEASE (PSN download for PSP)
play time: 11:01

Everyone and their mother knows that while I love the game, I am not of the opinion that it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. A lot of things don't really make that much sense when I'm replaying it and I still don't like Cloud. ...I'm really writing this so I can brag that I defeated Rufus (Shinra Building, disc 1) in one hit. Oh yeah, meteorrain. ...Yeah, I got Meteorrain even before the cross dressing. I AM FANTABULOUS.

I will leave off with some numbers. Reactor 1; Cloud only = LV11. Reactor 2; Cloud LV14, Tifa, Barret LV11. Aerith enters the party at LV10. Leveled up to Cloud 17, Aerith 14 before proceeding to reacquired Tifa. Tifa enters the party at LV13. Reacquire Barret LV13. Entering Shinra building; Cloud LV19, Aerith, Tifa LV16. Red joins the party at LV19. Beat Rufus LV20.

:D :D :D :D

Okay, so, moving onto Final Fantasy Tactics, finally.

So, Crisis Core. Still not done.

2009-05-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

re: –Crisis Core– Final Fantasy VII
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 25:04

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a die hard Zack/Aerith fan. I love this couple to pieces, and they are just so, so very tragic. Why do I always go for the tragic couples? I mean, seriously. I've been stuck in Nibelheim for a while, but yesterday I steeled myself to face Sephiroth going insane and turned on the game.

Instead, I watched Zack pick up the phone and say to Aerith, "I'll see you soon," and I started crying.

Need to prepare myself for THAT first, THEN proceed.

It's been a while.

2009-05-13T16:43:00.001-07:00

Been a while since I posted here. I was pretty busy finishing up my fourth term at school, and Trickster Online has eaten my soul. Might talk about it here later on. As for Crisis Core, I'm stuck in Nibelheim without the heart to continue on. Just playing with the missions and with materia fusion (which is ridiculously addicting.) I just don't want to see Sephiroth go insane, especially after seeing what a nice, decent guy he was. I always believed in you, Sephiroth. (;_;)

In other news, Nintendo has announced Pokemon Soul Silver and Heart Gold for the DS come this Fall! I am quite excited, and am now hoping even more for a remake of Yellow Version some day. ♥

NAMCO, WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME?

2009-04-02T09:22:00.000-07:00

Generally, I am not fond of porting games to different systems especially after a large portion of the fanbase bought the console the game was for in order to play that game. Tales of Vesperia is one such game. I know so many people who bought a 360 purely for Tales of Vesperia, and are now extremely upset there will be a PS3 version.

I am a bit upset that I won't have a lot of chances to play this new version when it comes out, due to the PS3 we own usually being with my family in the Bay Area, while for most of the year I am studying at school in SoCal. Still, I will somehow play this, even if it's in segments every few months, simply for all the new Yuri scenes. Also I am excited for Tales of VS. Sounds like a Tales version of Dissidia, which is actually what I thought Tales of the World was, but what do I know?

It's just gonna get worse...

2009-03-08T22:51:00.000-07:00

re: –Crisis Core– Final Fantasy VII
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 13:27

So, I just killed Angeal. I didn't really even like him that much, but listening to Zack cry is breaking my heart. I'm being such a baby, but this scene was so well done and it's making me cry.

What's worse is that it's Zack, and everyone knows it's going to get worse for him and everyone knows the ending already because this is a prequel and I don't know if I can handle the ending especially now that I'm so ridiculously attached to Zack.

Also, Aerith and Zack are kind of the sweetest and most adorable things in the entire universe and every scene with them makes me want to cry. Or say something like, "awww."

One more thing! I actually love and adore Cloud in this game. Which is really odd, but I wish he hadn't become a traumatized schizophrenic amnesiac (maybe it was MDP, I'm not to clear on psychological disorders), even if that would have ruined the entire story for FF7, because in FF7 he was kind of a loser, and in Crisis Core he is adorable and cute and sweet and I just can't dislike him.

Be right back, crying over Zack.

What, Final Fantasy VII-2

2009-03-02T21:05:00.000-08:00

re: –Crisis Core– Final Fantasy VII
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: 7:19

The first thing to be said about Crisis Core is that... I remember back (several years ago) when rumors about a Final Fantasy 7 remake were floating around. I think Advent Children was continuously being delayed at that time, and a rumor about Final Fantasy VII-2 was being circulated also. I think it was an IGN article, but basically it said there might be a Final Fantasy 7 sequel being made, and that it would be about Sephiroth's brother (or half-brother) and he'd be another one-winged-angel, and oh yeah by the way it'd be Gackt. And I remember going, "WHAT!!!" with all my friends at the news, and just raging at HOW BAD IT SOUNDS AND PLEASE DON'T DO IT SQUARESOFT!!!!"

In any case, soon after, Advent Children came out (which... could have been better), and with it, Lost Order was released and with THAT, a 1 minute teaser trailer using mostly Lost Order and Advent Children scenes called "Crisis Core". Wow, that was a long time ago. So basically, I've been anticipating this game since that time. I even pre-ordered the Crisis Core limited edition PSP when it was released last year (and went to great lengths in order to do so).

SO, THE GAME: of course, Genesis is Gackt, and Genesis is ALSO a one-winged angel, yeah, yeah, whatever, BUT! This game is about ZACK, who is the most adorable, sweetest, kindest FFVII character you will ever meet. God, I love this guy to pieces. And to be quite honest, he is a MUCH better hero than Cloud.

I do have a few issues though. Like, for one, I'm not sure if I like the slot machine system. Or rather, I do like it, but what I'm not sure I like is the fact I level up using the slot machines. This, at first glance, seems to negate the need to grind, but then my brother informed me that the slot machine (DMW) runs on Soldier Points (SP), and that the more SP you have, the more chance you'll have of leveling up. SO, now I fight every fight I come across (I think you HAVE to, I've yet to find a way to get out of them), and I go searching for more. Also, I might mention that the missions are remarkably addicting.

The graphics though; my main beef is the not-quite-CG/not-quite-in-game graphics that they throw at you occasionally. As if they're too lazy to actually CG the scene, but it's too important to leave as just an in-game graphics cut scene, and so they...blur the in game graphics? And in the end it turns out a bunch of DO NOT WANT, and I'm going "urgh" whenever it comes out. HOWEVER, the in-game graphics are really quite nice for PSP level, and the CG scenes are absolutely gorgeous. Like, Advent Children gorgeous.

As for the battle system, I really like it. I'm a turn-based type of player and am not all that particularly fond of real-time action battle systems; but this one is actually a lot of fun to use and I, as the offense-based whore I am, spam the attack button and have no idea how to use the guard skill. HOWEVER, I have gotten the dodge skill down to an art, and I am wildly good at evading attacks.

...I would have more to say, but my PSP ran out of batteries. Talk of the story, characters, and etc., will come later on.

...This is odd.

2009-02-27T23:12:00.000-08:00

re: –Crisis Core– Final Fantasy VII
PSP • USA RELEASE
play time: -

So today, I started Crisis Core. Well, "started" is a generous term. I turned on the game, and then thought, "...how come when I press「O」it's canceling..." And after that, "Hey, when did Crisis Core have English subtitles? Wow, this font is ugly." After that, "...Are they speaking in Engli....OH, DUH." Somehow I'd convinced myself I was playing the Japanese version and then turns out it was the English version! This is how long I've had the game and not had time to play it.

And then, and then:
Zack: *in the Kool-Aid voice* OH, YEAH.
Me: *facepalm*

This is going to take some getting used to.

ZIDANE LV100 MASTER FORM~

2009-02-26T08:59:00.001-08:00

re: Dissidia Final Fantasy
PSP • JPN RELEASE
play time: 49hrs ish

OKAY, Dissidia Final Fantasy. It is a gorgeous, gorgeous, GORGEOUS game that excels in the Fun department. It's not without flaws (faulty camera is my main issue with it), but the story is extensive and not entirely corny and actually has some depth from what I've read of translations, and it's fun. It's tons, and tons, and tons of fun. I love that we can level up all the characters up to LV100, rather than the traditional LV99 max, and I love the battle system. It sounds like a Street Fighter game at the beginning, and when you look at it it looks more like a DoA fighter game, and it's kind of both but with all the traditional Final Fantasy aspects and more.

In short, it's awesome. I finished the main story line yesterday (Destiny Odyssey + Shade Impulse), and it was just so cute. The entire story is so cute. And the ending, the ending is so, so, so gorgeous. (But then again, when has stuff produced by Square NOT been gorgeous?) The graphics are even more gorgeous than the opening FMV, but it's just so incredibly gorgeous, and they play a medley of all the main themes of each game and it just so beautiful. I felt ridiculously nostalgic and sentimental watching the credits and this bears repeating: it was just so incredibly, incredibly, incredibly gorgeous.

Today I finished up Distant Glory Heroes and Villains, and unlocked both Shantotto and Gabranth. Unfortunately, I'm short 400PP to buy Gabranth from the PP catalogue, but I'll get it soon. My Zidane has master form at LV100, so I'm gonna finish Inward Chaos today and then I'm going to put aside this game and move onto Crisis Core. Excellent game; this game is absolutely excellent. This was completely worth figuring out the controls and reading up on translations and everything that's inconvenient about playing an import without barely passable rudimentary knowledge of the language. Definitely going to play the entire game again when it releases in the US! (It has a tentative release date of October 2009 now. It keeps getting pushed back, so I'm not sure.)

Overall: 8.41
8.05 Story
8.1 Characters
I (8.0), II (9.0), III (7.0), IV (8.0), V (9.0)
VI (7.0), VII (7.0), VII (7.0), IX (10/), X (10/)
8.0 Plot
8.0 Graphics
9.5 Gameplay
8.0 Sound
10/ Replay Value

Because this game had so many characters, I didn't want to rate it all together, so I gave a rating for each character's destiny odyssey and how much I enjoyed playing it, and then averaged those for the total character rating. I wanted to give a 10 rating for the gameplay, but there were a few nitpicky details like sometimes the map sucking a lot and sometimes the camera angle sucking EVEN MORE, so I couldn't do it.

AHH DFF A++

2009-02-25T11:57:00.000-08:00

I BEAT DISSIDIA

More detailed talk later. I beat the main story, the ending FMV is even more gorgeous than the OP if possible, the credits are rolling and I feel so ridiculously sentimental and nostalgic. I want to type with my finger locked on the shift key. The main themes for all the games are playing and my god I love this game so hard. It was so much fun and fantastic and you can insert keyboard smashing here.

Best game ever, seriously. Okay, watching the credits. I unlock Duel Coliseum after this and I am excited.

Destiny Odyssey CLEAR

2009-02-22T16:31:00.001-08:00

re: Dissidia Final Fantasy
PSP • JPN RELEASE
play time: 44:00

OKAY, so after reading up on how to unlock things in Dissidia, I went and finished up all the Destiny Odyssey chapters. After doing that, I unlocked Shade Impulse, which is 4 chapters. D.O is just the cosmos heroes collecting all the crystals, and I think Shade Impulse is when the heroes start to work their way towards Chaos? After Shade Impulse there is Distant Glory (Heroes and Villains), and then after Distant Glory you unlock Inward Chaos which is apparently the final battle? Or something like that, I'm not sure.

Also you unlock Duel Coliseum (which is an endless battle mode) after you finish the Shade Impulse stories. I wanted to do that, and took Tidus (who is LV100 Master Form) into Shade Impulse ch1, and it was...too easy. Because even those super high level enemies were only LV30, so I had too easy a time fighting them and it was a bit boring. But the story was SUPER cute. Shade Impulse allows you to use any of the 10 Cosmos heroes to fight, and you get different scenes based on who you use. (Tidus and Jecht always have these "aww" inducing scenes. ♥) But you only have to clear each chapter once in order to unlock the next character. Of course I think you unlock other things if you use certain characters, like you can apparently unlock something cool by using Cloud to clear Shade Impulse ch4. I'm not sure, but right now I'm just trying to finish all the story lines.

Since Tidus made things a BIT too easy, and Saturday is my special day, after I finished all the Destiny Odysseys with all calendar upgrades unlocked in the PP catalogue, I maxed my EXP and PP calendar upgrades so that my EXP multiplier on Saturdays became x2. :D Then I took Zidane into Shade Impulse ch2, and he was only LV34. But the fights got harder and harder; e.g., really quickly the max enemy level was LV50. But luckily I kept leveling up. It took me quite a while to finish Shade Impulse ch2, but by the end of it, Zidane had gone from LV34 to LV72. It was very awesome. ♥ I was able to finish up to Shade Impulse ch3-2 and by then he was LV76.

I got some of the best EXP gains I've ever had using Zidane. There was this one battle where in a single hit I managed to land 47,000 EXP bonus + 11,000 EXP get, and that was with the Special Day x2EXP multiplier AND a x3 chocobo EXP multiplier. Very awesome, I was very excited. ♥

I'm probably going to finish up the DFF story lines within this week if I can, and then put DFF aside to play FFVII Crisis Core. DFF is such a huge game, I could play it forever. I am still having issues with the wonky camera, but otherwise this game kicks ass in the Fun department. I love it~!

Endgame was not easy, wow.

2009-02-20T13:45:00.001-08:00

re: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
NDS • EUR RELEASE
play time: 24:04 +

OKAY, FINISHED IT. The ending was Not Very Easy actually, even though my characters were all EPICALLY STRONG. Most of my difficulty came from those closing doors; I managed to keep most of my characters from getting trapped, but despite my efforts, I still lost two of my fighters. Boo.

Overall though, this was an absolutely, utterly fantastic game. I had so much fun playing it, and it was challenging too! (I was only playing on Normal mode, I'm sorry to say. HARD MODE, NEXT TIME.) Besides a brief attempt at FE8 before my cartridge corrupted and died SEVERAL TIMES (or something like that, I kept losing my save files for some reason), I've never played Fire Emblem before. I really, really, really love it though. It's just so much fun and lived up to all my expectations (of which I had quite a lot of them). And just, "eeee, Marth!"

The storyline was really cute/sweet/etc. Kind of simplistic, but really well told and didn't make me "ERM" the entire way through like a lot of game story lines do. My game play time is a LOT longer than 24:04, but most of it wasn't recorded since it went something like this: play almost all the way through the chapter and fight in the arena; character I'm training DIES in the arena; RESET. Actually, that brings up my only beef with this game. Forfeiting in the arena is a retarded system. Half the time I'm yelling at the DS, "I PRESSED B ALREADY YOU F@(#ER, WHY DID YOU STILL ATTACK?" I'll try to forfeit and the game will object and have the other guy attack me again, or twice, before letting me quit out. I ended up having to button smash B to get the arena to successfully forfeit which is kind of INCREDIBLY ANNOYING.

In any case, I would definitely recommend this game. It's tons of fun, and I'm definitely gonna replay it again in the future. A++ man~

Overall: 8.5
8.5 Story
9.0 Characters
8.0 Plot
8.0 Graphics
9.0 Gameplay
8.0 Sound
9.0 Replay Value

But- I wanted to recruit Michalis...

2009-02-19T18:05:00.001-08:00

re: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
NDS • EUR RELEASE
play time: 22:36 +

Just finished chapter 23 of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. This game is hard And I'm playing the normal level or something. I think so anyway, I don't really remember. I'd neglected to level up my magic user, so when it came to fighting Gharnef using Starlight, I didn't have a magic user who could use C-rank magic (=_=) except Boah, who was...like, oh, I don't know...LV1. My Lena is a maxed out, promoted Bishop, but I leveled her using primarily cleric magic, and so her mage rank was a fantastically powerful E. EPIC FAIL, RIGHT THERE. And it wasn't until I'd already gotten to the chapter that I realized that all my mages were going to get SLAUGHTERED, and that even if I used Lena to beat the shit out of every single enemy in chapter 23, I still wouldn't promote my rank to C in time. In the end, I had to pull out Merric, who was a measly LV6 (which means I couldn't even promote him to Bishop,) and then he was just two hits off rank C. IT WAS INCREDIBLY RISKY, BUT IT MANAGED TO WORK SOMEHOW.

I ended up using all those upgrading items that I'd been too packrat stingy to use before; like the talisman to up Merric's resistance, and then up his magic twice, and then up his max HP by about...14. Then I had him attack everyone he could reach to level him up a couple levels before I finally found real!Gharnef and kicked the shit out of him. I found that the fake Gharnefs were easy to beat if I equipped everyone with Javelin and then just let fake!Gharnef attack them, because their counter attack could deal quite a lot of damage. It was the bishops that had Swarm that were the most annoying in this chapter, honestly. Argh, it took me 3 hours to beat it, cause I had to fight it uh.....three times total. SO MUCH FAIL RIGHT THERE.

Also, can I ask why all the good looking guys need to die in this game? This does not make my inner boy-raving girl very happy. I was really hoping I could recruit Camus back in ch20, but no, he had to die. And then I was hoping that I could recruit Michalis, but no, HE had to die too. WHY? I'm going to go sulk in a corner or something.

Trying to play Fire Emblem without a single character dying (because when a character dies, it feels like a failure and I hate failing most of all) is like... giving yourself an extra difficulty. I would be done so much earlier if I wasn't always restarting battles due to my characters dying. And especially in later chapters, when I stop fielding the useless characters because I have enough useFUL characters, so the ones that die ARE the useful, powerful ones. STOP ATTACKING THE SAME GUY ALL AT ONCE!

...Going to finish the last chapter tonight after classes and homework are done. I LOOK FORWARD TO IT.

FINALLY DONE

2009-02-17T19:52:00.001-08:00

re: Final Fantasy III
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: w/e

FINALLY BEAT FFIII. This is something to celebrate. I had to fight the final boss a million times because the first time I beat Cloud of Darkness BEFORE I fought those other four mini-bosses. Whoops. As such, I didn't get the Warriors of Darkness to help proceed the story. Man that was dumb. Because of this ginormous error, I had to reload and do the entire castle all over again. It was so, so frustrating.

But(!) I finally finished the game. Over all, it was very cute. Unfortunately, the story wasn't very interesting, there was little to no character development, and just wasn't very impressive in general. However, I wasn't really expecting it to be. I'm pretty aware that Final Fantasy IV was when the stories started to be less stereotypical and began incorporating more twists and turns, so in the end I guess I don't really have any problem with it. Well, aside from how annoying it was to beat the ending.

I AM DONE. I HAVE SEEN THE ENDING. I certainly didn't "complete" it, I just...beat it to see the ending. I don't really care anymore, to be honest.

Overall: 7.2
6.0 Story
6.0 Characters
6.0 Plot
8.0 Graphics
8.0 Gameplay
8.0 Sound
6.0 Replay Value

Okay, now finish Fire Emblem next chance I get.

AGH

2009-02-14T00:36:00.000-08:00

re: Final Fantasy III
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: i don't care anymore

Okay, first of all this game has been boring me like crazy. I was right before the final dungeon before I got distracted by the shiny Final Fantasy crossover game. So these last two weeks I resolved to finally finish the thing and I entered the final dungeon. Mostly, I just headed straight to the final boss, and you know how you can't save except in the world map, and there's no place to exit to save once you're in the castle, and if you teleport out you have to go through the entire thing again?

YEAH, DO NOT WANT. I got to Cloud of Darkness, got my ass kicked in the story line, and then got my ass kicked when it really counted. I DON'T CARE ANYMORE. I actually went back and spent a million hours to level up to LV99 for both character levels and job levels for all characters, as well as went to all the trouble to get the Onion Knight class and the SAME THING HAPPENED SO IT DOESN'T MATTER. AGH, I must be doing something wrong, I don't get why I get killed so easily by Cloud of Darkness, this is so incredbly frustrating.

Why such a bitch of a boss, Cloud of Darkness? You kick my ass regularly in DFF, and you decide to kick my ass in FFIII as well? THANKS A LOT, GTFO!

Maybe one day in the far future I'll finish this game. It doesn't help that I keep nodding off while playing it... I have no interest in it at all.

VERY FRUSTRATED, SIGNING OUT.

MASTER FORM LV100 TIDUS

2009-02-01T23:49:00.000-08:00

re: Dissidia Final Fantasy
PSP • JPN RELEASE
play time: 31:08

I've been managing to play Dissidia in-between work shifts and by setting aside a few hours on Saturdays (my Special days) to do some quick leveling up. Yesterday, I spent about 4 hours taking Tidus from LV68 all the way to LV100. He's my highest level character (being that he's my favorite, I have this...obvious bias,) and my second highest is my second favorite: Zidane. He's...LV25. IT IS SO GLARINGLY OBVIOUS WHO I LIKE THE BEST.

But this game is tons, tons, tons of fun! I keep meaning to get into Star Ocean, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Crisis Core, all of which are sitting on my shelf just waiting to be played. But well, none of them are easily put-downable games, considering they all have long and involved story lines (not to say that Dissidia doesn't, as its script is longer than Crisis Core's, but it's primarily a beat 'em up crossover game, a purpose it serves extraordinarily well, and also it's in Japanese), so it's a bit harder to play if I can only play a few times every week or so.

And I feel bad for having completely dropped FFIII (which I was almost finished with! I think I should pick it up and just spend a few hours finishing the damn game. I'm kind of...oh, I don't know, right before the final dungeon,) and Chrono Trigger (which is fantastic), and Fire Emblem (which I'm also almost finished with. Just 4 more chapters to go? I should finish it.) Dissidia is so addictive in a Drop Everything Else And Play sort of way.

OKAY, I am determined to finish FFIII and Fire Emblem at the next available chance. Though, next time I pick up Dissidia again, I'm gonna finish up Butz's DO. I've got about 6 of the story lines finished, just 4 more to go. Then training up and I think there are reports to finish and things like that. I don't know, man. This is a long and involved game. Funny thing is that I'm sure if I ever finish, I'm going to be sucked right back into it when the US version releases in the summer. Cannot wait! Though unfortunately, the US version won't have this dream team cast of Japanese seiyuu. Hard to beat THIS lineup.

Life eaten by school and dissidia.

2009-01-17T20:40:00.001-08:00

re: Dissidia Final Fantasy
PSP • JPN RELEASE
play time: 24:05

So I've completely dropped everything else to play Dissidia obsessively in between classes and work shifts, and I've racked up some full day of game play. I've played half the story lines so far (Tidus, Cecil, Zidane, Cloud, and Terra) and am currently working on Mr. I Have No Social Skills Whatsoever.

Right now, my main love for it is just how fun it is. The battle system is really quite well done and the story lines are at least absolutely adorable even if it does largely seem to play on your nostalgia. From what I can understand, they stories are generally pretty cheesy and not entirely creative considering it's all about gathering crystals, working with your team mates, and if you can believe in blahblahblah you will succeed and defeat the chaos, etc. etc., etc. But because I can't understand it completely due to it all being in Japanese (though there are some great people in the fandom translating the story modes) I can't really say too much about it.

I find that some characters are not as fun to play as others whether or not I loved them or not. For instance, I do love Terra a lot, but she is infuriating to play due to her being a nearly completely magic-based character who moves about as fast a turtles stampeding through molasses and for the most part can only use long range magic attacks that miss half the time because the COM is so much better at dodging than you are. Currently, my favorite character to use is Tidus, but I don't think anyone will believe me when I say it's because he's fast, effective, and just awesomely nice to use. No, everyone will just say I'm biased towards him, since he's my favorite Final Fantasy character as well.

And then there's the camera. The camera can be infuriating sometimes in certain maps where the entire arena is enclosed in small spaces because you end up getting locked into a corner and the map completely disappears and you can only see the opponent charging up to HP attack you. When this happens, you have no clue when you're supposed to dodge, and usually the enemy can own you pretty hard in this situation. Still, it's tolerable if you just avoid those maps (though unfortunately there's nothing you can do when you're forced into it during story modes.)

There are other things I might mention but I think I'll wait until I finish all the story modes before I say anything else. I do say that overall it's a lot of fun and I haven't enjoyed playing a (new) Final Fantasy game this much since FFX, which was a very long time ago. (I do not include FFIV because I loved the game even before Final Fantasy X, and what I just played a few months ago was a remake.)

KRATOS.

2008-12-31T21:47:00.000-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 107:11

I spent forever in the EX Dungeon mostly because the memory bosses and the treasure chests refused to give me the fake gald I needed to fight the Traitor of Heaven (this begs a , "Y HALLO THAR, KRATOS.") But wow, talk about Leveling Up Like Crazy; it was fantastic. Yuri was LV93 when we fought Duke, and so he was LV93 when he entered the Labyrinth of Memories, right? By the time I fought Kratos, he was LV112. My other characters were all about LV82 when we went into the Labyrinth, and they were LV104 when we left. So much kickass, yes or yes? And then the 200-man melee? My Yuri kicks ass in there.

According to my records, I've defeated a total of over 13,000 enemies. This kill count should kick up all my fell arms, right? But as it turns out, I use Yuri about say, 99.9% of the time, and I'm usually the one making the kills. Yuri killed over half of the 13,000 enemies, and when I equip Abyssian, his P.Atk maxes out at 9999, and his M.Atk comes close at around 9700-ish. It's crazy! Judith gets an increase of about 1000, and Repede gets one of about...say, 500? With the rest of my characters though, the fell arms are actually weaker!

But yeah, fighting with Yuri makes everything remarkably easy. I'm probably going to start the EX-game soon, though I might not actually replay anything. :) (BUT- KRATOS! I am so happy he got a feature in this game. As did Klonoa! No amount of words can describe my glee at seeing Klonoa. ♥)

Overall: 7.9
6.5 Story
6.0 Characters
7.0 Plot
9.0 Graphics
8.0 Gameplay
8.0 Sound
8.0 Replay Value

...The story section got dinged pretty hard for Estelle. In fact, the only thing that's saving the story section is how kickass Yuri is. And the plot was fairly predictable in the second half, but overall I didn't rate it as badly as I would have when I first started this game.

re: Dissidia Final Fnatasy
PSP • JPN RELEASE
play time: 2:15

I cleared Tidus's destiny odyssey for the first time last night! And promptly started to replay it again. I love this guy so much. (;_;) And that last story with Jecht begets a "BAWW." They break my heart so bad, those two. I want to play Zidane and Cecil's story modes as well soon, but I must take my fill of Tidus first. Tidus is LV19 right now or something. Going to try to use the quick battle mode today and see how training up works.

There's so much confusion playing this game, but I really adore it. It's so much fun, and this battle system is so much love. I really can't wait for an English version to come out. ♥

So, about that Vesperia.

2008-12-29T20:09:00.000-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 104:36

I beat the main storyline today. My levels were uh... Yuri LV93, everyone else LV83. (I had this thing with Dark Seal and 100-man melee level up abuse.) I'm still going to go and explore the EX-Dungeon and maybe fight the 200-man melee before I continue into EX Game, but the game overall...

First, I'd like to say that overall, my opinion of the game has improved greatly since the first half of it. The storyline got to be a lot more interesting (far less predictable), there was quite a bit of very nice character development (except for Estelle who seems incapable of growing a brain or decent AI), and I actually really, really liked the ending. (And the ending credits! So cute!) The fight against Duke was suitably simple until his third form. Then it was just a bit on the annoying side every time he mystic art'd me (SIX TIMES IN THE THIRD FORM ALONE. SIX TIMES. (D8) I only managed 4 on him.) and I'd be stuck swearing and trying "treat" everyone.

But no, seriously. The fight was pretty fun, and damn if I don't love Duke and Yuri's designs so very much. (note to self: draw fanarts) Estelle though... I like her more than I did at the beginning, but I've never seen an AI as dumb as hers. She's just...so useless. I check my strategies and EVERYTHING, but she just never does what she needs to do. I'm probably gonna kick her off my party for good. Especially now that I don't need a healer so much, her slow ass magic and her stupid AI are more of a drag on my party than a help.

...That's really all I had to say, actually. The game is a good game. Not an amazing game; just good. A little more than decent, I'll say (which is what I had it pegged at as first: barely decent.) I love the main character, the skits get better as they go along, etc. :) I would recommend Tales fans to play it, but I wouldn't recommend you get an X-box 360 for it.

re: Dissidia Final Fnatasy
PSP • JPN RELEASE

And some Dissidia blogging while I'm at it. First, my good friend Meru linked me to some Dissidia translations that are kind of godsend. With those, I finally learned exactly what the controls are and I restarted my game.

Now... now I'm kicking ass. I'm still losing Destiny Points like a mutha, but I am dealing a shitload of damage and rocking the world oh hohoho. And it is so very fun. I love this game so much.

Then my battery died. BOO.

This was supposed to be posted on my blog.

2008-12-29T17:55:00.001-08:00

I BEAT TALES OF VESPERIA.
More on this later. Too excited to speak right now.

Dual language mode? I really wish.

2008-12-28T09:55:00.000-08:00

re: Dissidia Final Fnatasy
PSP • JPN RELEASE

First, I'd like to mention that this game is beautifully put together. The graphics are at least high PS2 quality, while the opening FMV was *fangasmomg*. Enough said. As for the game itself, I played through the Prologue that apparently serves as a tutorial to how the game works without understanding about 99% of what they said. Being that my Japanese is mediocre at best, and I'm not quite barely literate in Chinese, and this game throws the kanji at me like a motherfucker, I have no idea what any of it said! I imagine that those Destiny Points are rather important, but I keep getting myself into the negatives for them.

Still, the battle system is straight forward enough, so I can still beat the other characters I fight against, which is A++. Also, Tidus' EX-MODE made me adsglkh so hard that I had trouble sleeping last night.

...Anyway, will play (or attempt to play) more tonight. There's a NA release estimation of Summer 2009. I can wait that long. Yes I can.

re: God of War
PS2 • NA RELEASE

Also kicking ass. Though I think I like the second game better. It might be because it's a phenomenally well made sequel and I watched it first, so it was super amazingly epic to me, but no, this first game is good too. There are some nicely CGed cut scenes that I don't remember seeing in GOWII, so I'm wondering what's with that.

Actually, no, while I think both are fanastically awesome, I do have a beef with the sound system. I don't want to turn down the music and SFX in the options TOO much, but no matter how much I turn them down, they greatly overpower the narration in the background during cut scenes. Which is really not cool. So we turn down the music and the SFX more, and then turn up the sound so we can hear the narration better, but then it's not clear enough to understand...clearly. I don't know, it's like this in both games. So that's something on the annoying side, but the background music is brilliant and beautiful.

Also, about God of War II. I do have one more problem with it. The ending? Where Athena revealed Kratos to be Zeus's son? I really do not see why Zeus would have a problem with this since Zeus has so many children he can't remember all their names. A large majority of them are mortal, and in general it's all just kind of a rather half-cocked explanation. So I didn't like that part of it, but it's just a minor nitpick.

Where's #3?

2008-12-26T23:45:00.001-08:00

re: God of War 2
PS2 • NA RELEASE

Okay, dude, we just finished God of War II (Spartan Mode). And it was awesome. I haven't played or watched the first game, so I can't say myself, but the boys in my family all collectively agree that this is a phenomenal sequel. And that the only reason why it might lose out to the first game is because it's not as ground breaking holyshit as the first one. But overall, the graphics are better, the soundtrack is just as good, they've improved a lot of things about the game and nothing well, regressed like sequels tend to do, and just overall this was an amazingly kickass awesome game.

It got really difficult near the end too. Even though we had pretty much everything except the hammer that none of us were very good at using anyway powered up to maximum, we still game'd over a whole lot. Actually, my dad's reflexes aren't as good as mine and my brothers', so he has trouble using the Golden Fleece to deflect things. That's where me and my brothers came in. :) We took turns playing the fight against Lakhesis and Atropos, and we kicked ass in a rather slow, but safe way. I think I really will play God of War and this one one day when I have time and my list of unfinished games are complete. The ending just made me go, "so...where's #3? Zomg." But yeah.

Dude, awesome game ftw.

(We're gonna replay it in Bonus mode. And we're gonna play Cod of War II. It's gonna be awesome. HAHA.)

Overall: 9.2
8.0 Story
8.0 Characters
8.0 Plot
10/ Graphics
9.0 Gameplay
10/ Sound
9.0 Replay Value

Oh, and to note my rating... I had to ding the game a bit on story and character, since Kratos is a homicidal maniac kills a lot of people. I'm assuming SCE couldn't figure out how to make excuses for it so they've left it as such. So uh, he doesn't go through much development, and instead most of my glowing praise is showered in other areas of the game. The plot in #2 was a bit predictable, so I had to ding that as well, but still. Excellent game. :D

HELLO, NURSE!

2008-12-26T15:34:00.000-08:00

HEY, LOOK WHAT ARRIVED. With beautiful packaging as always. (Though, I have to say this actually kind of kicks the Crisis Core PSP's packaging's ass in terms of prettiness.

Sorry, photos from my iPhone can only be so-high quality. My apologies. ...I should have at least gotten some better lighting, haha.

God of War 2? Hubbahubba.

2008-12-25T18:52:00.000-08:00

re: God of War 2
PS2 • NA RELEASE

My dad is playing God of War 2. Mostly my part in this is telling him where the Gorgon's Eyes and the Phoenix Feathers are. But I think the game is very beautifully made, with very detailed environments and marvelous graphics all around. The story has also continuously been quite interesting from the very beginning, and the boss fights seem to be extremely satisfying. The puzzles are also not all that easy, and the action sequences during battles are extremely well done. I didn't play or watch the first game, but from what I've been told, it's just as amazing as this one, if not more so.

And this game is extremely therapeutic for bad moods of all sorts. Very bloody, very violent, very well made. And this sort of game is really not my type of game to even watch someone else play, but I'm definitely enjoying it very much. Maybe one day I'll stop being a coward and play it myself - but the first game first, of course.

re: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
NDS • EUR RELEASE
play time: 14-17 hrs +

I've also been playing Fire Emblem. I'm on chapter 17, and probably about 14 hours or so in. Maybe 17 hours? A very long time though. And it's been fantastic. I don't really have much to say about it though. The storyline is excellent, and I love Marth even more than I did from SSB.

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 94hrs @ side questing before Tarquaron

I'm done with Rita's grade griding, beat the shit out of Flynn in the 100-man melee (which is very therapeutic, and good train-up as well. :) Let me see if I can't get him to LV100 and then beat it in hard mode.). I did miss several of the side quests since I didn't activate them (like the Giganto Monster sidequest), and so I'm missing stuff. But that's okay, I'll do it in New Game Plus. Well, maybe. One day. I'll definitely start a NG+ but I don't know if I'll ever actually play it again.

Overall though, the game has gotten a lot better. The storyline got a lot more interesting after Alexei died. I kind of wanted to kill Sonia when she "killed" Yuri (CHEST STABBER BITCH), and for the first time in the entire game I wished Yuri wasn't such a nice guy. I want to beat the shit out of Flynn whenever he says things like "are you okay with this? I'm taking all the credit and half of it (more like all of it) is because of you." And Yuri is all "nah, it's all cool, man." And I'm over there yelling at the tv screen, "IF IT BOTHERS YOU THAT MUCH FLYNN, YOU GO TELL EVERYONE WHAT YURI HAS DONE. IT'S NOT LIKE THEY'D BELIEVE YURI EVEN IF HE DID YOU FUCKING MORON."

But I can't have everything. Characters though, are kind of fantastic. Rita is a lot nicer now. I feel she actually has a personality beyond her unnecessarily mean and sarcastic comments. Estelle has also become a bit less useless, Karol is still as sweet and adorable as ever, and I really adore Raven and Judith to pieces. And of course, Yuri? Well, Japan agrees with me in that he's my #1 favorite Tales characters since like. Ever. (Though what's with Ashe getting pushed down to 13th? D8) Very nice. :D

some unorganized rambling

That's about it for the games I'm actively watching/playing I guess. As for the other games I started but haven't finished:
• Chrono Trigger is currently on hold since I've played the PS version. I'll finish it after I finish Vesperia and Fire Emblem.
• Disgaea DS is something I'll be playing again when I don't have other games to work on. Since Disgaea is kind of a game that I can play for forever. I should probably at least finish the main storyline at least once, I guess. I've been on chapter 11 for forever.
• Final Fantasy III I'll probably play when I'm bored to death. I'm right before the final dungeon and boss anyway, but that games really bores me to sleep. It's kind of a chore to finish.
• Dragon Quest Swords: ...I don't know if I'll ever finish this. I'm right before the final boss...I really should just beat it even if I don't go fighting the extra dungeon bosses.

And I have some games that I haven't started, but they're all PSP games. But I'll play them soon, probably. Dissidia was shipped a few days ago, so I'm still waiting for that to come. But I have Star Ocean: First Departure, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, and Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core to play. Wow, that's a list of games.

unorganized rambling

2008-12-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

EVERYBODY PLAYING DISSIDIA, I HATE YOU ALL. PlayAsia only shipped the stupid thing yesterday, so now I've gotta wait for forever before it gets here. Insert angry face here. In the mean time though, I love, love, love, love, love Fire Emblem. It's so awesome. I'm just massively KICKING ASS. Well, except when the Arena decides to piss me off, because I trained up Cain and maxed out his level as Cavalry, and then I upgraded him to Paladin and then I use Nabarl and got him to LV18 and he's ALMOST MAXED OUT AND HE ENDS UP FIGHTING SOME ASSHOLE AXE GUY AND I'M LIKE NO, NO, NO, FORFEIT, FORFEIT AND THE STUPID PLACE IS LIKE "WAIT, WAIT, LET HIM HIT ONE MORE TIME" AND I DIE. RAGE!!! There needs to be more map save points. Even Not Saving Until The Entire Chapter Is Cleared So I Can Fight In The Arena is not good enough; two save points is not enough. I'm one of those Save Obsessively types of players, so having a limited number of save points is on the side of infuriating.

Trying to earn 10M gald, even through Nam Cobanda Isle is shite tedious and boring.

However, the grade grinding trick using Rita's tidal wave is actually fun to do. Extremely button smashing repetitive, but it takes some level of concentration and I've racked up a combo of 2600+ and a FS chain of 303 so far, so I am very pleased with myself. Will try to beat that tomorrow. I still have some 12000 grade to earn before I move on with other side quests. :D

Kicking Flynn's ass was almost better than kicking Estelle's.

2008-12-13T23:13:00.001-08:00

This just made the game for me. ♥

I can grind in the arena! Whoo!

2008-12-07T22:22:00.000-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 61:07

Okay, so the game is actually turning into a pretty good game. I'm starting to enjoy the story more, the characters are less annoying (especially Karol ♥) and it's actually fun to play! I mean, I'm less bored while playing it, now. I still think Estelle needs to use that brain I know she has, but overall it's getting better.

Right now I'm in that rocky cliffs on the south-east side of the map. Uh, Reslkdhgsweis or something. I can't pronounce that thing, bah. Anyway, I've been in love with the Dark Seal for the past 20 hours of game play or so and am loathe to remove it even for boss fights. The monsters in this area are about LV54-56, so I think I'm only making decent time now as my characters are only 61-65 (Yuri is 65.) Boo, I prefer to be a good 10 levels over, but I'm only five or so. Must rectify this at some point.

Also I've missed all sorts of side quest opportunities, but I'm mostly aiming to finish the fucking game at this point. I'll do a complete game with new game plus or something. Which reminds me, I need to work on getting more grade, so I can afford to purchase stuff for the new game plus. My fighting skills in this game have improved since using the Dark Seal though. I handle Yuri a lot better than I did before, oh yes.

By the way, I really like Duke. Not as much as I like Yuri, but I really like Duke. ACTUALLY THAT REMINDS ME, Flynn's lieutenant is really, really, really annoying. I don't like her.

re: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
NDS • EUR RELEASE
play time: 3:17

This game is a lot of fun! And really hard, wow. I keep getting my characters killed and because I'm a wimp, I keep restarting to make sure none of them die unless they have to. I want to turn Lena into a Pegasus Knight. I love the Dracoknight class.

...omg Marth. <3

Dumb AI is dumb.

2008-12-06T22:51:00.000-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 55:43 @ in Zaude

Estelle's AI is the dumbest AI I've ever seen. I mean, seriously. Is it really that hard for you to just keep away from the monsters and just heal? I checked my strategies and I have you listed as "help allies / keep distance / heal," but Estelle just insists on running up to the Giganto Monster and attacking it with her stupid little saber while I'm left facepalming at the tv.

re: Chrono Trigger DS
NDS • JPN RELEASE
play time: 7:36

...I love this game so hard. It's so nostalgic, and so enjoyable to play. I love that they didn't do much changing of the graphics style. Cleaned it up and put in touch screen capabilities, otherwise they kept it largely the same. They've really done a good job remaking it. ♥

Currently in 600 A.D., confronting the kid claiming to be the Hero.

Wow I am bad at this game.

2008-12-05T15:47:00.000-08:00

re: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
NDS • EUR RELEASE
play time: chapter 3

I am kind of really bad at Fire Emblem! :D I keep getting one of my units killed while I facepalm off screen. Do not want. ESPECIALLY NOT MY LEVEL LV4 PEGASUS KNIGHT OKAY? OKAY?! What did she ever do to you? Stop attacking her all at once! Is there some way to train up in this game?

HELLLOOOOO, MARTH~!

2008-12-04T16:33:00.000-08:00

FIRE EMBLEM DS (EUR) IS OUT.
Okay, life being overtaken very quickly here. I still haven't finished Chrono Trigger, but I've never played FE1 before. Especially since it'd never been translated to English before this so I'll be playing Fire Emblem first.

I think Fire Emblem will come first no matter how hard I love Chrono Trigger. Maybe I'll play them in tandem. I probably will. And I'm back home where there's a 360, so more Vesperia will be played soon.

God she is stupid. SO STUPID.

2008-11-29T04:37:00.000-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 49:56 @ on my way to that shrine

Someone explain to me how Estelle managed to grow 6 levels while stuck in that Apatheia sphere. This "automatically catch up to whoever is the strongest in your party" is really, really, really annoying.

re: Chrono Trigger DS
NDS • JPN RELEASE
play time: 00:56 @ The Queen Returns (beginning)

For those of you wondering the difference between the USA and JPN version, the only difference is that the USA version does not have a JPN language option.

And the facepalming continues.

2008-11-23T20:52:00.001-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 44:53 @ Heracles

I don't know. I think Estelle is a bit lacking in the intelligence department. I mean, she can memorize book facts, and she's a nice girl. But, um, girl, you already know that the Entelexia hate your power for some reason. So when Belius is in pain, maybe you should stay the fuck away. It's just common sense. THERE'S A REASON THEY DON'T LIKE YOU, maybe because, oh, I don't know, YOU CAN KILL THEM?

And also, I remember distinctly that Phaeroh said, "the insipid poison of the world must be purged". But he never actually directly referred to Estelle as that insipid poison. She just kind of assumed he meant her. I mean, of course, it did turn out to be her, but wow, that could have been connected a little better so that I'm not going "wait, what? SINCE WHEN?" all the time. Plus, self-centered, much?

I don't dislike her anymore, but I really think she needs to actually use her brain for once. On the other hand, I really, really, really like Raven. I was really sad when I thought he was dead as Schwann. Which thankfully didn't happen. And Yuri is being extremely kickass. Do like him.

I CALLED ALEXEI BEING A BAD GUY. I CALLED IT.

I'm going to laugh forever: the princess got kidnapped. Is this what, stock-plot or something?

...I played 12 hours of this game today. Am I at least getting close to the ending? I was really hoping I could finish it today, but after saving in the Heracles, I just turned it off. I'm so, so, so tired after playing for 12 hours with minimum rest. I find myself yawning my way through most of it, and the story...while getting more interesting, kind of leaves a lot to be desired.

It's going to be a while before I can finish this game unfortunately, as where I'm going doesn't have an X360 for me to play. I'll have to wait until some time in December. Hopefully I don't forget what's happened so far.

In Final Fantasy III news, I'm nearly done with the game. It's very cute, and that's about it. Both Vesperia and FFIII prompt this reaction from me all the way through: *YAWN*

OHMYGOD

2008-11-19T15:19:00.001-08:00

EVERYTHING I SAID TODAY, AND EVERYTHING I WAS GOING TO SAY LATER IS NOW RENDERED OBSOLETE. BECAUSE.

CHRONO TRIGGER DS JPN IS OUT.

AND IT'S DUAL LANGUAGE.

BRB. DITCHING FINAL FANTASY III FOREVER.

Huh, this game is growing on me.

2008-11-17T17:04:00.000-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 30:29
location: found the two parents in Sands of Kogorh; assumedly off to fight Phaeroh next

Um, so the characters are growing on me: I really adore Judy and Raven, and I just keep liking Yuri more and more. I want to fight more of those Giganto Monsters; they're like, bosses x10 or something. Which is kickass because they're easy to fight, and take about 5 minutes to beat? This is good level up, and very awesome.

Seeing Flynn in the coliseum was a bit predictable. But I really didn't like how the story kept interrupting my battle. I'm always happy to see Yuri and Flynn fight, but can it not be during the first time where I get to actually control one of their meetings? Those annoying interrupting in-battle cut scenes kept throwing off my rhythm, so it was a pain in the ass to kick Flynn's ass. AND THEN Zagi interrupts me before I can actually defeat Flynn (I magic lense'd him! I only had 3000 HP to go. D8), and it was just...argh, PISS OFF.

Had to stop right before I would have gone to see Phaeroh? Well, I found the two parents in Sands of Kogorh. I assume that in the next part I'd meet the Phaeroh. But it was 10pm, and my brothers had school today so I had to stop. I wonder if I'll be able to finish this game by next weekend. D8 At the rate I'm proceeding, it doesn't seem like it.

I'm also a bit tempted to pick up Tales of Symphonia 2, but I'm still really wary about it since Lloyd is a villain? I don't know, new-cast is never something I'm very fond of when it comes to direct sequels.

And spoilers in this one as well.

2008-11-15T23:28:00.000-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 22:54 (ish)
location: about to head back to Heliord; just cleared the entire "kill Ragou" thing.

As always, my current take on the cast:
Yuri: Liking him more and more <3
Estelle: Not hating on her as much as before. She's getting better.
Rita: She's also getting a little better. Slightly.
Raven: Do like this guy. He makes me laugh.
Karol: He's so cute!
Judith: I like her very much.
Flynn: I almost feel sorry for him. DITCH THE KNIGHTLY DUTIES AND JOIN UP WITH MY TEAM. [flail]
Duke: Why so mysterious and gorgeous, Sephiroth? :D (Oh shut up, like you weren't thinking the same thing.)

...Um, that's about all I have to say so far. The game is starting to get more interesting, so that's a good thing. ...omg want to see more of Duke Sephiroth. SDSDGLKH ahhhhhhhh!!

There are spoilers in this post.

2008-11-11T22:10:00.000-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 16:06 (ish)
location: just visited Heliord for the first time

There are a few comments I'd like to make. I've found that I, so far, do not like anyone but Yuri in Tales of Vesperia. So far, they are all highly unlikeable characters, and if not highly unlikeable, they're either annoying, borderline Mary-Sue, or a huge, huge, huge moral advocate. None are what I like in characters. Training up in this game is slow as well. And I don't like when new characters come in at the level of my highest level character. [proceeds to let them die and painfully retrains back to a higher level]

So Estelle is a princess. On top of that, she can cast artes without a blastia. She's kindhearted, naive, innocent, SPECIAL, the monsters look at her and run, and EVERYONE LIKES HER. WHY THE MARY-SUE? (One day, I need to take a proper look at Yuna and figure out why I don't dislike her. There has to be some something that sets them apart. They have all the Mary-Sue qualities, but there's something about them that makes me adore them. While I just keep pulling my hair out over characters like Estelle.)

Also, my opinion of Karol has actually improved over the game. While my opinions of Rita and Estelle have dropped. Karol I think I just feel sorry for now, after seeing him being yelled at by Nan and just everyone. He's a 12 year old kid, who has such an extremely low self esteem that he tries to talk big to cover it up (and fails miserably at it), but he's hardworking and sincere and just gets scared easily. I FEEL BAD FOR HIM. GO, GO CREATE BRAVE VESPERIA WITH YURI. YOU DON'T NEED THOSE STUPID ASS HUNTING BLADES.

Note to self: go buy another Tama-something for Repede and make it into the OTHER Tama-something 2 alpha. Also, most characters have more than one weapon to learn weapon skills from. Practice the burst limits and the fatal strikes.

Wow, Nan is a total bitch.

2008-11-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

A comment on Tales of Vesperia:

So far, I do not like any of the female characters. In fact, Mary Sue Estelle seems to be the most likeable out of all of them. And dammit, I really do not like Estelle. Just met up with Nan, and just, urgh. On this subject, I don't really like anyone in this game except for Yuri. And I worry that's not going to change later on? I'm rather disappointed so far, as in both Symphonia and Abyss, I liked plenty of characters. And in Symphonia, I adored Colette to pieces. ♥

So, Vesperia. I'm mostly just training up right now before I go into the next area. (Uh, the area where we meet Nan.) Training up is slow...

I don't like Mary Sues. :|

2008-11-09T22:11:00.001-08:00

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 12:23

1. I love Yuri, very much.
2. Estelle, thy name is Mary Sue.
3. Rita is amazingly More Annoying Than Karol Is.
4. I'm disappointed, Flynn is an asshat.

Note for when I continue next week: currently training up right outside Torim Harbor. Need to head NorthWest(?) to some guild place after that one-eyed guy. Story points: check the library synopsis; Flynn is a loser who let Ragou go. I think we've found where the cores are, etc. What level am I supposed to be at? Right now, everyone is about LV27. I'm a bit nervous that it's not high enough, though.

And it really bugs me that new party members seem to come in at the level my highest party member is. Because I have I tendency to choose favorites in the beginning, and I prefer them to be the strongest by at least 2-3 levels. And Yuri is...not. I have to keep letting my party members die and train up on my own. And then they decide it'd be cool to catch up. :| BAH.

EDIT Drachemeister's recommended LV against Zagi in Capua Nor is 17-21. I think I'm doing fine.

I like characters named Yuri. :)

2008-11-08T23:25:00.000-08:00

re: Final Fantasy III
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 13-ish

...Ooohhhhh, Dark Knight~ ♥

re: Tales of Vesperia
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: 5:16

Graphics are very nice, number 1. I love Yuri, number 2. Both Estelle and Karol already annoy me, number 3. Also, I think the skits aren't done as nicely as they were in either Tales of the Abyss or Tales of Symphonia, so I'm a bit disappointed there. I'm waiting to finally see Flynn, because he's that Guy Cecil like character I keep seeing, right? Nice guy, super talented, not a gynophobic? Unfortunately, I'm playing with my family and it seems I have a record of starting games and then never finishing the storyline when they're around since someone in this family always ends up getting our video game priveleges taken away. :| That, and I'm a slow game player due to the way I train, so. Because of that, I didn't train as much as I usually would, since I didn't want to get yelled at, and so when Karol came in, he was almost as strong as Yuri. Do not want OTL. When can I kick everyone off my party to train by myself? I tried to ditch them when they left my party for story reasons in uh, that tree town, but that didn't really work.

Anyway, the game is adorable as all Tales games are. And I think I'm finally used to the 360 controls again. I should probably consider picking up Tales of the World again in the future, though I'm not wild about it due to it Not Being Very Interesting.

So, I want a dark knight.

2008-11-06T21:41:00.001-08:00

re: Final Fantasy III
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 9:23

Okay, this game is absofuckinglutely adorable. ♥ I'm uh, still slightly confused about job classes, and keep experimenting back and forth, but I'm sure I'll get it at some point. I really want to get that Onion Knight class, but I have an issue with my router security that doesn't allow me to use the DS's wi-fi capability. Which makes me very sad. I must find a reason to head over to Starbucks at some point. Apparently that's a hot spot, and I should be able to access wi-fi over there.

Anyway, I just finished the second crystal portion of the game. My level is... uh, I think 20. My current party jobs are red mage, black mage, white mage, and warrior. I'm thinking now that the second class jobs have opened up I should change my warrior to a knight, my black mage to a geomancer, and my white mage to a thief. I'll probably keep the red mage until...later. ...More on this later, the story is much simpler and not much is happening in the game. But! It is adorable and I'm liking it a lot. Well, not as much as FFIV, but what can I say. XD

re: Fable II
X360 • USA RELEASE

It's been a few days since we finished, and I just wanted to comment that the story is still disappointingly short. The ending is ridiculously anticlimactic. And I like the credits roll. That is all.

Tales of Vesperia arrived today. I'll be starting that this weekend. :)

re: Fable II

2008-11-03T08:56:00.001-08:00

re: Fable II
X360 • USA RELEASE

Finished this game about 2 hours after finishing FFIV, actually. Well, my brother did, since he was the one playing. I rather thought the storyline would be longer than it is. We spent ...a lot of hours doing Other Things in the game and avoiding the main quest line, but yeah, the main quest line finishes really fast. There's training and the like to do by completing the various jobs given to you, and such, but overall it's a pretty short game.

Plot-wise, ignoring how disappointingly short it is, the story is rather interesting. The ending wasn't all I had imagined it to be. For one, I thought there'd be a final boss fight, but we took Lucien out with a single shot. That was rather sad. Also, Reaver is an asshole. And I was expecting there to be a more um...drawn out ending. But instead we had a choice between 1) saving everyone, 2) saving your dog, or 3) getting a lot of money. Needless to say, our difficulty was in choosing between the dog, or people we didn't care about. We ended up choosing the people since my parents were all ">8|" about everything, but the doggy... ;_;

Now that the main story is over, we're just going around solving various quests (WITHOUT THE DOG) and training up for no real apparent reason and trying to get enough money to buy Fairfax Castle. But yeah, the game itself is over now.

Overall, it seems like a pretty fun game. My brother enjoyed it a lot and he thinks the gameplay is excellent. I really like the experience system this game has, it's quite unique (given that I haven't played Fable I, I am assuming this game either has the same system it does, or it's a new system - and therefore the unique term still applies) and a rather refreshing level-up system concept. Especially since I'm used to the entire "get this much experience and you level up and all your stats increase appropriately" system common to jRPGs.

Music is excellent, though I think the character design for the main character could have used more work after he grew up. Environments are gorgeous, etc., etc. This game is definitely worth playing (or at least watching someone else play, as in my case), at least once. And due to the games emphasis on choices, I expect it has a pretty decent replay value as well. We shall see about that.

In the mean time, I've started FFIII and am waiting the arrival of Tales of Vesperia, and God of War I & II. It will be awesome. Oh yes.

Overall: 8.2
7.0 Story
7.0 Characters
7.0 Plot
9.0 Graphics
9.0 Gameplay
8.0 Sound
8.0 Replay Value

re: Final Fantasy IV

2008-11-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
completion data: 66:30 (+ another 29 unsaved hours)

Okay, before I go through my overall review, there are a few things to mention. The Red Tail took me 12 hours of play to get. D8 It was V. Frustrating. HOWEVER, it was worth it. By now you probably know that even stronger than the Excalibur (so powerful that Cecil and co. actually had little thought bubbles going "omg this sword is the holy sword of legend holy shit), was the Ragnarok Blade which I picked up in the Lunar Subterrain after beating the shit out of Dark Bahamut. Excalibur had an holyshit attack power of 120, which was dwarfed (LOL it was built by dwarves ...okay, this is my love for bad jokes showing up again) by the Ragnarok's attack strength of 150. And then I finally got the Red Tail, and traded it for the Onion Sword, and that increased my attack strength to 198. Yeah. Do want. SO IT WAS WORTH IT.

Also, the pink tail traded for something called Adamant Armor, which kicks ass in that it has a Defense and Magic Defense of 100, while my previous most powerful armor was the Crystal Armor, and that gave me Defense of 25 and Magic Defense of 10. Yeah. Huge jump right there. So, rare items? Totally worth it. Though recall that I was at 48 hours of game play when I started searching for the rare items, and I got them all at 65 hrs + 29 unsaved. Yeah, the FAQ said "you're in for a bit of a time sink". Understatement of the century, please. STILL, WORTH IT.

The ending was really satisfying. I kicked Zeromus's ass a little too easily (no, the fight was over in 5 minutes. I am not kidding here.) I spent about 30 minutes fighting wi-fi battles with Whyt, because the number of times you summon Whyt whether you win, lose, or quit the battle gets added to your weapon strength if you use an augment called "????'s Love". ???? is the name you choose in the Namingway quest line - the name of a loved one, and you get it after completing the subquest. I named it Rosa, so it's Rosa's Love augment in my game. Anyway, using Ragnarok Blade, which has 150 attack, after summoning Whyt 99, using Rosa's Love (which replaces the Attack command pretty much), the attack strength for that move is 150+99. Which is kickass. So with the Onion Sword, it was 198+99, and I was very happy. Oh yes.

ANYWAY, the ending. I enjoyed it, it was really cute, and just. What do I say about it? It was adorable and I felt all warm and happy watching it and just overall DAMMIT THIS GAME KICKS ASS.

OVERALL:
I think this game is fantastic. ALL ROUND. The graphics have been upped from their original 2D sprites, and they're 3D SD-style characters. It's still pixelly, but I can't really expect all that much from a handheld platform (not everything's a PSP), but for what the DS offers, this really exceeded all my expectations. I have a slight bias towards the music since I'm a diehard Nobuo Uematsu fan, but I do admit it got slightly tedious listening to it when I was fighting in the same dungeon for 20 hours straight (OTL the pink and red tails.)

The decants (augments) they offer in this remake is a huge plus as well. I really like this option, it's ultra fun to use and really well done, IMHO. And the bottom screen map was really convenient. Only bad part about the map is that nearly the entire game can be played on the map. While I was trying to get the 100% map completion (which was pretty much the entire game), my eyes were generally glued to the bottom screen and I didn't pay that much attention to the new, pretty environments the game provides on the top screen.

AND I've implemented a rating system, which since this will be the first time I use it in this blog, let me explain how I've set things up: I've based my rating on five categories: story, graphics, gameplay, sound, and replay value. The story category is composed of characters and plot, and the average score is taken for the overall story. Each category is ranked between 1-10, with 10 being the best, and then the overall average is the score I'm giving the game. Anything that ends up with an overall score between 8 and 10 is a game I would recommend to friends. If it's between the 7-7.9 rating, then it's an "it's okay if you want to just play it once", and if it dips below the 7 mark... well then. Generally, my scores shouldn't as I only have time to play so many games and so I try to make sure the games I play have been recced to me by other people and have gotten decent ratings already. Oh, and graphics are rated both by the system the game is built on as well as the year the game originally came out. So games like FFIV, which came out several years earlier and were remade for the DS won't be dinged too hard if at all for graphics quality. SO, without further ado, here's my overall rating for Final Fantasy IV.

Overall: 8.5
8.5 Story
9.0 Characters
8.0 Plot
8.0 Graphics
9.0 Gameplay
9.0 Sound
8.0 Replay Value

BRB FINALLY FINISHING THIS GAME.

2008-11-02T13:07:00.001-08:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE

I GOT THE RED TAIL.
After approx 29 unsaved hours, and 64 hours of saved game play, I finally completed the rare items portion of the game. I CAN FINISH THE GAME FINALLY. Screw the rare summons, I'll do that in my second play if I have to, but I hardly ever summon anyway. Takes too long.

I AM SO HAPPY OHMYGOD. BRB, FINISHING THE GAME TODAY. FULL REVIEW AFTER I'M DONE.

JUST ONE MORE TO GO.

2008-10-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 59:28 (+ another 12 unsaved hours)

I found the Black Tail off the Armored Fiends about 3 hours after making my previous post. And last night, after dropping my DS on my brother and bribing him with gifts if he got me a Pink Tail (after 8 hours of futile fighting on my part over the last two days), he got me a Pink Tail in about 2 hours. FINALLY.

Just one more tail to go, the Red Tail off the Red Dragons. This should be a less of a "OHGOD KILL ME NOW" fight since I actually have to actively participate if I don't want my LV99 party to get slaughtered by its Thermal Ray attack. So it should be less boring than all the other auto-battle fights.

I was about to give up, actually. I was so frustrated fighting those annoying Princess Flans, but I'm almost to the goal. I don't want these hours and hours and hours of work to go to waste. That, and I hate incomplete sets. I was going to get multiples for each character, but now I'm like "HA, fuck that."

Been hoping to play FFIII for the last two weeks... c'mon, let me finally finish this game already.

SDGLKH FUCKING TAILS. AGH.

2008-10-26T19:32:00.001-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 57:30 (+ another 3-4 unsaved hours)

I'm finding the rare tails right now. And with Treasure Hunt augment, which I had to go searching for since I had about 5-6 incomplete maps scattered across the Blue Planet that I had to complete before I could get it... and then finishing Namingway sidequest took a while. I actually got lucky with Namingway, since I needed Rainbow Pudding, and I actually went searching for those incomplete maps because getting Rainbow Pudding would be a pain in the ass without the Treasure Hunt augment, and luckily for me, I got lucky and one of the Yellow Puddings in Antlion's Den dropped it for me even before I had Treasure Hunt, which is A++.

HOWEVER, those rare tails? God, even WITH Treasure Hunt they're a pain in the ass. I spent 3 hours last night fighting Yellow Dragons on Auto-Battle, and I couldn't find a single one. Finally gave up around 11:30 and went to sleep. And this morning, after just a few fights, the Green Dragon dropped a Green Tail, and immediately after in my enthusiasm, the first Yellow Dragon I fought dropped a Yellow Tail, so I was extremely happy. And then it took me 4 hours of fighting to get the Blue Tail from the Thunder Dragons... and I've been fighting Armored Fiends for the last 5 hours and still no Black Tail drop. Aghh, I'm gonna be stuck here for a while. I'm not even interested in getting the rare summons considering how Extremely Not Often I use Rydia's summons, and I was gonna leave that for the next play through, but I can't bring myself to give up on the last three tails so I'm stuck here for however much longer before I'll let myself finish the game. AGH. [stabs at things]

Still hoping I'll be able to start FFIII sometime soon. PREFERABLY TOMORROW. OR EVEN TONIGHT. Goddammit, just three more fucking tails and I can go kick the shit out of Zeromus. My characters have already maxed out the levels, everyone's LV99 now. I maxed those out about 3 hours ago. Fighting weak Thunder Dragons, believe it or not.

re: Fable II
X360 • USA RELEASE
play time: ?

In other news, we picked up Fable II the other day. It's not the type of game I'm normally interested in, and I said as much when my dad told me he bought it. But my brother has really been looking forward to it, and I've been watching him play for the last however many hours starting from yesterday and I have a few favorable comments for it:

1. It's graphics are top notch, especially for an X360 game, which really can't compare to the PS3. But I really do think the graphics are gorgeous, as is the artwork. The opening sequence is quite beautiful, really.

2. The music is rather nice as well! And I like that pretty much everything is voiced. Sound quality is excellent, and the various accents given to various characters is an extremely nice touch.

3. Storyline! What I think is the most important in any game (despite my design background.) I actually think it's really interesting. Sort of, I can already guess what Lucien's ultimate motives are, but okay that's fine. [SPOILERS SPOILERS blah blah don't worry I won't tell.]

4. IT'S FUNNY. There's all sorts of humourous little touches here and there in the dialogues, in the actions, etc. The social aspect of this game is really nicely done and it has me laughing all over the place.

And that's all I have to say about it right now. I probably wouldn't play this game, ever. Since I'm a huge coward and I'd just run away all the time, but my brother is loving it and it's really fun to watch. Even if all he's doing is working in the blacksmith's trying to get some money. :)

7 hours more and I'm still not done?

2008-10-24T15:28:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 47:02

Okay, so I said I wanted to finish this yesterday but I ended up sleeping instead since the dungeon was taking forfuckingever. I kept getting my ass handed to me by the double Blue Dragons and those Armored Fiends. The recommended level for the weapon bosses were 65+ (for the regular dungeon, about 56-60) and I was well above that for all characters. At uh, LV68 Edge, LV70 Kain, LV74 Rydia, LV76 Rosa, and LV78 Cecil. And well, I was SUPPOSED to be kicking ass since my levels were so high, except I WASN'T, because those fights suck. ANYWAY, so I had to keep teleporting out of the Lunar Subterrain in order to heal and save. BOO. Except because of that, now I'm finally kicking ass and I can pretty much autobattle my way through the Armored Fiends and the single Blue Dragons. What. I've raised (through this process of getting my ass kicked, teleporting out, healing, and saving) my levels up 12-ish. They look like this now:
LV87 Cecil
LV86 Rosa
LV85 Rydia
LV83 Kain
LV81 Edge
Yeahh, I'm kicking ass. Got myself the Ragnarok Sword, which makes Excalibur look like a toy (I mean geezus, I just GOT Excalibur, and now it's already a toy? D8), and the Holy Lance for Kain. As well as a million other awesome equipment that drop the damage dealt by Dark Bahamut down so much that his immediate Mega Flare does just a little over 1000 damage when it's supposed to kill me. What.

And yet, I still have like, 4 floors to go before I clear this dungeon and need to head out to go find all the rare items, summons, and augments, and finish the Namingway subplot before I go fight Zemus. Or something. Yeah, this might take a while. Say, the rest of today maybe. Maybe I'll be able to start FFIII tomorrow? HA, better not make too many predictions... I already want to replay FFIV though, this game is so kickass in all sorts of ways. I haven't had this much fun with an FF since IX and X, which was actually quite a long time ago if you think about it. Lots of FFs in-between since then.

I'm in the final stretch!

2008-10-23T15:15:00.001-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 40:42

Whew, I'm about to tackle the final dungeon and all that. Just finished wrapping up the little miscellaneous things I had to do like pick up HP+50% augment, Phoenix augment, etc. As well as grabbing Excalibur, which is so full of sex ohmygod. IN ANY CASE, story-wise, this game is really like playing a new game again, since I've always been able to separate my reaction to the story vs what I already know about it (as in, I can read spoilers and still get HOLYSHIT SURPRISED when I get to the part I was spoiled about). That, and I only ever played this game once and that was several years ago, when it was remade for the PS1. And goddamn the story is falling together now and omgomgomg WHAT.

I love this game so hard. Hi. So, Kain is back and thankfully I had him trained to LV70 before he stole the final crystal and ditched me, so he comes back as just slightly stronger than Edge who still lags at LV68. Cecil is LV78 right now, with Rosa and Rydia trailing at LV76 and LV74. I expect if I'd followed the recommended levels, he'd come back at like, 60 or something. They usually kick his level up a little, except he was already over-trained by me, so they didn't kick it up at all. Assholes. :|

ANYWAY, um. Yes, I'm hoping to finish the last dungeon, fight Zemus, etc., and finally finish this game today. In the next uh...several hours or so. Maybe less. It seems like I'm coming up on the end, and damn I have high expectations that it will be a very satisfying end. Edge is annoying, by the way. I'm not very fond of him. AND he's weak, not cool at all. And if Kain wasn't always stealing my equipment, I'd like him more.

...Will be playing Final Fantasy III right after I finish this. I'm gonna take a long break from Disgaea while I try to finish FFIII before Chrono Trigger (NA) and Fire Emblem (EUR) release. BTW, is a EUR release also in English? Or is it in another European language? I never did understand the difference.

I've been neglecting FFIV OTL

2008-10-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 36:19

Damn, it's been a while since I last played FFIV. Like, three weeks? D8 I'm sorry for neglecting you!! D8 But I had to do all the miscellaneous Before You Go To Mysidia item gathering, and I wanted to make sure I got them all so I had to wait for the chance to use the faq. Boo on no time! In any case, I've finally done all that and am about to go into Mysidia, and after that... TO THE MOON.

I was plenty pissed at Kain for leaving my party again after the sealed cave. It was kind of like "WTF, GIVE ME BACK MY EQUIPMENT." I knew he was going to leave again, just not so soon. [anger] I didn't even get to unequip him, and I didn't want to have to go through two floors of the sealed cave again just to get those items... [sighs] At least I never give him anything more powerful than what Cecil wears.

BOO, KAIN. Argh, and I still need to give him various augments... Ass.

re: Disgaea DS
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 109:35

ANYWAY, I'm still hooked on Disgaea. I'm probably going to play this game forever, considering my game play time has already exceeded 100 hours. Every time I go into the item world it takes me an hour, what. Anyway, it took me 20 hours of play time to get my Angel class character, and now I'm trying to work up enough mana to reincarnate her as the highest class Angel (I'm assuming there's only 6 class levels for every class.), which means I have to unlock the sixth first. I think I might get it when I get Angel to LV200, and she's only LV116 right now. Hm. Hopefully by the time she's LV200, she'll have enough mana to do reincarnation as well.

Laharl is kicking plenty of ass, and I STILL haven't proceeded in the story past chapter 11. This HOE business is grating on my nerves. I don't like Gordon at all. Flonne continues to make me "AHHH SHE'S SO CUTE I LOVE HER" but Etna is still a "bah, who cares." I did start an Etna's game, mostly just read the opening sequence where she "kills" Laharl, but bleh. I'm honestly not interested at all in playing her game. :| No Laharl? DO NOT WANT.

I've got my eyes on Star Ocean: First Departure (NA) which released yesterday. But even after I get it, I probably won't be playing for a while. [must finish FFIV and FFIII before Chrono Trigger DS (NA) and Fire Emblem DS (EUR) is released omgomg]

Unlocking "Angel" is really tedious.

2008-10-14T09:49:00.001-07:00

re: Disgaea DS
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 70:32

1. Unlocking "Angel" class in this game is really tedious. I've almost gotten my cleric to LV100 now, but my Knight is still LV57 and my Archer is only LV60. Urgh. I'm primarily fighting in Jotunheim/Terrible Cold, passing TRIP EXP every battle to speed up the process... I even increased the enemy strength to LV9 (OTL I'm gonna be SLAUGHTERED if I try to fight anywhere else after this. Or maybe not. I'll train up ALL my characters in that area before moving on again.) so that I'd get a larger EXP share.
2. I've taken to bribing the senators with Unopened Drinks, Mint Gum, and Fairy Dusts. Cause they're cheap, and I'd rather sell my acquired, useless items than give them to those senators who vote "nay" in the end anyway. BUT! I now have a large portion of senators who fucking LOVE ME. YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT.

And I figure while I'm at it, I might as well talk about the differences between the PSP port and the DS port. My brother is playing Disgaea in tandem with me, but he's playing the PSP version, and sometimes when we get bored, we switch off and train in each other's game. PSP has a much larger graphics capability, so I give a lot of allowances to the DS for DS-ifying the graphics. Especially since before I saw the PSP version, I thought the graphics were fabulous. Now, not so much, but it's not fair to the DS to compare it for graphics.

The PSP port generally has a nicer feel overall to it. Movements are smoother, special attacks are done within the map rather than blacking out the background, etc. The text is cleaner, and every time someone counters a counter, I see all the "counters" written out. While in the DS, it goes "counter x3", in the PSP it'll say "countercountercountercounter" and makes me LOL like crazy. The PSP also retains the Japanese voice option, which the DS version does not possess, for memory capacity reasons I'm assuming. But it's still a bit on the disappointing side that I can't listen to the Japanese audio. A lot of audio was cut out also. In the PSP version, every cut scene is voiced, but in the DS version, only the "next episode" portions with Etna are voiced. I was fine with that, but I was fine with everything until I saw how nice the PSP version looked. Like I said, allowances have to be made for the larger graphics capability and memory capability of the UMD vs the DS card, but. It's still a bit disappointing considering that the PSP port is at least a year or so older than the DS port. It what, deproved?

The DS version DOES have quite a few nice features that the PSP one doesn't have though. Its dual screen is nicely utilized by including a topographical map feature when in the battle, which makes things a lot easier to see, frankly, especially when wiping out those pesky geo panels. And in the Dark Assembly, you get a nice clear bar that needs to hit blue on the top screen in order to win. So you're not calculating those fast moving numbers in your head trying to keep track of whether you have more yays or nays. But in the battle screen, you lose the "status" option which I think is a really convenient feature, especially when I want to know how much mana I need to acquire, etc.

OVERALL, I think the DS Port and the PSP port are both great. I think I like the PSP port better though because of the features it has that the DS port doesn't, and while I like the new, nifty features in the DS, I think they're just aesthetic features that really don't actually ADD to the experience, just makes it look cooler. But as soon as you put the PSP and the DS version next to each other, the DS version loses out pretty badly. Well, IMHO. Still, I've played over 70 hours in my version and the DS is a little more portable for me. I'll stick to it. The game itself is still fantastic, so I really don't mind the differences in the end. :)

...Now was that a lot of tl;dr or what?

re: Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racing
DC • USA

Oh, and because I remembered, I'll talk a bit about this too. The other day, tired of constantly losing in the same race, my brothers and I re-started this game. From the very beginning. Three times. We'd forgotten we could select winner-takes-all for prize winnings, and then we changed our minds about which car we should spend all our money upgrading. When we finally came to the correct decision, we spent about 6 hours straight playing, and then beat the game.

I was a bit disappointed, frankly. I thought after beating Bunta Classic on Tatooine to acquire Sebulba's pod, that 1., Sebulba's pod was better than it is (it kind of sucks, frankly. D8), and 2., there would be more races besides the four bonus races in the fourth galaxy. Not impressed here. I was hoping that the game would at least be LONGER, but... geezus. Also, the credits were the worst credits roll I'd ever seen.

But the game is still fabulous overall, despite my disappointment over its length. I want to play it again, on the N64 or something. :D

Overall: 8.3
--/ Story
--/ Characters
--/ Plot
8.0 Graphics
9.0 Gameplay
8.0 Sound
8.0 Replay Value

REINCARNATION?

2008-10-08T15:41:00.001-07:00

re: Disgaea DS
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 47:12

QUICK, HELP. Laharl is LV88, mana 12000+

REINCARNATE AS GENIUS FOR 5000 MANA Y/N?

LOLOL "you captured an enemy"

2008-10-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

re: Disgaea DS
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 28:26

I LOVE KICKING THE SHIT OUT OF THE SENATORS THAT DON'T SUPPORT ME. Also, I picked up a blue dragon. It was hysterical, cause my brother was telling me all about how he could get an "average" fafnir (the blue dragon) for less mana than it took him to get an "incompetent" dragon (the green one) and of course, I insisted on picking up a "skilled" dragon because well, I play in a style that takes me Forever To Get Anywhere, and I knew it'd be forever before I finally picked up the fafnir. Well, I finally got to the area where I could beat the shit out of fafnirs and thereby lower the mana price to create one, and I uh....killed 65 of them. By then, the mana cost had dropped (for incompetant) from... approx 2850 to....50. HAHAHA. I ended up getting a "distinguished" fafnir, which was a pain in the ass to create since I had to get senate approval, and I had to beat the shit out of them to get them to give me my fafnir. Overall, it was very satisfying.

AND AND AND what's really funny. So if you throw an enemy into your base panel, the enemy will destroy the party members in the panel, which is really convenient when you want to spend a lot of money at the hospital in order to get the prizes for going there. :D It's also an easy way to die, so I was gonna try and go see what the Mid-Boss ending was, but because I was too powerful, Laharl's counter x3 would wipe out the entire enemy party, so I had to somehow kill off Laharl. By then Laharl was LV69 or something, and I had both a green dragon (LV44) and a blue fafnir (LV32) and Etna and Flonne were both LV31/32 or something, etc. OKAY, so I tossed this enemy into my base panel trying to kill Laharl so I could easily kill off my weak characters outside the base panel and get the Mid-Boss ending. ...And... There was a lot of fighting in my base panel that I couldn't see and I get this result:

"You have captured an enemy!"

LOLOLOLOLOL. I laughed so hard. HAHAHA. Oh god, and then I realized that when you capture an enemy... you keep it. So my brother and I promptly went through the other levels to capture enemies we wanted. So we caught a Cait Sith (LV22) (the blue kit kat) and...another fafnir (LV40). HAHAHA. So funny, it's like cheating and creating an enemy for free and then having it all leveled up for you. XD

Anyway, that's my funny Disgaea story of the day. :) Well, I thought it was funny.

Laharl is so cute! ♥

2008-10-01T11:59:00.001-07:00

re: Disgaea DS
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 19:14

Wow, I'm not really impressed with Etna. Like, at all. She's kind of on the annoying side. Still loving Laharl though, even if he is a little kid all the time. ♥ And Flonne is still funny, though I hear from my brother she'll start getting annoying within the next two chapters or so. I'm currently on chapter 5, training my characters up in the third section. The one with all the fox girls and succubuses and the invincibility geopyramid? It's awesome to see Flonne jump from LV13 to LV21 in one go, and that's splitting the EXP with Laharl. So awesome.

Also, beating the shit out of senators that don't support me is Very Fun. Even though Laharl is only LV49 right now, I'm still pushing my way through. MOAR COUNTERATTACK. MOAR EXPENSIVE ITEMS. I want to improve my counter attack again, though I think 3 is good right now. I got the green dragon I wanted, despite my brother telling me it wasn't worth it and to wait for the blue one. I am currently very happily training it up, oh yes.

Final Fantasy IV and Disgaea DS currently occupying my life, hello.

What is this Disgaea?

2008-09-29T12:50:00.001-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 32:03

Wow, was Sylph Cave not the Most Annoying Dungeon In All Of Final Fantasy or what? I don't think I've ever been more annoyed by monster fights than by the batches of Evil Dreamers x4 where all they do is cast Sleep and Silence continuously thereby making my fight go by Really Slowly. I actually started leaving my DS and going off to do other things, like check my email, eat something, go get the mail, etc., while my party just auto-battled their way through.

Passage of the Eidolons was also Extremely Annoying, but not as much as Sylph Cave. I didn't want to strangle the creators when playing it, but I was made Very Sad when I finally made it to Fey March and accidentally stepped on the wrong portal and was promptly escorted out of the entire cave. That was Not Cool. But now I have Leviathan and Asura, though I'll probably almost never use them since I fight most of my battles on auto-battle...

Anyway, current party looks something like this:
LV69 Cecil
LV67 Kain
LV66 Rosa
LV62 Rydia
LV54 Edge
Recommended party level against Leviathan was 43-45. Bah, at this rate I will have maxed out everyone but Edge by the time I finally take on Golbez. Not that I'm complaining. :D

re: Disgaea DS
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 13:34

Disgaea DS released the other day! I'm pretty new to Disgaea, but my brother loves Disgaea 1 on PS2. Apparently the DS and PSP are both ports of the first Disgaea game (so they remade it twice? What makes Disgaea so great that its first game gets so much love?) Anyway, I'm purchasing the PSP port for my brother, but I'm currently having a lot of fun with the DS port. It was really confusing at first, but I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

Also, I love Laharl. And I really, really, really want a dragon. My brother says it's not worth it to get one right now, but considering the way I play games, it'll be forever before I get one at this rate, so I'll just continue training up my weaker characters (OTL Laharl is nearly 10LVs over everyone else) and collect enough mana to create a green dragon or something. :D

re: Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racing
DC • USA

My brothers and I started playing this again~! We continued my dad and my 10-year-old file and are finally tackling all the races that I wasn't able to beat as a kid. My brothers are failing miserably, but I managed to win the 1st place blue ribbon for two races I always had trouble with before. Then promptly lost miserably at the third one. Oh, if there's anything I hate more than losing equipment due to people leaving my party/dying, it's losing a race when I was winning for the first two laps. Oh god that pissed me off.

I think we're only playing this game on Sundays. :D

FINALLY finished with the gay lawyers.

2008-09-25T14:28:00.000-07:00

re: Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: case 5

AND after hours and hours and hours of gameplay for the "nearly done" case 5, I have finally finished the last case and as such, the first Phoenix Wright game. Man, case 5 was entirely too long. The case was really interesting and the plot twists were homgwtfwow but at the same time it was a little along the lines of "goddammit would he just fucking shut up and stop denying it? HE DID IT, HE DID IT." My brain is all fried right now, the ending was fantastic, but still. Too long. And I'm not really the type of person who complains about the length of a game. :|

Anyway, overall I really liked this game. The first two cases were too tutorial-like for me, since I kind of figured out how to play it by halfway through the first case, and uh, they kept explaining things I figured were common sense but the stuff I was actually confused about I had to figure out myself. The fourth and fifth cases were both fantastic though, kind of made up for the Too Long And Not Interesting Enough third case, though #5 was a bit on the long side as well (if my memory serves me well, this case took me well over 24 hours to beat. Over a period of uh, 3 months I think, due to lack of time. And that's only game-play, not including the time I had to read the faq to remember what the hell I was doing originally).

Aside from the numerous typos in this game... (wonton instead of wanton, transferal is not the same as transferral, possible instead of possibly, etc.) I think it was well translated and I know there were a lot of puns in the Japanese version that the translators must have worked really hard to adapt so they worked similarly in English. The characters were fun (I liked Ema more than Maya definitely though, design was nicer as well), and Edgeworth did a good job of making me adore him even though he pissed me off like crazy in the first three trials. Overall I think I liked all the characters, Phoenix is adorable, and just, I love the character designs. Though, I think the Judge made a lot of comments that were so ridiculous and unintelligent that it stopped being funny at about the second case.

AND I think that's all I have to say about the first Phoenix Wright game! And now, back to Kirby and FFIV, and I do believe I'll start Disgaea DS as well since I picked that up. At least to see what it's like.

Overall: 8.5
8.5 Story
9.0 Characters
8.0 Plot
8.0 Graphics
9.0 Gameplay
8.0 Sound
9.0 Replay Value

Eh, this is kind of short.

2008-09-24T14:23:00.000-07:00

re: Dragon Quest Swords
WII • USA RELEASE
play time: 13:32

Eh I'm in Chapter 8: Deathbringer now, and what they didn't let me go back to town to train up, heal up, etc. D8 I need to upgrade that Rorrim sword, and get some more master strokes, and, and, and dude, this game is kind of short. What I'm already going to the final battle and I'm only LV31 and Anlace is 25? What. Tell me this is not already the end of the game or I will be horridly disappointed. Tell me I get my ass kicked due to some plot twist and am forced to go back and train more.

re: Kirby Super Star Ultra
NDS • USA RELEASE

IT IS SO CUTE OMG. That is all. Though, Kirby runs a bit slower than I remember and would prefer.

Oh, FFIV, how you make me so happy.

2008-09-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 27:40

I finally went back and beat that Lugae fellow. Though it took me like, 4 tries since I kept killing him before he could get out Barnabas-Z and I wanted Barnabas-Z for my bestiary. But then after I beat him, Yang went and got himself killed! And right after him, Cid! D8 I GOT YANG TO LEVEL 59 TOO. [cries a little inside]
suggested party LV @ Dr. Lugae: 35-37
actual party LV @ Dr. Lugae:
LV61 Cecil
LV59 Yang
LV57 Kain
LV56 Rosa
LV52 Rydia

I got Edge, by the way. Though it took me like, three times. Anyway, my current party looks like this:
• LV63 Cecil
• LV59 Kain
• LV58 Rosa
• LV54 Rydia
• LV36 Edge

Why is Edge so WEAK? He comes in at an even weaker level than Rydia... Rydia came in at LV36. Why are you so weak, Edge. There's gonna be a shitload of training up for me to do before I go fight Rubicante. Rubicante's suggested party level is 39-41, which means Edge needs to be at least LV 55 I guess before I'll be happy taking him to the boss.

...Also, I just went and re-watched the opening FMV sequence and h-holy shit wow. Just. WHY IS EVERYONE SO GORGEOUS? I'm just fangirling over everyone. Especially Kain. HIS HAIR. THAT YELLOW RIBBON IS ACTUALLY HIS HAIR. HIS HAIR. Damn, he has nice hair.

A-anyway. This game is so many levels of kickass. I really, really, really haven't had so much fun with an RPG for a...very long time. There have been so many games I started and didn't finish in the last few years due to lack of time, work, etc., or for any other various reason, but usually they didn't hold my interest long enough that I wanted to play it all the time anyway. FFIV has totally re-ignited my gaming spirit omg. ;; /cue birds and chirping and all sorts of hearts in the background

Wow, I feel so young again.

2008-09-21T18:05:00.001-07:00

re: Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racing
DC • USA

Oh man, my brothers and I pulled out our old Dreamcast and started play Starwars Pod Racing again. I can't believe our memory cards from 10 years ago are still in-tact! I'm so impressed, wow. And our save files are still saved onto them! And my brothers and I were playing and those tracks we remember being really hard to beat we can beat them and even beat our old time records! HAHA oh wow, Star Wars Episode 1 Pod Racing was what got me so interested in racing and cars, so many years ago. And I was so excited to play it again and it's just SO NOSTALGIC.

Oh, Dreamcast, how you crashed, long and hard against the Playstation. But I still love you. Or, the Pod Racing part of you. ♥

I AM IMMENSELY PLEASED WITH MYSELF RIGHT NOW, OH YES.

2008-09-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 22:07

Oh man, fighting Golbez was a pain though much simpler after I learned what the strategy was. And since my characters were powerful, I'd nearly killed him by the time he decided to kill everyone in my part, so I only needed to get Rydia up enough so she wouldn't get shot down immediately and it took one hit from her dragon to wipe out Golbez. (I was all ready with another Cura so she could summon it again, what.)

Anyway, Rydia returns to me at LV30. Wat is this faggotry. She left me at LV24. :| I am severely unimpressed here. Especially given the plot. She leaves me to go live with the eidolons for a decade or so, and only grows a measly 6 levels? And she was at least training. Rosa leaves me at LV22 and she manages to come back at LV26 and she was hanging by a rope the entire time. Pretty impressive there, managing to grow 4LVs while being a hostage. And Kain, Kain leaves me at LV12 and returns to me LV32. This is what I consider acceptable. Now I have to whip Rydia back into shape but I can't really fight effectively in Tower of Babil since she keeps getting her ass kicked whenever I'm surprised by a bunch of Flamehounds who like to cast Scorch on my entire party. What the shit.

Though, I am extremely fond of Cecil's new augment. :D Draw Attack equipped with Counter is crazy effective. I can just autobattle and never heal. So great. My current party looks like this:
• LV53 Cecil
• LV50 Yang
• LV47 Kain
• LV45 Rosa
• LV37 Rydia
I also happily equipped Cecil with the Dwarven Ax, since the lowered speed and evasion stats don't really matter if he's doing counter all the time. XD He doesn't even have to regular attack anymore, and he's still plenty fast enough since his insanely high level makes up for the lower speed, he's still the fastest character in my party except for maybe Yang. So now instead of doing a critical hit of 1900 and a regular hit of 1400, he's hitting a critical hit of 3100 and a regular hit of 2400. Very pleased here, oh yes. (Dwarven Ax upped his attack to 82 from the 55 it was with the Sleep Blade. :D)

Shhh, busy being pleased with myself here. (Although I'm still mad at Square Enix for developing Final Fantasy IV the After: Tsuki no Kikan exclusively for mobile phones.)

D8 This is why I like to follow guides OTL. When I don't, I miss out on all sorts of great things.

2008-09-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 20:36

I THINK I MISSED OUT ON DUALCAST, CRY, BLUFF AND TWINCAST AUGMENTS. D8 BRB I think I saved right before going into the underworld so I might still be able to get them... though I'll lose like, 20,000EXP.

EDIT- aw fuck, I never put augment abilities on the twins, so there's pretty much no way I'll get their augments. Fuck fuck I really wanted Dualcast and Twincast. :| I should still check that other save file though, since it seems I missed out on a lot of areas in the overworld. Though I could probably do it later. Maybe. Damn, fighting Golbez at the Dwarven Castle is gonna be tricky without dualcast.

Crawford isn't any more useful in Arondight Heights either. Maybe I should take Anlace instead.

2008-09-16T13:58:00.001-07:00

re: Dragon Quest Swords
WII • USA RELEASE
play time: 9:32

Arondight Heights is kicking my ass despite my high level. I don't wan't to proceed to Secace Seacove until I master that area, but those rock bombs and the flying anchor...thing... is causing me no end of Getting My Ass Kicked. Even though it's not really doing my character (Koyasu) any damage, it's kicking the shit out of my companion. Also, Fleurette is thoroughly useless. I can't even use her to fire long range attacks and her MP is too low to make her an effective healer so I'm slowly eating my way through the stock piles of medicinal herbs I collected while getting mini medals at Caliburn Cave.

I also have quite a bit of money now, so I splurged a bit on headgear and a new shield. Still don't have the ice crystal I need to turn my steel broadsword into a frost blade though. My brother recommended I get the frost blade before I get the fire sword and the lightning blade, so I'm gonna try that. ...I wonder when I got this thunder ball and the two lava rocks though. Must have been fighting some enemy cause I'm pretty sure I still haven't cleared Caliburn Cave with S Rank. Maybe I should go ahead and turn my sword into a lightning blade since I can't seem to get my hands on the ice crystal. If I do eventually get the ice crystal, I have more than enough gold (14,000+) to either purchase a steel broadsword later or temper a copper sword into one. Or something.

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 20:03

Rosa is LV40 and Cecil is LV50! So I'm gonna head into the underworld next. FFIV is fantastic so far. I'm really adoring this game. There are things like...like Not Being Healed After Leveling Up and Very Low Gil Acquisition Count that make the game actually rather challenging. I'm currently 15-20 levels over the recommended dungeon level, and also possess an extremely pleasing 130,000G (it comes of that 50,000G treasure chest, Never Buying Anything Cause Everything Is Shite Expensive, and Fighting 50 Monsters In Order To Level Cecil Up One Level).

Bah, training white mages is so uninteresting.

2008-09-14T15:54:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 18:17

Rosa is currently LV31. Kain is LV34. I am refusing to enter the underworld until Rosa is LV40. If I do this correctly, I can get Cecil (LV45) to LV50 before that happens. [nodnod]

...Training Rosa is shit-damn boring, though. It doesn't give me the same satisfaction as training Cecil. Also, Kain/Rosa and Cecil/Rosa pairings are making me :| all over the place. What makes her so popular?

Oh, I love level-whoring.

2008-09-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 17:15

So like, I checked gamefaqs for info on the rainbow pudding that Puddingway wants me to get, and got the information I wanted: namely that I can't get it at this point in the game. Probably. Anyway, while I was at it (I don't want spoilers, so I only looked up a few paragraphs) I checked out what level they suggest I be at when fighting Barbariccia.

Suggested Party Level: 28-31

...HAHAHA. Kain joins my party and he's an incredible LV32. Cecil was LV43 when fighting Barbariccia. And the rest of my party (that is, Yang and Cid) were 39-40. SO, YES I AM VASTLY OVERPOWERED. I AM PLEASED.

Productive day is productive. :)

2008-09-12T14:52:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 16:157

⇒ Cecil is now a LV40 Paladin! :D I ended up letting both Yang and Tellah die for a few hours while I trained Cecil to be 3 LVs higher than them, so now Cecil is undoubtedly the strongest character in my party. HOHO I am happy. It was a bit dangerous fighting numerous monsters that could cast Stop or were capable of inflicting Stone, so I had to save after every battle. LOLOL.
⇒ Also, I was very happy to be allowed into the Troia treasure room. :) The line of treasure boxes with useful items in it made me so happy. And having 85,000+ g because of the 50,000 g treasure box in the room was so much awesome. :D
⇒ Now fighting in Tower of Zot, where I'm happily leveling up...more. HAHA. I'm such a level whore. I was sad to find a gorgeous Flame Sword that would raise my attack power to 75, but pretty much render Cecil useless against any flame monster. Which...are numerous. OTL.

re: Dragon Quest Swords
WII • USA RELEASE
play time: 6:57

⇒ I found a liquid metal slime in Caliburn Cave, and remembering what my brother told me about them, I hacked and slashed it to pieces. :) Both Prince Pretty Face and my character (I've named in Koyasu) leveled up like, 3 levels. XD
⇒ I GOT THE LIQUID METAL ARMOR. YES.
⇒ ...Finally, I can proceed the story now. Except, haha, whoops, ...Prince Anlace and Koyasu are both LV16... SO MUCH OVERKILL.

STILL RAGING OVER LOST LVs, EXP, AND EQUIPMENT.

2008-09-11T09:17:00.001-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 13:15

⇒ Cecil was LV29 Dark Knight before he became a Paladin. He had 75k EXP. I-I'm still raging over losing that. Now he's a LV30 Paladin with 100k EXP, but I'm STILL SO PISSED.
⇒ Before Palom and Porom turned themselves to stone, I should have taken all their equipment. But I spent like, an hour fighting that water boss with the strange name and I didn't have a chance to remove it. So pissed, ohmygod.
⇒ BRING BACK MY BOW AND HOLY ARROWS.

Also, I really, really, really don't like it when my favorite character is at a lower level than other characters. :| Like, I really, really, really don't like it. And Cecil is only LV30, while Yang is LV31 and Tellah is LV32. And it's BUGGING ME LIKE CRAZY. I just want to stone them and let Cecil grow two levels.

I'm instead settling for just never healing them. HAHA. Cecil's counter and cover are working really nicely together, since Yang is currently at 120/1300 HP (approx) and Cecil will automatically cover him when he's attacked. :D Also, training right next to the chocobo forest outside of Troai? So convenient. I just have to head over to the white chocobo and heal my MP. No more expensive inn nights trying to conserve my ethers HOHOHO.

re: Dragon Quest Swords
WII • USA RELEASE
play time: 4:16

⇒ I'm slowly, but surely, approaching 100 mini medals! I currently have 36. :) That's more than my brothers ever got on their entire game play through HAHA. I WILL get that liquid metal armor before I progress the story. :D
⇒ BUT, I did finally manage to clear Caliburn Cave with Rank A, so I got the Iron Ore I needed to temper my Copper Sword into a Steel Broad Sword. And I got an Iron Shield in one of those lucky bags. :) I am happy oh yes.
⇒ And Prince Pretty Face is getting less useless. He's LV8 now, I think. I want to at least get him to LV10, but I expect he might be LV15 before I finally get all the mini medals I want. Or, I could be underestimating how slow he'll grow on max 10EXP monsters.

STOP TAKING MY EQUIPMENT.

2008-09-10T09:01:00.001-07:00

re: Dragon Quest Swords
WII • USA RELEASE
play time: 3:33

→ ...Gonna hang out at Caliburn Cave collecting mini medals for the next four hours of play time, I guess. I'm gonna beat the system and get that liquid metal armor for 100 mini metals HAHA.
→ Also, Prince Pretty Boy has joined me. He's uh, a little less than useless. Gotta train him up.
→ Do I have to temper my copper sword into steel broad sword? D8 I'd much rather just buy one.

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 12:13

⇒ Bwuh, what the hell, party. You don't just go overboard and take my equipment with you! BRING MY EQUIPMENT BACK.
⇒ ...I like these flying birdy things that give me like, 1300exp.
⇒ hohoho, gotta train up those two tiny little black mages. [from LV10 - LV23 HOHO]
⇒ But I like Dark Knight Cecil. Wry so weak, Paladin?
⇒ ......I LOST ALL MY EXP AND ALL MY LEVELS. YOU WERE LEVEL 29, CECIL. LV29. AND NOW YOU'RE LV1. I'm gonna go bawl my eyes out now.
⇒ okay, you're back to level 20 now. Quick train up, huh.
⇒ ...What. Th-they're....They're dead? WITH MY EQUIPMENT. WITH MY EQUIPMENT.. AGH.

I wonder what level I'm supposed to be at in Fabul?

2008-09-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 7:07

⇒ NOOOOO KAINNNNNN.
⇒ ...What the shit, Rosa? Can you be any less useless-damsel-in-distress-y?
⇒ Sacking castles and caves in this game is the most disappointing treasure hunt ever. Ugh. Every other game I can get powerful weapons and the like. I can't count how many potions I have now. I should start using Edward's salve move.
⇒ And bring back my bow and holy arrows, Rosa! >8| You don't go galavanting off as a kidnappee and take my equipment as well! Take the equipment off and then go be useless. >8|

AHAHAHAHA....yeah.

2008-09-07T19:48:00.000-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 4:37
⇒ [clears throat] So like. Uh. I was in the wrong area. I'm trying to get the sandgem from the Antlion Den, and uh. I went searching for it, and passed right by it and couldn't find the den so I assumed that the area I was in was the right area. After getting my ass kicked like crazy no matter how much I level-whored, I was trying to hovercraft back over to the oasis town in order to heal up at the inn, and I accidentally happen upon this other cave. So I entered and what do you know, "Antlion Den" shows up on the screen.
⇒ I am uh. Accidentally. Crazily overpowered now.

Level-whoring returns! ...Or not.

2008-09-07T09:28:00.001-07:00

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 04:21
⇒ FUCK YOU EDWARD FOR BEING SO FUCKING USELESS. I trained you up like 5 levels and you're still getting your ass kicked with a single Thunder move. THAT AND YOUR MOVES TAKE TOO LONG TO USE. BE USEFUL FOR A CHANGE. AGH.
⇒ Why are the enemies at that cave to the far right of Damycan by hover craft so powerful anyway? They're totally kicking my ass, I'm not at the wrong place, am I? Because I KNOW I spent a ridiculous amount of time level-whoring. Agh. I'm so out of touch in gaming. [resolves to level-whore more so]

re: Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: case 5
⇒ Why does this case continue to be so long? Geezus. I swear we're on part 12397266 already.

PLAYING WITH SWORDS

2008-09-07T09:24:00.001-07:00

I would like to mention I am very bad at thrusting.

Pokemon Diamond continues to successfully bore me to death.

2008-09-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

re: giving Pokemon Diamond another chance

name: koyasu♂
location: jubilife city (first time)
badges: 0
story status: before fighting blond "friend" for first time

party:
• chimchar ♂ → "GOKU" → lv12
• starly ♂ → "BYRDI XIII" → lv9
• shinx ♀ → "FLAAFI" → lv9
• shinx ♂ → "ZECHS" → lv8
• zubat ♀ → "BRUCE♀" → lv4
• magikarp ♂ → "FYSHI IV" → lv6

comments:
• those lv3 starly need to stop kicking my lv7 shinx's ass
• I love giving my pokemon random/anime nicknames
• considering changing "FLAAFI" into "NOIN"
• named my blond friend "SEKI"
• lol I'm not fighting SEKI until all my magikarp is lv10
• why is shinx so weak?
• I named my budew "SCALLION"
• I named my bidoof "PUHPER II"
• have another pokemon in the box but I can't remember it, that's why it's in the box

So far, game is still pretty boring and pokemon are ugly. I vow I will play this game to the end this time, and I will have a party of red/blue/yellow pokemon. I want a Pikachu. Where can I get Pikachu. And I want a Charmander. And an Eevee. I say the original games are still the best. Pokemon Yellow ranks #1, though I adore Fire Red and Leaf Green. I say we need a Lightning Yellow. If my pokemanz isn't following me around at all hours of the game, it's a B class pokemon game.

In other news, I have convinced both my mom and dad that Wii Fit is a necessary game to have.

I really don't need another blog.

2008-09-06T16:16:00.000-07:00

Ah well, instead of cluttering my journal with my gameblogging, might as well make it here. :D

[link] backloggery
Just got one from a couple friend's recommendations. Will severely need to update though, haha. There's a million and one games missing from the current list.

re: ファイアーエムブレム　新 • 暗黒竜と光の剣
NDS • JPN RELEASE
play time: n/a
⇒ eeeeeee MARTH.
⇒ I've said it once, and I'll say it again. Playing tactic games when you don't understand the objective is... uh. Very Difficult.
⇒ c'mon Nintendo [whines] announce a NA release date already~ ;____;

re: Final Fantasy IV
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: 03:26
⇒ Cecil, why is leveling you up such a slow process?
⇒ Rydia, before you up your attack strength, how about accumulating vast stores of MP? You're thoroughly useless!

re: Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney
NDS • USA RELEASE
play time: case 5
⇒ almost done! :D I started this game three months ago, but then got really busy with school and couldn't finish. Had to read the FAQ to remember what was going on though, LOLOL.
⇒ will hopefully finish soon. preferably today.