23 hours and 05 minutes gone. 127 dragons killed, 128 left to go. That doesn’t necessarily mean I have another 23 hours left, of course. Game developers are skillful at padding games out to make as long as they want to them to be. It wouldn’t be strange for them to have a whole dungeon with just one dragon at the end, but on the other hand I could be lucky and get to fight 16 dragons in quick succession on one floor like I just got done doing. Good times, good times.
Length calculations aside, I must say just having the Dragon Counter is a tremendous boost to my gamer morale. I’ve seen Encounter bars for specific dungeons in certain games (Ar Tonelico comes to mind) but if I’m not mistaken having one of the whole game is unique to the 7th Dragon series. More games should have one, seriously. Just seeing that number reduce due to my actions keeps me going through the dryer bits. When you get to the halfway point and you start to feel a bit When Will it Ever End-ish, you look at the counter and welp, I’ve already come this far, I can’t leave the rest of the dragons hanging. It wouldn’t be fair to those I’ve already killed. Gotta Kill ’em All, just to be fair.
Ahh, nothing like a long soak to get you pumped up for more dragon-killing.
Another thing I like about 7th Dragon 2020 and II – the NPCs are actually useful. I’m not just talking about the quest NPCs who have been giving me some very nice rewards lately. I mean people like the Self-Defense Force, the research team and assorted rebels, people who in other games just sit around and achieve nothing besides getting killed. Here they still get killed, but at least they’re good about volunteering for dangerous missions and actually accomplishing them at the cost of their own lives. Heck, sometimes they even survive! But usually they don’t, which makes me feel like I can’t let their sacrifice be in vain. Death to all dragons!
TBH 2020 went a little too far killing NPCs left and right. Luckily 2020-II seems to have realized that killing people off for cheap tears only works when you do it in extreme moderation. Of course it’s also possible that 2020 just had more people available to kill in the first place. The second coming of the dragons seems to have done a real number on Japan’s already tiny population. With their present birthrate, the nation is already doomed even if I don’t drive the dragons away again, but you can’t become a hero with a pessimistic mindset like that. If it’s a difference between definitely dying now and possibly dying later the heroic thing is to die later. Now if only they’d let me hunt those selfish, bungling Diet politicians along with the dragons, then the future would really be secure…
Aww, Level 2! How nostalgic…
Which is all a long roundabout way of saying I’m still playing 7th Dragon 2020-II, I’m still having a great time and I’m not about to stop any time soon. I wish they would stop interrupting me with all the story bits and just turn me loose on the world like they did in the first game, but I’ve already made peace with the fact that I’m stuck on rails, so I’m making the best of it while I can. I don’t expect to have anything more to report on this game, so see you when I’m done.
[I wanna play the new Lord of Magna game on the 3DS!! But I hear it uses the circle pad for movement. :-(((( This blows.]
looking forward to see what you think about Lord of Magna, heard some really mixed opinions about it so I skipped it back then. By the way, the post-game dungeon for 2020-2 is pretty damn hard, especially the random encounters, I pretty much just skipped all of them and only went for the boss battles in there.
I’m only two chapters into Lord of Magna, plus I started Tsurugi no Machi AND Bravely Default this week, so it might be a while before I get round to commenting on Lord of Magna. That said, my very early impression is a quiet “Meh” and I don’t know if the battle system is quite my sort of thing. We’ll see how things go once I have a few more abilities and party member.
I didn’t do the post-game dungeon for 2020 and I doubt I’ll do it for this one either. I’m kind of ready for the game to end now.
ah, fair enough. I never played the original 7th Dragon on NDS but apparently the secret dungeon expand on the relationship between the original and the 2020 games. I guess you can always find Let’s Play video and just read the story. 😛
Nah, I’m not that interested in the story. I just like to kill dragons!