Don’t worry, no whining today. After 55 hours and 221 quests, I’ve already turned in my Right to Complain card. Unfortunately I don’t have anything new to report about Frontier Gate Boost+, just more of the same.

Accept quest, do quest, accept quest, do quest, accept quest, do quest. It’s not like the quests are all that interesting either. It’s either exterminating monsters (80%),  catching monsters, finding missing persons, finding X of a certain item or delivering items to villages. Sometimes they get a little creative with the descriptions. One recent quest involved tracking down a thief who had stolen a swimsuit recipe, for example. But it still boiled down to finding him and beating the tar out of him, just as I’d done with the other 22,430 enemies before him.

I got two new party members, rather unwelcome additions at this point.

Arsha: Foreign (spy?) girl allegedly looking for medicine ingredients. I haven’t gotten much use out of her yet because she can only go on specific quests that require items I don’t have.
Kurotaki: Samurai guy. Might be a spy too, but I doubt it. Seems like a nice fellow, but I don’t have the tyrannosaurus fang I need to be able to upgrade his katana further. Which is a shame because even at a low level it’s extremely powerful. I’ve killed about 5 tyrannosauruses in vain, but I might attempt a few more captures before I give up.

Difficulty has gone up quite a bit, which is another not-entirely-welcome addition. Not because I have anything against hard RPGs but because this game is “hard” in my least favorite way: it ramps up enemy HP, DEF and ATK and arms your party members with the equivalent of cotton wool and jelly. Part of it is my fault for trying to give all my party members equal attention and another part of it is my fault for experimenting with different weapons instead of sticking with what works best (knuckles. So broken it’s not funny).

But self-imposed challenges aside, the giant leap in enemy levels and stats is still a PITA. Especially since I’m expected to farm items to upgrade my weapons and armor, which I don’t want to do. I’m plodding on as best as I can, chipping away at the harder quests one at a time, but somehow I’m not feeling the same joy one usually gets in RPGs after killing a tough boss or fulfilling a difficult request.

And yet I’m still playing. Because really, Frontier Gate Boost+ is more fun than I’m making it sound. I just don’t know how else to make it sound because I’m describing it as accurately as I can. I think it would be a good game to play multiplayer, with a real life person controlling your battle partner and making individual decisions. As it is right now, enjoyment of the game boils down how much you can stomach killing the same frogs and wolves and hornets for 58 hours in a row. Luckily I’ve got plenty of experience in that sort of thing, so I’ll be at this for a while. Don’t wait up!