Xenosaga III: Worst…security…EVER (spoilers)

Security in all the installations in this series has been bad, but I think Labyrinthos in Xenosaga III takes the cake for WORST ever in video game history. It’s a very important building handling all kind of top-secret experiments and materials, and they’re expecting an attack from the Federation at any moment! They even said there were Federation moles around, didn’t they?

So from the second we took those guards out on the first floor, every single door, lock, window, everything in the building should have been locked down tight and a non-stop flood of security should have poured in. Labyrinthos shouldn’t have keycards just lying around for people to pick up, and every elevator should be guarded tightly, especially in an emergency. And haven’t they heard of fingerprint and retina scanners? Well actually they have, because Kevin had some in his room, so why don’t they bloody use them!!!? Haven’t they heard of encryption? How can I just stroll casually up to the Vessels of Anima, enter a few commands and have full access to the system? And when I do that, they still wait till I’ve stolen 3 of them and outfitted the E.S. before having any sort of reaction to my intrusion. Ridiculous.

I was flabbergasted all the way through the dungeon. I was expecting some sort of trap or ambush at the end, like “We saw you coming all along, now die!” ‘cos they have to have security cameras in a place like this, right? I know they do because I saw the footage, but somehow they’re incapable of tracking us on the cameras and blocking us off, or setting traps for us? Who runs this installation, Sesame Street muppets? No wonder they got wiped out, with intelligence like that.

Anyway, I’m having fun finally finishing this series off. It would help if Shion wasn’t such a stubborn, whiny bitch, but that’s what the Mute button is for. What an annoying bitch.

Xenosaga III needs more chaos!!

Harvest Moon: Twin Villages – First thoughts

I’ve shelved Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 3 for the time being while I decide which guy to go for next. I’m very satisfied after dating Konno-senpai, so to throw myself back in the dating game for an inferior guy is like, hmm… But I get the feeling Shitara’s route will be all kinds of awesome, so maybe I’ll do that. Thanks to all who wrote about how to change the picture on my desk. I thought for sure Fujiyama was stalking me, *brrr!*

Right now I’m playing Harvest Moon: Twin Villages (a.k.a Bokujou Monogatari: Futago no Mura)! I used to really love Harvest Moon games, but most of the recent ones have been iffy-to-okay, not great. Sunshine Islands would have been great if I hadn’t played it right after Island of Happiness. The similarities between the two made SI feel very stale and unoriginal. In the same way there are a lot of similarities between Twin Villages and Grand Bazaar, particularly in terms of the art style and controls, so it lacks a bit of freshness.

As far as the story goes, there are two villages you can live in: Bluebell Village and Konohana Village. Hundreds of years ago the two mayors had a falling out and the two villages have theoretically been on bad terms ever since. Theoretically. I came into the game expecting some real rivalry and hostility between the two villages, but everyone’s actually really friendly. Even the two mayors have more of a friendly rivalry, they say the funniest things when they compete in the cooking contest (taking part in which is the only way to reunite the villages, go figure). Plus you can go to any of the villages any time you want, shop there all you want, do quests for the other villagers, talk to people, you might even be able to woo the girls on the other side with no real consequences, and basically have a good time with no restrictions.

Furthermore, Bluebell is supposed to be the “ranching” village and Konohana the “farming” village, but you can start keeping cows and chickens in Konohana right away, and I’m pretty sure you can grow crops in Bluebell too. What that means is that apart from the decor, there’s not much to choose between the two. Even better, you can up and move to the other village between the 23rd and the 30th of every season if you want. I’m yet to figure out why this would be a good idea when you can travel there any time, but this is more evidence that the rivalry is practically non-existent.

As far as the game itself goes, I’m only on Year 1 Spring 26, so I don’t want to come down too hard on it just yet. I’ll limit myself to two complaints for now: One, the map is rubbish. Remember the map from Sunshine Islands, how you could see where everyone was with one glance? In Rune Factory 3 the map even tracked movements, which was really convenient. Yeah, well, say goodbye to all that. Twin Villages’ map is awful and lacks a lot of detail. You can only see where your character is at any point in time, nobody else. You get a slightly more in-depth map when you’re in town, but when you’re exploring the mountains and other places, tough luck. It wasn’t so bad in Grand Bazaar because there weren’t that many places to go, but in Twin Villages it’s extremely annoying.

Second complaint, time still moves way too slowly. They brought back that system from Grand Bazaar where if you water the crops twice a day they grow faster, but the minutes pass so slowly that you’ll be done with all your watering, foraging and quests with game-hours to spare. Luckily I learned my lesson in the last game, so I don’t chase those extra days, I just go to bed. Unfortunately the time affects other things, particularly festivals. Most of them start in the afternoon, so you might have to wait up to five real-time minutes to progress with the game if you’re taking part in one. It sounds short, but there’s nothing to DO while you’re waiting, so you’re just sitting there staring at the screen…staring…staring…starinZzZzZz…

But still, I just started. After having to eat crow on my initial Atelier Lina review, I’m going to be as optimistic as possible about this game until I’ve finished at least one year. I’ll write a second post on the game then.

Read follow-up post here.

Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness

I’m doing  a replay of Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness, since I gave up on it back when it first came out out of boredom. I’ve made it to Winter 1 and now I’m rediscovering why I quit the first time. Winter is boring! I’d forgotten how boring because the most recent HM games I played, Rune Factory 2 and 3, had winter farming and lots of other stuff to do. In IoH it’s wake up, feed animals, wrangle wonderfuls out of Chen, mine if I want, sleep. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

Mining is kinda fun though, and this time round I definitely want to get married so I’m toughing things out. My goal now is to make a ton of money in the mines this season, buy as many town upgrades as I can in spring, get married, have a kid and then put an end to the game. I hate having unfinished business.

You might be wondering what’s happening with the more recent games I’ve been playing (Saga 2 DS, DQIX) and why I’m playing old stuff over them. Well, I’m wondering that myself. I guess it’s just the case that sometimes the old, familiar game is more fun to play than the newer, drier ones. But I’ll get back to them eventually.

New Year’s game resolutions

[Obviously an old post (3rd January 2010), now appearing here because of site crash and recovery. Happily enough I managed to play every single one of these games]

Finally finished Xenosaga Episode III, and with it the whole series. I thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay in all three games, even the undoubtedly inferior II. I also liked most of the characters, except that stubborn, idiotic, moronic Shion. People talk about how fresh it is to have a female character as the lead, but Shion only makes girls look bad, being dumb, weak-willed, dishonest, helpless, only finding meaning in and being redeemed by the males in her life (Kevin, Allen, Jin).

But apart from her I enjoyed all the other characters, especially chaos. Throughout the series I was hoping he had a really unique backstory and interesting powers, but we find out everything about him in the last 30 minutes of the entire series and it’s not that interesting either, so…yeah. I learned a lot more about him from reading wikis than I ever did from the game itself. That’s the sure sign of bad writing and an overly-complicated plot.

Real life kept me from playing a lot of games last year, so I’m going to be much less ambitious in my gaming plans this year. There are only a few major games I want to finish, and then I’ll leave the rest to chance, or to whenever something I just *have* to play comes out. Here’s what I want to get done, ASAP:

1. Saga 2. I just killed Apollo, I think I have just one more boss to go.

2. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey – I’ve had it for a while but I haven’t even started it yet.

3. Harvest Moon: Twin Villages. When it comes out, I’m gonna be all over it!

4. Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2: Almost done with 1, I just went back to kill a few side-bosses and now they’re kicking my ass.

5. Angelique Special 2: Old game for PSX, but it’s been on my mind lately.

6. Dragon Quest 9: I’m a few levels into this. It’s interesting, but not especially gripping. But I’ll get to it sometime.

7. Atelier Lina: Lise and Annie were pretty much fail as far as I’m concerned, so I haven’t been in a hurry to get to this one. I wish they’d go back to the pure alchemy-centrism of the older games.

If I manage to finish just these by the end of the year, it’ll be enough for me. Yeah, I’m that busy.

Love Plus early info

love plusTouch your girlfriend on the screen! I don’t know how the Nintendo DS maintains its kiddy image in the face of an increasing line-up of naughty and edgy games. What caught by eye today is Love Plus by Konami (yes, that Konami). Konami is no stranger to romance games, being the creators of the Tokimeki Memorial series, but they’ve managed to keep things clean so far.

Let’s see, according to Famitsu, Love Plus is a “Communication Game” that takes place in real-time a la Animal Crossing. Your job as a player is basically to get a girl to fall in love with you. Once she does, you can touch her in various worksafe places to increase her affection for you. If you’ve played the Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side games for DS, there’s a similar feature in there. Unlike most romance games, Love Plus doesn’t stop once you confess to the girl but continues to show your deepening relationship. Depending on the choices and actions you make, the events you get to see differ.

Apart from the touchscreen features, the game is also voice-responsive, which is only useful if you speak Japanese. It’s not all one-sided molestation of nubile young girls, though. They can also make approaches towards you, termed “love motions.” Sounds kinda gross. Anyway, if you play your cards right, you’ll even be rewarded with a kiss scene!

love plus 2Guess I know what the next game I’m getting is! Love Plus from Konami comes out on 3rd September 2009.