Happy New Year + Resolutions 2013

fireworksHappy New Year! May 2013 be as quiet and uneventful for me as 2012 was! Everybody, love! And peace! And lots of video games!

This year I have two overall gaming resolutions:

1) I shall no longer force myself to continue games I’m not enjoying. I usually end up quitting later anyway and feeling terrible to boot.

2) Get out of gaming by the end of 2014. It’s a hobby I’ve been spending less and less time on and getting less and less enjoyment out of with every passing month. Nothing happened in 2012 to make me want a 3DS/Vita/WiiU/PS3/XBox360, either. 2013 will therefore be spent playing sequels and games I’ve “always meant to try” as a prelude to a more or less complete shutdown in 2014.

Unless, like, Sega releases, like, Phantasy Star Portable 3 or something, then I’ll be in a deep doo-doo (hint, hint).

And so on to the sequels and “always meant to try” games for this year. Last year I managed to get through 9 of my 12 resolutions.

1. Phantasy Star Portable 2 (PSP) – I can’t believe I’ve managed to hold myself back this long when every cell in my body has been longing to play this. It had better have been worth the wait. But I know it will be ‘cos it’s PSP2. 😀

2. Star Ocean Second Evolution (PSP) – The first SO was a highly pleasant surprise for me last year, and I’m told the second one is better in almost every way. Of course this could be false hype like with Suikodens I and II, but I’m going to trust in my own luck and try it anyway.

3. Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth (PSP) – One of those “always meant to try” games. I’ve been avoiding it for years because I hear you need a FAQ to get any sort of good ending. I HATE games like that, but I’ll suck it up and try it anyway. I used to have VP2: Silmeria for the PS2, but only my brother liked it so I got rid of it.

4. Dragon Quest 7 (PSX) – Continuing my rampage through the DQ series. 6 was a disappointment and I hear 7 takes forever to get going. If I don’t like it, I’ll quit with no regrets. I used to have DQ8 for the PS2, but only my brothers liked it so I got rid of it… or so I thought but actually I still have it? Somebody’s gonna be really happy to hear that.

BoFIVBox5. Breath of Fire 4 (PSX) – BoF was my favorite RPG series for the longest time before being overtaken by Grandia. I loved 2, 1 was okay, 3 was plenty good, but somehow I never got around to trying 4. I’ll make up for lost time this year. I used to have BoF: Dragon Quarter for the PS2, but I heard bad things about it so I got rid of it without even trying it.

6. Sakura Taisen 2 (PSP) – I played and liked 1 last year, so this is the natural followup. They need to beef up the battles a bit, put in a more satisfying story and flesh out the character plots a little more. That’s all it’ll take to make me really happy.

7. Monster Hunter Freedom 2 (PSP) – I’ve always wanted to try an MH game, so I bought this for cheap last year. The controls sound a bit clunky, but maybe I’ll love it once I get the hang of it.

8. Tales of Hearts (DS) – Continuing my (probably) doomed foray into the world of Tales games. If I have time this year I’ll also try Tales of Eternia. That will make it 4 Tales games I’ve played, more than enough to tell me whether this series is for me or not.

9. Saga Frontier (PSX) – Another of those ‘always meant to play’ games. I loved Saga Frontier 2, especially the art style and the soundtrack. It had so many cool, but completely wasted characters. Time to see what the original has to offer.

black matrix cross10. Black/Matrix Cross (PSX) – No list of mine is complete without a strategy RPG. Flight Plan was better known for the Summon Night series, but I’ve had my eye on Black/Matrix for a while.

11. The Last Story (Wii) – Mistwalker has really disappointed me so far. However I’m home, the family Wii is here and we have The Last Story courtesy of my brother with the weird tastes, so I might as well play it. I hear it’s fairly short and fairly good apart from a whack romance story, so it just might work out.

12. Lunar Silver Star Harmony (PSP) – A third ‘always meant to play’ game. I know I’ve played a little bit of some Lunar game or the other before, but I don’t remember which one. There was a dragon in a cave and we had to get a stone from it, and then my fat friend quit the party to become a shopkeeper and I quit the game because I was bored. I’m going to give the series (wait, is Lunar a series?) a proper try with Silver Star Harmony.

And that’s it. I’ll also play anything else that catches my fancy, but these should keep me on my toes this year.

Now for another day or two of forced socializing and then my time will be my own again. Happy New Year!

Xenoblade Chronicles – Last break before the end (spoilers)

xenoblade bionisWoo hoo! Finally reached Agniratha! I say “woo hoo!” because I’ve spent at least 20 hours supposedly trying to get there, but actually exploring as much of the world as I can. I killed my first ‘red’ mobs too, though they were just harmless sardines and flamingos. I tried to take on a level 74 caterpie with my level 68 party, and we were doing pretty well. Then some Vangs got involved and the whole thing turned nasty, but I’ll get them yet!

In story news, I kinda got annoyed at the cheesiness and ‘accidentally’ skipped a couple of cutscenes in the Hidden Machina Village, so I’m not too sure what we’re doing in Agniratha. If I recall correctly my party’s there to waste some kill-everyone-but-my-people Egil guy, but that’s about it. He might as well be Necron, for all I care about him.

I’ve also been doing a LOT of quests. It’s funny, because I was adamant when I started Xenoblade Chronicles that I wouldn’t bother with any non-mandatory quests. Yet here I am, running and jumping and hiding and swimming for 30 minutes to get one drop of water to a lazy adventurer. Whatever happened to my willpower? Then again I’m the same person who spent the first 20 hours of a story-heavy RPG doing nothing but quests, thereby semi-ruining the game for myself. I should have known it would turn out this way.

xenoblade agnirathaAs for my opinion of the game, it hasn’t changed much in the past 70 hours. I love the exploration. I’m enjoying the quests. I’m not sure when the timed ones will expire, so I’m focusing on those for now. I still don’t care much for the 7th party member, but I’ll survive.

Battle-wise, the battle system itself got stale a few hours in, but I’ve been keeping things fresh by switching my party around. I got tired of Shulk, Melia and Riki, so I’m trying Dunban and Reyn as mains now. One of them should have been the main character instead! Story-wise… yah, I still don’t care. And I’m okay with that. Let’s just get this over with, but not too quickly because I have a lot of exploring left to do.

And so it is with the utmost reluctance that I enter my final break before I finish Xenoblade Chronicles. This time I don’t want to stop playing, but there’s a lot going on around this time of the year. The sad thing about console gaming is the time and energy commitment involved. You can’t just roll over on your side, flip a switch and play for 15 minutes before bed. You need peace and quiet (well, I need peace and quiet) and at least a solid two hours if you really want to enjoy a console RPG. Once the hue and cry of Christmas and the New Year is over I hope to get the time to devote to finishing this dang thing already.

Gamebook DS – Aquarian Age: Perpetual Period = meh

aquarian ageAn average, seriously-cliched visual novel that I somehow found myself enjoying. I’ve been reading it on and off for the past couple of months.

Characters: Lazy, orphaned slightly perverted brown-haired protagonist, always comes to the rescue of the ladies, who treat him like dirt. Lives with his typically violent, tsundere, terrible cook of a  childhood friend/cousin/love interest and her saucy but competent little sister.

I’ve already forgotten his name, but he has an equally perverted loser best friend who may or may not be up to something sinister behind the scenes. Either that or he’s a rapist. Or both. Then there’s a blue-haired loli of mystery and a white-haired not-loli of mystery and some other assorted characters that you’ve already met if you’ve watched even one Japanese anime.

I liked it so much I read it twice. I’ve given up pretending I have good taste when it comes to video games. The simple truth is that I took a shine to the characters, and that’s usually enough to carry me through any game no matter how terrible. In this case it was Kokona, the blue-haired kid in the middle right, that caught my fancy, so I played through twice to try and get her ending. No luck, and I’m too lazy to use a FAQ, so I give up.

What was good: What can I say, I liked the characters, stale as they were. The character designs were generic-cute, and the characters themselves were amusing in an “I already know what you’re going to say, but say it anyway” kind of way. There was also a murder mystery involving strange fires which I found fairly interesting. Thirdly, Aquarian Age is a fast-paced, dialogue-based visual novel and each playthrough barely took three hours, possibly because I got the bad ending both times.

What made me quit: This might be just Kokona’s route, but it’s impossible to get a good ending without a FAQ. There is no affection system and no sound or visual to indicate whether the choices you’ve made are wrong or not. Sometimes you get an insta-end after choosing wrong, but for the most part the game progresses normally until BAM, a bucket falls on your head and sends you back to Day 1. I could have solved that by using a FAQ, but after playing it twice on my own, I didn’t fancy a third run glued to my computer screen. It doesn’t help that the dialogue crawls by at a snail’s pace even on the fastest Skip setting.

…Ah. Now I’m starting to regret deleting the rom. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty. But no. I can get pretty much the same experience by watching any random harem show, and when it comes down to that I’ve gotta better things to do with my time. *toss* It was kinda fun, though…

Zero no Kiseki – TL;DR

znkThis is the game that never ends
It just goes on and on my friends
Some people started playing it, not knowing what it was
And they’ll continue playing it forever just because
This is the game that never ends…

…Actually Zero no Kiseki was ‘only’ 60 hours long, but it felt like an eternity. You can’t see it right now, but I’ve packed up my PSP and shut it away in my desk. I don’t even want to look at it for a while.

The last time I wrote about the game, I gloried in the fact that there was no main baddy and no real story. Of course I wasn’t naive enough to think I’d get through the whole game without one. However I never expected there to be game developers who, knowing they had a 20-hour long story to tell, would waste the first 40 hours on absolutely nothing and only then get around to their main point. I’m more exhausted than mad at this point though, so I’ll just scribble some stuff and walk away.

What was okay

1. At least it wasn’t Fails in the Sky.

2. It doesn’t end with a brother tongue-kissing his sister and then running away in a fit of teenage angst.

3. Cassius Bright doesn’t show up. We do have two obligatory “I wanna have Cassie’s babies” scenes, though.

4. Battles are mostly fast-paced and fun. The enemies also start out closer to your party so you don’t need a passport and visa to reach them any more. The battle system just needed an auto-battle option and an animation skip button for magic and joint attacks to be near-perfect.

5. Weak enemies will run from you. They can also be whacked for quick Sepith.

6. I liked my party, there were some interesting NPCs, and even the last boss was more funny than evil. Lloyd is a terrible but typical main character, but the other characters make up for him.

7. It ended well. There are a few unanswered questions, but I’m satisfied enough that I’m not going to bother playing Ao no Kiseki.

znk partyWhat sucked

1. 60 hours of BS, of which only 10 was indispensable. Way too long game was waaaaay too long.

2. Some of the jobs/sidequests were really boring. I know it’s the S.S.S.’s job to do minor tasks like finding kitties, but it got old after the first few.

3. Too many references to Snails in the Sky. Some were references to SC and TC, which I haven’t played. What’s worse, those foul, disgusting Bright kids showed up again and even had the nerve to *vomits* join my final party.

4. Too many rescues of my party, too much kill-stealing. I know we’re supposed to be rookies but every other boss battle ends with someone jumping in to save our hides or even the odds. Thanks but GTFO.

5. Too much talking. The party members take turns repeating answers and facts just to pad out the text. Or maybe it was a misguided attempt to ‘flesh out their characters.’ “He must have gone out.” “You mean he’s gone out?” “But how did he go out?” “Yeah, we didn’t see him go.” “Yeah, he must have gone when we weren’t looking.” “Yeah, that must be it.” etc etc etc.

6. It’s a story about a corrupt city with two rival mafia groups. Mafia that never kill or even hurt anyone. Mafia that the story somehow still tries to present as a threat to Crossbell’s stability, even though they never actually do anything to threaten said stability. Not until the last 10 hours, anyway.

7. Magic is useless for most of the game until the final boss. Then suddenly it’s uber-useful. Also there are way too many useless items and accessories.

8. Wasn’t good enough to justify being 60 hours long. Wasn’t Good Enough, period.

That’s it. That’s enough. No more Legend of the Heroes games for me. I still have Ys DS left to try before I give up on Falcom entirely, but I’m not expecting much.

In other gaming news, I’ve hit the 75 hour mark with Xenoblade Chronicles. I need to stop exploring and move on with the game, but exploration is just so much fun! I also started Date ni Gametsui wake ja ne: Dungeon Maker Girl’s Type on the DS. Gameplay-wise it’s exactly the same as Master of the Monster Lair, but the story and characters are completely different so it’s been good so far. Since the year’s almost over those will probably be the last two games I play till 2013.

I haven’t gone anywhere

And I don’t have writer’s block or anything funky like that. I’m busy playing Xenoblade Chronicles and Zero no Kiseki, but I haven’t reached anywhere worth writing about.

Xenoblade Chroicles: 67-ish hours. Just reached the Fallen Arm and got the ‘final party member’. Do Not Want. I was doing so well raising affinity and mixing and matching my teams. Melia and Riki are actually pretty useful in battle, especially when you control them yourself. I just don’t know what they want me to do with this new character. Well, whatever. Exploring is still fun, and we’re FINALLY getting round to the core of the story, so that’s good.

Zero no Kiseki: Longest. Final Dungeon. Ever. I’ve been trying to finish the game for the past 5 hours, but they just keep sending me deeper and deeper into some ancient ruins. Then I finally killed the last-but-one boss and thought, oh well the last boss must be in the next room, right? Noooo, the dungeon’s going on. And on. And on. At present I don’t have a list of game developers I instinctively avoid. If I did, though, Falcom would be at the top of it.

I think, or at least I desperately hope, that I’ll finish ZnK soon, and then I guess I’ll have to write something about it. *sigh*

I also figure since my PS2 is already dead, there’s no harm taking it apart in a last-ditch attempt to fix it, so that’s what I’ll do tomorrowish.