The Romalian Codex

Why Final Fantasy 7 Is the Best Final Fantasy.

2015-07-04T05:09:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I'll admit. I worded the title to be a bit eye-catching since the very idea of Final Fantasy 7 being good is just taboo in this day of independent thinking. I mean OBVIOUSLY the game that's easily broken, has one-dimensional characters, and a plot device that makes no sense would be the superior game right*? Well of course it is, it's not as popular, so for you to find it better, would mean you're more of an independent thinker, you following me here? Anyways, I havent had an update in a year and with the announcement of the Final Fantasy VII remake, I thought I should delve into why I think FF7 is the best of the series, or at least why I think everyone thinks it is.

Now obviously the best answer you can get is Nostalgia. Final Fantasy 7 was a GOOD number of peoples first RPG and they just remember it from their childhood so it sticks to them better. It's the same reason we think Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time and Halo 1 is so amazing, it was our introduction to the genre that we now love. It's like going to a Restaurant; If you've never eaten Italian before, once you do eat it and love it. Wouldn't you want to return to the Restaurant that originally served your meal? But to me Nostalgia is just a result of a greater beast. I mean, I also played Mario as a kid and today I think Mario is an ok game and have no desire to pillage Nintendo HQ demanding a Mario remake**. So something bigger must be going on here.... So let's just delve into it.

The First 10 Minutes

Every game out there should get you hooked by the first 10 minutes of the game. A lot of RPGs seem to miss this message and seem to think starting a game off with some kid in a forest with his dog for 3 hours is a good intro; it's not. Here you start off with an awesome CGI intro of the main city which is incredibly artistic and original.... it's just... pleasing to look at. You got these 7 reactors which are all attached in a circle, this giant tower spiraling out in the middle, helicopters flying around... It's very busy and interesting. It looks like a city that looks inviting but is actually a prison if anything.

Right off the bat from a 40 second CGI, you're already curious about this city you're in and when you jump off the train you're invited with this really pumped up and serious music. It's music that when you hear it, you know you're doing something really important. People are knocking our soldiers, yelling at you in the train.... then you're thrusted into a fight right off the bat, one-shotting both of them which both tells you how the game is played without anything too hard fighting you. Which also adds just to the excitement.

Then you get a close-up of the reactor, the giant futuristic building in a CGI pan up while you run into it. Just what is this building that you're running into in such a hurry? Who am I? Who are these people that are fighting? Obviously you're important because you're with them and you carry that giant sword, something unique to you. And yes, a Giant sword = Important. I said that. And to top it off, you very quickly should be able to use Cloud's Limit Break which adds to how badass you already feel.

Finally Barret tells you. The Reactor you're in is sucking the world dry and you're on a team to put a stop to it. You're there to Blow the Reactor Up. You are a Terrorist. You are 10 minutes into the game you're already in the process of overthrowing a tyrannical government; a government which you don't even KNOW about! You don't even know it's name! And to top all that off, you're already a trained warrior from SOLDIER which obviously is important since your teammates sound concerned about you being there, Barret obviously hates the fact that he needs you. You're NEEDED. You're not just a third wheel, you're not helpless, you're told right off the bat that you're a badass.

And finally you succeed. You blew up the damn thing and with an awesome cutscene to help secure the feeling.

All this happens within the first 40 minutes, assuming you weren't dawdling around. I don't think I can remember any other RPG that starts off this fast and pumped. The game tells you right away exactly why you should love the game: Music, Gameplay, Your Mission, Your backstory, and tons of eye candy to go with it. I think just about anyone who picks this game up and made it through this would HAVE to be interested at this point.

The Story Makes No Damn Sense.

Yes, the story not making any sense is a good thing. But it's not like this is because the game didn't tell you or because of plot holes, but because so much is going on and so many things are explained but you find out aren't true, you have to keep relearning things and figuring out what's a lie and what isn't. And I suppose this is kind of a personal reason, but I have to imagine that it's not just me. Whenever you have a story like this one, where it's all over the place, and you successfully follow it, you feel like you achieved something. Its a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that I can't even explain other then comparing it to a puzzle.

Between all your Sephiroth encounters, the Jenova reunion, the purpose of WEAPON, Vincents past, Clouds past, the Ending to the game, the history of the Cetra, the Wutai War, SOLDIER... so many things that tie them all together and whats funny is, a lot things are tied together from a single NPC in some town that you probably didn't talk to. But the fact you're interested in this story so much to wanna do this, wanna talk to all these NPCs, do every sidequest, and overanalyze everything, just heightens just how incredible the story is written in this game.

Sephiroth

Just say that name. Sephiroth. It sounds like a Star Wars villain, the kinda guy that the name you hear and right away know somethings up. The name kind of sounds like a melodic tone, an evil tone to it.... Like, I can't imagine the hero of my book being named Sephiroth. Maybe I'm just too preexposed to the game to think otherwise, but when I try not to, Sephiroth just sounds evil.

But even more than that... The guy was designed to be likeable: The Long Sword, Long Silver Hair, Long Black Coat, Metal Shoulder Guards, that Theme song, His legacy... Once again, like Cloud, the game is doing everything possible to tell you how badass this guy is, to the point where they actually stopped the entire game, sat you down in Kalm and force fed you the entire backstory of Cloud and Sephiroth's past. And because this history is so interesting, you didn't care. You witnessed one of the most likeable characters turn into another most likeable character. This is something I've always found fascinating was how charismatic Sephiroth was because he snapped... He was a genuinely good guy who fought for the right reasons and even in Crisis Core when you got to delve more into character, you learned how likeable he was and to suddenly 180 into nearly the opposite... and still retain all likeability. That's just interesting to me.

Oh and he walks through fire.

The Soundtrack.

I'm not too sure how I can explain the music to this game but it's definitely unique. Like the Instruments used in the game to make the music were made just for the game and gives the game its own character. No other Final Fantasy really did this, IMO. Uematsu somehow managed to make music that has its own personality that fit into the games setting. I can't explain it at all. I wont spend too much time here but I definitely do think the Soundtrack is a big piece especially when you got pieces such as One-Winged Angel and the Final Fantasy 7 Theme. I wouldn't say THE MOST but some of the most memorable music in the entire franchise.

Gameplay

The Materia system in this game is pretty new-player friendly, as in, anyone can pick it up and figure out how it works and with some creativity figure out some interesting tricks with the Materia system like Added Effect + Ice. See, gone were the days where you had to work hard for your spells and abilities, now they kinda just show up during the story and present themselves with little obstacles to obtain them. It's just so mindless to throw whatever magic you like onto whomever and that's that... now everyones a Magic User! And a Fighter..... and a White Mage....

It almost sounds like a complaint but one of the biggest things that deters people from actually completing a game is when the game is just too frustrating to level in or gain abilities. The easier the game, the easier I can pick it up, play it, and enjoy it. And when you basically are given nearly limitless possibilities for magic to whoever you desire, it just opens up so many doors to play however you like. And over time you can pick up Summons to entertain and surprise yourself with their long animations***.

Probably what I think is the most important aspect though is the Limit Breaks. Absolutely nothing is more satisfying then when you're just fighting somewhere and then out of the blue that short ding showed up "Clouds learned 'Climhazzard'" and now you're tasked to figure out what it does, and when you do you're so pleased because EVERY Limit Break is so flashy and fulfilling to use. It's like a Drug to charge that Limit up and just unleash a Satellite Beam from Barret or a Climhazzard from Cloud. All them loud Sound Effects to go with them.

Summary

To sum things up though.... FF7 is pretty much just very interesting eye candy. It's like an episode of Lost that was directed by Michael Bay. Everything is hyperdriven to be really cool and ended up working. And by no means is this my favorite of the series****, it's just my objective interpretation of why I would say it's the best in the series and why everyone clamors over it. But just because I'm writing this, it doesn't mean anything to our opinion. You can still think it's the worst thing ever and that the game no one else liked was better. This is basically just a set of observations that I felt like sharing.

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*- Notice how I don't say which game I'm talking about here.... ( Final Fantasy 8 )
** - Then again, I guess every Mario might as well be a Mario remake since it's the same damn recycled plot.
*** - 3 Bahamuts and a 2-3 minute long Knights of the Round. I'd honestly say they were trying very hard to be flashy with these.
**** - Mine probably being Final Fantasy 9

The Brilliance and Flaws of Final Fantasy 8

2014-03-06T02:55:00.000-08:00

It's weird to think of Final Fantasy 8 as brilliant when all you hear about this game is negativity: The Orphanage, GFs, Time Compression, Ultimecia, Angst, Junction. These are usually the topic of complaints when it comes to Final Fantasy 8. To me though, Final Fantasy 8 has always been a, "Well... I don't see what's so wrong with it." kind of game to me. I played it as a kid a whole bunch of times and I always found it to be a really fun game to pick up and play. It took me a long time to beat it, I remember loading up my childhood memory save where I was fighting Adel and I had 14 Fires Junctioned into Strength and like 20 cures in Vitality. That's it. I was adorable.

I just got done replaying the Steam version of Final Fantasy 8. It was nice to relive my childhood on PC, challenge myself to a few new things and really delve into the story that everyone else seems to complain about. I kind of want to go over why I think Final Fantasy 8 is brilliant later on because I want to end this on a high note; I don't think Final Fantasy 8 is a bad game, I'd say it's a tad bit higher than average, maybe a 6/10. It's still worth playing! But like I said, I'll go into it later.

Disc 3. I think when the developers were making this game, when they got to Disc 3 they must have just gotten back from a long trip to Disney World or something because the mood of the game completely changes right here, and it's not a change for the better. For some stupid reason, you find out that everyone on your party knew each other as a child, your GFs made you forget over time, and that you must go on to fight a more powerful Sorceress from the future. Ever since the beginning of the game, small clues have been put on you about SeeD such as Seifer asking "What is SeeD?" and Squall couldn't answer. But when the answer finally comes, it comes with a monsoon of absurdities, but I want to cover these little by little so I can fully grasp just how awful the storytelling is on this chapter.

You Knew Each Other As Kids: This in itself is not stupid, and I'll cover this later. But the way the game handles it is just horrible. The problem with this is, everyone was kind of teamed up against their will but made it seem random: Squall was intended to team up with Seifer and Zell in Dollet since he was a child. Cid knew that these kids had to be with each other... And that makes sense! Except how the hell did Selphie end up in Trabia and Irvine in Galbadia? And when Irvine joins you, it wasnt because of fate, but because of a rand
om coincidence that he was Marksman and they needed a Marksman.

GFs Make You Lose Your Memory: This is stupid on every possible level. This is nothing more than a lazy plot device for the developers to make an excuse to get everyone together but make them unaware that they knew each other. See, when it comes to the idea of GFs making you lose your memory, I kind of assume that it's like radiation; if you play with it for just a few moments, it wont harm you that much. The more exposure, the more it harms you. Except Quistis says "I have a confession to make... I secretly played around with GFs". Which to me says that, around Matron, who by the way was a Sorceress, you'd imagine she could sense Magic, she had to hide her GF from her. Maybe discard it somewhere else and I imagine she was under supervision for quite a while to the point where no one remembered or saw her use it. So this means that even with a tiny bit of exposure, she still had memory loss as severe as everyone else. It's inconsistent and lazy.

Irvine Knew All Along: That picture sums it up perfectly. When you get a new job and you're assigned to B Division and you just to happen to run into someone you went to school with and they don't remember you. Your first reaction is going to be "HEY, RON! ITS BEEN SO LONG".... not completely ignore the fact because "well no one seemed to remember so I shrugged it off.", REALLY? You mean to tell me that you remeet EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. you grew up with and you just.... shrug it off? Once again, this is just lazy writing because one person in the group needed to be able to confirm what happened since everyone else forgot. Well, it's more convenient to just say one person does remember but just didn't feel like mentioning it.

The Lunar Cry: I don't know what it is about this that just makes me roll my eyes. There's millions of monsters living on the moon that apparently one day are going to climb on top of each other until they make a bridge all the way to earth and.... invade. This sounds like something from a 12 year old's fanfiction. Why are there so many monsters on the Moon? How can they survive on a dead rock? Are they feeding on each other? Do they not breathe air? How are they surviving the vacuum of space? How can they complete this bridge without any form of gravity to hold themselves together? Better yet, why are people of Earth not just launching high powered weapons at the Moon to eradicate all them? They have the Space gear, hell, they're able to maintain a Sorceress Prison that orbits earth... It's not like they're threatening anything else on the moon if they wiped out all life on it.

Junctions: I have a small secret with FF8 that I don't tell other people when it comes to Junctions. It's kind of funny actually because so many people complain that it's so hard to do anything and all you need to do is spam GFs to win fights. Well, I don't ever use my GFs because of one thing: Ifrit. Ifrit teaches you Strength Boost. Every time you gain a level, you gain 1 Strength. By the end of the game you'll be hitting quadruple digits without much effort on Junctions, however this does mean your other characters are hitting low though. I will admit the Junction system is pretty hard to maintain since your levels don't amount to squat. What I do is, I have Squall killing everything, I put 100% Death on someone's Status Junction and the other person does whatever... Then once I can get Cactuar, I train the real people since he also comes with STR Bonus. But yeah, Junctions aren't bad and can be broken.

One scene that really bugs me about Disc 3 is when Rinoa ( possessed by Ultimecia ) unlocks the first seal of Adel's Prison. She walks up to the computer, pushes a button and first seal is broken. Really? ANYONE could just walk up to this computer and just push a button and potentially release her? I mean, I know you'd need to break the second seal as well, but don't you think this seal deserves a LITTLE bit more security than just a random person coming up, pushing a button and presto?

Another thing that bugged me was Galbadia taking the Lunatic Pandora. You see, Galbadia has no ruler anymore: Deling is dead and Edea defected. Seifer was never anyone of power, she was just a knight for the Sorceress and didn't really seem to do much but his Sorceress' willing. All we really get is a small cutscene explaining this with Ultimecia telling Seifer to get the Lunatic Pandora over Tears' Point, but that's it. The state of Galbadia is never addressed or how Seifer has the power or pull to achieve something like this. You see, I'd imagine Galbadia to be a state where once the ruler is dethroned, the people would rejoice and reclaim the nation. People don't WANT to be ruled, Soldier's don't WANT to invade and conquer and especially with the morale blow of Deling's death AND the defection of the Sorceress... what exactly is motivating these people to listen to Seifer and continue being a dictatorship?

The Brilliance

Okay, now that I got all that out of the way*, I can finally explain what makes this game brilliant. So one thing that you notice when you beat the game is you go back to the past and find Edea, she tells you to go home because you're in the wrong time period and that's that. When I was a kid, this was all that scene was to me was just a scene for Edea to meet Squall for a second and then to watch her gain her powers, nothing more. Then it hit me.... The entire game is pivotal on this ENTIRE scene and I do not mean her gaining the powers.

When Squall meets Edea, he tells her what SeeD is, what Garden is, their goal and everything. Right here she learns her child in the other room is this man speaking to her, and she learns that she and her husband must create a group called SeeD within a Garden whose sole purpose is to hunt down the Sorceress. With this small conversation, your destiny from Disc 1 was set. So when Zell was teamed up with you in Dollet; not a coincidence. Cid knew that one day Zell would fight the sorceress with Squall. Cid knew from the very beginning to make sure that Squall became a leader and that these kids come together and fight.

This is why I said them knowing each other as kids isn't as silly as it sounds... If anything, I think it should have been handled like they found out that Cid has been purposely teaming them up for this and that he'd reveal all this to you versus Irvine being a douche bag.

One argument people like to make is: "So the game is pointless, if you defeat Ultimecia, she just goes back in time to redo the whole thing."

Well, yes and no. Yes because it's true that Ultimecia isn't dead. She passes her powers down to Edea only for her to be battled again by Squall. But also no, because in the timeline of Squall, once Ultimecia is defeated... her reign is no longer relevant. She wont bother anyone else anymore. Ultimecia is effectively stuck in limbo and that's what the whole time compression thing was all about. You see, Ultimecia knew she was in limbo and she wanted to crunch time into a single entity so that she can recreate it and free herself from this limbo she put herself in.

Squall's angst really makes sense to me as well, especially when the cutscenes showing his background: He was raised as an orphan to a war, he was picked on all the time, the person he depended on left him very early on ( Ellone ) and this all just devastated him. It made him insecure and cut off from the rest of the world. He learned to depend on only himself because the people around him picked on him or abandoned him. If anything, this environment was what made him into the leader he is since he pretty much didn't care what people thought of him when he lead people and no one held him back during his training**. I suppose if anything is to fault him for being angsty is that he's a teenager and the text boxers show thought regularly.

And finally the last thing that I think makes this game brilliant is Laguna. Everything his guy does is just remarkable... he's another story to be told, he supplies exposition where it's VERY much needed and he's a very likeable person. In the original iteration of the game, Laguna was intended to be a second man character and I kinda wish that was still true because that would have been awesome to find out about since it contrasts heavily on Squall's depressive personality. One thing I thought was really cool was the scene where they were raising money, they did a TV show where they fought a Dragon and he was a knight.... for a sorceress. The same TV show that Seifer got his inspiration from. It's a small detail like this that could have been completely brushed off that they provided exposition for: Laguna was the Knight that Seifer watched.

All in all, I'm glad I replayed FF8 and got to learn all these neat little things and at the same time was reminded how awful the third disc was. I just hope FF9 comes to Steam soon.... I'd love to write something on that.

*- All this is speculation. If anywhere it's said otherwise, feel free to correct me.

**- Makes me wonder why he's training with Seifer if he's never once gotten along with him and doesn't rely on others for help though.

The Reason Path of Exile is Broken

2014-02-09T21:45:00.000-08:00

So I recently got into playing Path of Exile. After playing Diablo 3 for a little bit, I was extremely underwhelmed by just what a mess that game was. I saw from a few reviews about Path
of Exile. I kept hearing about this game; it's made by huge fans of Diablo, it's pretty much suppose to be the answer to everyone who complains about Diablo 3's lackluster existence. It was suppose to be innovative, it was suppose to be pretty much everything that Diablo 3 was suppose to be. And when I first started playing the game, I thought all this too...And let me just say this, I don't think Path of Exile sucks, I just think that with a few fixes it *can* be better... But in the state its in right now, it's just another Diablo clone that tried and will be forgotten.

What makes Path of Exile a good game* is the Sphere Grid. I'm going to call it a Sphere Grid because it is a Sphere Grid. To call it anything else is lying to yourself. But this isn't a bad thing.... The Sphere Grid is definitely what this game has going for itself, it allows you to customize your character how you see fit, like no other game before it. These are good things!

I also really like the Skill Gems. It kind of lets you pick and choose what you can define your character as and not to mention keeps you surprised about what skills you can find. This kind of system allows you to pretty much mold your character however you want, you can be a Mage that wields an Axe, a Ranger whose a tank, the possibilities are endless.

Now you might be saying to yourself, "Holy shit. After all this. This game isn't that great?".

Surprisingly, even to myself, yes. The overall game design is bad. It's a complicated mess of some idea that wants to be a crafting system but over complicates itself with it's "creativity". The way the game works is, you get these random orbs all over the place which either: Upgrades the quality of your items, identifies them, adds sockets, changes sockets, changes the stats, changes the rarity, downgrades the quality, grants passive points, etc. There's like 20-30 different orbs that you can collect which all do these different items.... In this list are those Upgrades and downgrades orbs which are *suppose* to be the way you get your items, though let me digress from this a minute.

I said previously, this is how you're *suppose* to get your items, and that's because... Because of this method of item creation...the enemies don't drop shit. You can kill 40 bosses or HQ mobs, but the items you'll loot from the drops will almost always be Uncommons, which are 1 or 2 random stats, or a Rare item which CAN be beneficial. See the problem this game runs into is, boss mobs are very hard to find, inconsistently drop items, and when they DO drop what you need... Odds are the items arent what you need. What Diablo did that this game doesnt do right is it keeps an armor set which is consistent throughout all classes: You will always start with leather, work up to breast plate, full-plate, scale, ring, etc.... THIS game however divides between Armor, Evasion, and Energy Shield. And BECAUSE this game divides *all* armor into these three different sets, you'll almost always loot armor that you don't need. I managed to get all the way to Act 3 with stuff I randomly found from Act 1. Your gear will *always* be inferior, and the entire game pretty much ended up me being one or two-shotted by everything.

Now, going back to the Orbs, with that in mind. The game WANTS you to make your own gear with these Orbs. Chaos Orbs can turn a White into a Rare, and some other Orb can return it back to White in case you aren't pleased. Now there's two problems with this: 1. You're going to have an entire inventory filled with these stupid Orbs, all of which boil down to parts of an orb, useless orbs or the very few actual useful orbs. 2. Getting the Orbs you need are *very* rare. I've found 1 Chaos Orb in my entire run, which means if I don't get whatever rare item I need, I'm screwed. I'm stuck trying to either hope to god something useful drops or this incredibly rare item drops. It's tedious and it's stupid. And on top of all these orbs, your stash will also be packed with all these Skill Gems. On my game, my stash is literally half skill gems, half orbs. It's so cluttered and a mess that it's just frustrating.

What this all boils down to is, the classes you pick don't really mean anything in the long run. Remember when I said that a Mage can wield an Axe or a Bowman can use spells? Well this is because this Sphere Grid. It's like in Final Fantasy X. Lulu might be your Mage, but with enough time or the right Orb, Wakka can move to Lulu's grid and become the Black Mage; your class means nothing aside from how you start the game. If you want to be unique in the long run, you wont be. And BECAUSE of this, you end up being bogged down with Skill gems you don't need, gear you don't need, and even run out of Sphere Grid nodes that are actually useful to you. The whole game turns into this confused mess where it seems like the game itself doesn't even understand what the best route is to take. I have never been so confused when playing a game, it's like the way to be successful with this game is some secret that only patience and more patience will you learn.

The Sphere Grid also has its flaws. When you level, you don't get stats. You get whatever node you activate: 10 strength, +4% attack speed, +4% run speed and when enough time passes... Something fascinating happens: You run out of stuff to level. It turns into, "Uhh... I guess I could just put a level into Intelligence..." or... "Oh wow, in 8 levels I can get added Fire Damage.". Without a consistent flow of stat boosts, you end up falling behind as a character. Intelligence doesn't do anything but add Energy Shield and Mana. Okay, well if your defense is low and your damage is low that just means you're gonna take longer to kill, but you'll still die because your damage is lacking.

**And last but not least... Defense. So the way the calculations for defense works in this game is pretty much what makes this whole thing not work. The way it works is, if the Enemy you're fighting is say... 100 damage and you have 10,000 armor. You will absorb about 80% of that damage. Which is good! Your armor is doing it's job! Now let's change this to 10,000 damage and 10,000 armor. Let's be realistic here, 10,000 armor is stupid, I'm not quite endgame so I'm not sure of the numbers, but I doubt it's quite 10,000 armor. But for the sake of examples, we'll do 10,000. Your armor will absorb about 11% of that base damage now and when it comes down to end-game bosses and higher difficulties, this amount of armor isn't doing anything for you! Combined with the fact that your gear is already a pain to get/make, and your sphere grid doesn't always work with you.... This all works against you and makes the game much harder than it needs to be.

I mean, it doesn't *suck*. PoE could very potentially BE a great Diablo killer. But where it is now? Me and all my friends quit because we were just tired of this system.

*Contrary to the title....

** Pardon me if my thoughts seem scattered here. This article took me almost a month to write....

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds Review

2013-12-01T00:52:00.004-08:00

My first impressions of seeing this game was pretty sour. I thought they were just taking an older title like A Link to the Past and trying to use it for profit and to be fair, they kind of did and I'll explain later. Every time I saw previews for the game, my opinion of it went worse and worse as the game's new puzzle mechanic, Graffiti Link, just looked absolutely stupid. However after the reviews finally came out, I was surprised to see it getting near perfect scores. I quickly put away my premature bias and picked it up just to see what was so special about the game. I was definitely not disappointed... This is something a little different as I will be using a number scoring system to elaborate the strengths and weaknesses of the game as this game does not come without it's flaw. This will also be spoiler free.... as best as I can. Be warned though, minor stuff will be revealed.

We start off the game in the same Hyrule we let off with in A Link to the Past and come to find out these mysterious graffiti paintings are all over town and as you venture further into the game, you eventually get the ability yourself to become these paintings inside the wall, where it allows you to roam off of cliffs without falling and add pretty much a new level of exploration and puzzling. And this is exactly where this games best feats lie: It's puzzles. You see the entire game is pretty much one giant puzzle for you to roam and collect these hidden out-of-reach objects with your new found power. This idea is absolutely brilliant in design and its something I've never seen before in a game and a lot of times I find myself completely confused on just how to obtain this item just barely out of reach and then "Oh god dammit!", I forgot I could use this new ability and just walk over to it and sometimes it's fun to just go into a wall, walk down the line and see if you can find something just on a whim. It's definitely really fun to experiment with. I'd honestly say this game does it's puzzles better than any game in the entire series. Though that might just be because it's fresh in my mind...

So the biggest thing I always head said negatively about this game was that you Rent your items. Yes that's right, every equipable item you obtain is rented through a merchant and if you die, you must pay for them again. Theoretically this also means you start off with every item as well... but there in lies the 2 problems with the game: The game also assumes you have every item and dungeons are only for story as they do not contain any equipable items anymore, which kind of cheapens the experience of exploring the dungeon. A lot of times you'll run through a dungeon and you'll see an obstacle that requires you to use bombs but oh wait, you didn't rent the bombs from the last time you died... Guess you gotta run out of the dungeon and rent them! Some dungeons are kind of obvious what item it wants you to have, but they will also contain a puzzle that isn't so obvious. But on the bright side you CAN buy the item later on and the game whores you with ruppees. So there's that...

The inventory in the game feels pretty lackluster... You got the very basic 9 items and that's it. Your inventory from Link to the Past is gone; Cane of Bryna, Cane of Somaria, Magic Cape, etc... Missing. There were a bit of puzzles later in the game that felt like the Cane of Somaria would have been welcomed, but I was disappointed to see it wasn't. I was kind of hoping with the inventory space that's opened, there'd be items that I was missing... but I wasn't.

One more gripe I had, and it's a very minor gripe: The dungeon and overworld is SUPPOSE to share similarities with A Link to the Past, it's a sequel afterall. So why is it that some dungeons look RADICALLY different? Like the Tower of Hera for example no longer has stairways and requires you to bounce your way to the top and looks completely different. Did some architect come in and just drastically redo all the ancient temples and palaces around the world? I mean the game is 500 years later, not 500,000 years. There's just no reason... But I understand why it is... I mean if it looked exactly the same, it would literally just be a rip from the older game and that's pretty boring. But continuity just bothers me.

SPOILERS BELOW

And where it SHOULD be different, in the "Dark World"*, it looks almost exactly like they stole the sprites from the Dark World from a Link to the Past. The Trees, the enemies, the buildings, hell I was honestly assuming the game was going to say that this second world WAS the Sacred Realm just inhabited by people now. But it's not....

END SPOILERS

But what this game does right, does it in spades. This games 3D looks amazing. Like a lot of the time I had my 3D on without even realizing it because it just looked so natural. It helps the game so much because of a lot of times the game has platforms on different levels and the levels can kind of be hard to see, the 3D makes it jump out. I would honestly say that the 3D is almost a requirement to the game... It adds so much and didn't really give me a headache. A lot of times the enemies and magic will jump out and kind of surprise you. I am honestly amazed to see myself call a gimmick like 3D an actual asset to the game.

The Gameplay is also the best you'll ever see in a top-down Zelda game. The gameplay is very fluid and rewarding. I kind of expected to see gameplay like this and it's kind of refreshing to come back to this type of Zelda after the 3D adventures of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword... so it's exciting to see it actually do very well. However, what cheapens the gameplay is the removal of ammo. All bombs and arrows share the same magic bar.... I'm not quite sure why they did this but I'm not sure if it's bad or good.

There are a lot more good things about this game and a few more bad.... None of them really come to mind at the moment, and it feels like I kind of did nothing but bash the game. But what the game does right does it SO well that it definitely makes up for its flaws. For a moment I was considering it better than A Link to the Past** but now that I've complete it, I wont.... but it's definitely a contender. With a little bit of polish, it could have done just that.

Gameplay: 9/10
Puzzles: 10/10
Story: 6/10
Music: 10/10
3D: 10/10
Design: 6/10
Overall: 8.5

* Let's be fair, it might as well be the Dark World

** A Link to the Past is my favorite in the series.

Final Fantasy XIV: The Empty Experience

2013-11-19T13:25:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the land of Eorzea.

In the world of Hydaelyn.

Okay. I think the problems with this game start with the settings: Eorzea and Hydaelyn sounds like one of those names you come up with when trying to make up some pretend story, like some satire for something you're making up as a joke. I actually had to google where or not I was spelling it right because it's just... Yeah, I'm digressing from this.

Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn is an MMORPG after the original Final Fantasy 14 failed. And by failed, I mean it BOMBED. Zero playtesting went into the game, the developers probably rushed the game in development, producers probably told them to move even faster and when it came to ideas, they were told to reuse whatever they can. In the end, it sold horribly and had to publicly apologize for it's awfulness and went back to the drawing board. And in the end we got A Realm Reborn.

I'm pretty experienced when it comes to: Final Fantasy, RPGs, MMORPGs and Final Fantasy XI. I've actually played Final Fantasy XI for a good while*, got myself 2 level 75's back when they were relevant and enjoyed what I found; Final Fantasy XI was vast, it took time to get what you needed, it required teamwork, it forced trolls to not be trolls, and everything about FFXI made you feel rewarded. You EARNED your items, your gil, your quests. It did NOT hold your hand and it definitely made you think on your toes. The last thing FFXI was, was player friendly. And I suppose in a society where games are nothing BUT player friendly, holding your hand and catering as much as possible... FFXI can get tedious and looked down on. I can see why.

So what did they do? The exact opposite: FFXIV is definition of player friendly. It does nothing but reward the player for doing menial tasks. Players don't have to help anyone anymore, the class system balance is non-existant since they aren't even required 90% of the time, but let me elaborate on everything:

Starting with the races; they're literally just reskinned FFXI races. Tarutaru are now Lalafell, Humes are Hyur, Elvaan are Elezen... etc. To me this just seems lazy, it kind of reminds of me those games you see like Ninja Blade where it's just a blatant carbon copy. In this case, it's the same people who made the original... Why not just keep the same names? I mean Moogles are always Moogles, Chocobos are always Chocobos, the world is ( almost ) always Gaia, why not just use your tradition and reuse the same names? Or better yet, why even have a different setting? Why not keep Vana'diel in the same setting? You're using almost all the same NM names and enemy models... But I can get over all this, this is all very minor and from the changes, it's all very good! All the NPC models are very different and have much more emotion to them. But for a game in 2013, this isn't really a pro but an expectation.

You have all your basics from an MMORPG: Quest Grinding, Crafting, Auction Houses, Open Worlds, and Dungeons. And what's kinda sad is that FFXIV gets almost all of this wrong, in one way or another.

Quest Grinding is pointless and it took me a while to learn this. Yes, it kind of keeps you busy, but in the long run, you can run something called FATEs which are Global Quests for MUCH more experience and faster than you can do Quests. Yes, you get more gear and money from Quests, but gear is very cheap so... So what the game ends up being is you finding Fates from beginning to end and MAYBE in the off-time doing some quests. And trust me when I say... this gets boring and tedious VERY quick. And you'll see that 30-70 people will be with you as you get to higher levels, as it takes longer to level. I'm sure this was a complete oversight from the developers but this has been around since beta... and it still hasnt been fixed.

But you wanna know the BIGGEST insult this game throws at you? It took me a while to really notice this... The game is criminally small. You have:

The Three Main areas, the North, Sound, East and West fields around each of the area; Mor Dhona, and Coerthas. You also got some Dungeons you queue into which I think was an awful idea since instead of being focused on exploration, it's now a rush down instance instead.

There is so much more I can say about this game and it's flaws. There might be so much more that I will find, so much more that will grow on me but so far this has been a huge step down. This is the year 2013, almost 2014 and these things are not oversights, somethings should be standard in their game. World of Warcraft came out 10 years earlier and it featured two GIANT continents, all with huge ranges of monsters, areas, and questing sites...

With future update, yeah... things will be fixed. More areas open up, grinding will be fixed and maybe classes will become a little more diverse... but as of right now; I have a very hard time saying I'm enjoying the game. I'm sure future updates will fix it and I'm happy to see other people enjoying it but I just figured I'd jot down my thoughts. I don't really feel like getting TOO into it since I have far more complaints with it but these two just seem to big the biggest glaring flaws.

* until the level 99 patch came out and pretty much ruined it

Super Mario Brothers and why I hate this game.

2013-10-25T23:05:00.001-07:00

Super Mario Brothers has always been so respected in the gaming community. People praise it for: It's memorable music, resurrecting the video game market after the '83 crash, and creating the platformer genre. People will tell you that SMB was the template for what people used to create their own games like Loony Tunes, Gimmick, and Kid Kool... I hate hearing things like this. I am not a fan of giving credit to someone for mediocrity. And I suppose this might as well be: A Nintendo hate rant, a Mario ( series ) hate rant, and a rant focused on the game itself.

Super Mario Brothers was a launch game by Nintendo on their premiere console, the NES. However this was not the first game they ever made as they had their own Pong Consoles, Donkey Kong 1-3, and a few others. But I want to focus on Mario... Mario was the main character of the Donkey Kong game, trying to rescue his damsel from the giant ape. Here we see him jumping over barrels, smashing barrels with a hammer, smacking birds with whips, and a few other things. All because ever really reaching the SMB game. Now with all this previous knowledge of Mario, I find it extremely amusing that the best method of taking out your enemies is by stepping on them. In fact, the best option to take out the enemy... is by completely avoiding them. And here is pretty much where my first gripes begin with this game: It's lazy on just about every way you can imagine.

SMB1 has bricks for the ground, clouds and bushes using the game sprite, music that lasts like 39 notes long before it starts repeating, the characters are literally guys in overalls, the enemies are everyday vegetables and animals just anthromorphed, and the way to beat the boss of the game is to grab an ax which somehow destroys a bridge... oh and when you Do grab it, it repeats the same message 7 times. The story isn't even great. I think the ONLY thing that truly makes the game stand out is the Fire flower.

I always hear the same retorts: Well, it's their first game for the NES, well they could only do so much, well games werent fleshed out yet! Okay, let's be fair here. There exists adventure games before the NES, like Jungle Hunt for the Arcades.. in fact the Arcades held a lot of great inspiration for games that the NES could have blown us away with... You see, Nintendo MADE the NES... AND had 3 years to make the game. You see the NES began development in 81, released in 83 and Mario came out in 85. Now considering they designed the console, you'd think Nintendo would have the advantage over everyone else on having a great looking game, in actuality though, we got the opposite. We got probably the ugliest and cheapest looking thing possible.

But why? Why does EVERYONE put Mario 1 on a pedestal? Well, I'd probably say the obvious nostalgia. I mean, the world 1-1 music is recognized by everyone. Just about everyone played it, including their grandma. We had 27 years of exposure of Mario and its evolution, we hear it every day online, we hear remixes of the music on Smash Brothers and other games, we have remixes of Stages like Mario Forever, Rom hacks, rereleases... we're BOMBARDED by Mario. And each time we're reminded of our childhood, we're reminded of that day when we first turned on that NES and played Mario with our friend and died on World 2-2... or found that Warp Pipe.

So the big question I ask you? Is Nostalgia really a reason? I recently saw a video online of the Top 5 Mario games ever. And I KNEW that Mario 1 would be no. 1 or close to it and my mind was blown when I saw that Mario 1 was put above 3 BECAUSE of its impact on the world. Not because it's a better game, but because of good timing. I just can't imagine sitting down, playing an objectively better game and saying to myself, "Well it's not as good as the less fun and poorer quality predecessor."

It makes me wonder if they purposely put as little effort into the game as possible since Nintendo is known for not doing anything with their games but doing the same thing: Mario and Zelda. Just start with the bare basics and very slowly make it better until you plateau on your ingredients of cookies and then just keep redecorating that same cookie with old ideas until it just dies.

Also, about the whole impact SMB had on the industry. This is another argument people make that I can't stand. To claim that BECAUSE one thing happened, the future is now made... Especially considering there exists platformers before SMB and there exists sidescrollers before SMB. I mean come on, even then, it's a character who runs right and dodges obstacles... Yes, it's very innovative!

Persona 2: The Forgotten Persona Game.

2013-09-04T21:49:00.001-07:00

That's right people. There is a game that came before Persona 3. The series didn't start on the Playstation 2, with the 3rd in the series like some Star Wars like series, and eventually have some PSP title prequel that was very forgotten and looked over. Surprisingly, the Persona series existed. Actually, there was two of them:

Persona 2: Innocent Sin

and

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.

They were both rereleased for the PSP
The first one the only one to reach America, the second one, not so much.
I never played the first game. However I played the second one pretty thoroughly. And in writing this, I actually consider playing the first now that I remember it's on PSP since it's pretty much Eternal Punishment in Engine. But I digress...

I just got done playing Persona 3. I played the game for about 8 hours and they were probably the most confusing, boring, and mundane 8 hours I've ever played in my life. And the only reason I was so intersted in playing this game was because the reception of the series is so high ( the series being 3 and 4. ). And it was very surprising to find out how just devolved the game was, the RPG aspect of the game was pushed off to the side, was very underdeveloped, and limiting... Where the rest of the game focuses so much on Social Aspects; a giant dating game. Why is this so popular? I just don't get it. The music wasn't even that great... Though I will admit, I did not play Persona 4... and I suppose it might be a detriment to this part of the review, however this isn't a Persona 4 review, it's an awareness of the second game.

Persona 2 by far was a superior game. In like... every aspect I could think about. It's about a "virus" of some sort called the JOKER, it's the antagonist who if you call him to kill someone, he will do it. The Joker is the antagonist of the previous game who broke out of the Sanitarium. You are a reporter whose job it is to track down these Joker killings and pretty much figure them out. You meet people along the way who can help you out, and apparently you figure out that other people can become the Joker through rumors of calling the Joker to kill someone; where if you call him, you become one yourself. * Bare in mind, I haven't played the game in like 6 years... I'm just loosely remembering what it was able, but it wasn't really the story that got to me... Even though it was still told VERY well since it didn't treat you like a child, like most JRPGs would.

I loved the gameplay. The gameplay to 2 is just so intuitive and involved. Each monster you find you can either: Kill it or Talk to it. When you talk to it, you can get them to like you and they will reward you with a Tarot card ( Heirophant, Lovers, The Hanged Man ), and with enough Tarot cards, you can purchase new Persona. Which I suppose can be compared to Final Fantasy 8's draw system but it's no where near as taxing. I liked how the game flowed; the game moved with a pace like it was in a hurry. When you do the Trio-Persona Ultimate Attack**, it instantly happens and the battle is over... You press the attack button, the game asks you "Press A to use" and if you press B.. you do your normal attacks. The game flowed so nicely. The gameplay felt so smooth and everything felt so right. The setting of modern Japan, driving around the cities from destination to destination... going from city to city.

I feel that I just can't convey with words how superior the game felt. It wasn't bogged down with some silly dating game system, the gameplay doesn't limit you to 10 battles that feel like it was designed by a child, and the entire game setting wasn't the same drool over and over; talk to this guy and get 1 point in this Tarot, go here and raise your Stamina, go to bed....

"Do you wanna actually play the game?"
"Ehhh.... I think I need to sleep and gain some Academic points. Maybe later...."

I think if I had to rate to Persona 2... I'd give it a 9/10.***

* I don't think this is accurate, but it's pretty close. It's been a long time. I'm saying 'Virus' loosely since it kinda acts like one.... Sort of.

** I don't remember what the hell it's called...

*** Persona 3 would get a 3/10. I almost feel like this was more of a Persona 3 hate rant then a Persona 2 recommendation.

Chrono Trigger is Overrated.

2013-01-01T04:51:00.000-08:00

I've always been conflicted about Chrono Trigger. I've always felt like I was the only person who just thought Chrono Trigger was just an alright game and that there are much better out there. People always raved to me that Chrono Trigger was the best RPG ever made and that nothing else compares to it. I always asked why? Seriously, why?

Chrono Trigger is Overrated. You will not hear me say that phrase often; that something is overrated. But I think if one game would take the cake, it would be this. I've beaten the game about 6 times now, so yeah... I can kind of see the fun in the game. I think the gameplay is ahead of its time* and that the theme it has is very unique for what it is. But to me it just misses on just about everything. And I want to go on step-by-step for everything about this game that bothers me. Starting with the very beginning.

I think the reason I took so long to ever try this game ( it was about after playing Final Fantasy 9 ) was two things: It was on SNES and it was kind of inaccessable and the title of it just looks stupid. And by that I mean the "Trigger" in Chrono Trigger. I don't understand why they chose to stretch the "Trigger" part out like that. It honestly looks like it was made by some amateur programmer for a fanfiction or a amateur game he was working on. The "Chrono" part of it already illustrates the Time aspect of the game, the other part.... you got me. It's just a very ugly title.

The game starts off with Crono waking up for the Millennial Fair, it's the year 1,000 and a fair starts off. You wake up from bed and you're welcome to Earth, or a caricature of Earth. You rush over to the fair as you had plans to meet your friend there and test her Invention. Yes, we all know the intro to our favorite game... While at the fair, we bump into this blonde girl who we later find out is Princess Nadia of Guardia. The Kingdom you happen to reside in. She introduces herself as Marle and you do this whole little sidequest where you gotta entertain her... You come up to Lucca's machine and she ends up causing a Time Rift throwing you back to the year 600. Where you find out that she's the Princess. So you end up rescuing the real princess, which causes her to reappear. You go back to your own time and they assume you kidnapped her, a trial happens where the sidequest you did earlier comes into play, though it's kind of pointless in the long-run. And you escape into the future from the castle. Now where am I going with all this?

This is the last portion of the game where Marle has any significance.

After this, she has absolutely no purpose to the game whatsoever other than being a so-so party member. And taking into considersation she's an escaped Princess of a Kingdom you'd think she'd be somewhat important. You'd think maybe some questions would be asked, maybe SOMETHING but no, she's pretty much a blank slate for the entire game. And what gets me is.... she's the love interest. How you make a Silent Protagonist and a cardboard cutout to be love interests in a game is beyond me. The only interaction I can remember between these two are a brief dream sequence of Marle waking up Crono from bed in a reenactment of the opening of the game, which wasn't even real.

But what am I saying, hardly anyone in this game is fleshed out. I imagine when they made this game all they did was give small one sentence explanations for each character and never go beyond this:

Crono: Swordsman boy...

Marle: Tomboy Princess who wants adventure

Lucca: Tomboy science geek.

Though to be fair, I think Lucca has probably the most personality in the game and the most backstory ever explained. Probably explains why she's my favorite character in the game....

Ayla: Cave-girl. Leader of Tribe. And apparently the Ancestor of Marle... **

Frog: A chivalrous anthropomorphic swordsman who seeks revenge for his fallen comrade by the hands of Magus. He also has a good amount of backstory explained but I think he's a rather boring character. Though the English NA Translators have a HUGE hand in this by pretty much changing every honorable quote he had into something silly... For example:

"Ah it's you. Sir Slush!"
"That's Slash you nitwit!"

In original Translation it was:

Frog: It's been a while.    
   Dark Arts Swordsman Soysaw......!    
    
Soysaw: I never even thought that you    
   would come this far, Glenn.    
    
   If Cyrus hadn't been there back then, you    
   would have had the same fate as well.    
    
    
Soysaw: Same as the corpses earlier!    
    
    
Soysaw: Pretty good.    
   Guess I'll get serious for the first time in a while.    
    
    
Soysaw: But without Cyrus, will you......    
    
    
Soysaw: Be able to take me!?    
    
Soysaw: Well done......!    
   But being beaten fighting for Magus-sama......

So he wasn't always a cookie-cutter white knight.

Magus: The only original character in the game. Except he joins 5 minutes before you beat it and he STILL has piss-poor backstory. So pretty much he's just a brooding little boy who hates everyone and only likes his cat and Schala. Queen Zeal accidentally sends him to 580 AD after she summons Lavos and he spends the entire game secretly trying to get revenge on Lavos.

Now it should be noted that, once again, English Translation has another part in this. In the original story, it was noted that Magus started the war with Guardia so he could gain more power to use against Lavos. In NA story... he's just a huge douche waffle.

I hardly consider Magus to be a real "party member" considering he joins so late making his inclusion very useless by now as all my members are equipped, have skills, and have grown on me.

In the end though, the characters are just... boring. Once you get past their arc, they don't say another word. For example, one thing that would have REALLY made the game a lot more interesting was just little comments about the time periods. For instance when Ayla joins you and you head back to 1000 AD, it's FAR FAR FAAAAAR more advanced than anything she knows about. Hell, Crono's Mom says to her "Honey, girls shouldnt dress like that" and Ayla pretty much laughs it off. There is NEVER a single line of dialogue about noting period differences***.

In my opinion, I think one of the biggest downfalls to the game is Crono. For two reasons: He's a silent protagonist and on top of this, he's given absolutely zero story. So therefore the enjoyment of the story is kind of toned down since you can't really grow on him. There's just nothing to attach yourself to...

As you go in in the story, you start to learn that there's a magical background to the game where once the Ice Age began, people ascended into the skies and began fiddling with Magic in a kingdom called Zeal. You meet Schala and Janus whom are the children of the Queen, Schala is a very soft-hearted woman that only means the best and Janus is a cold-hearted little boy whose only friend is his chat. Also, among these magical people are the Three Sages: Gaspar, Balthasar, and Melchoir. And I'd like to say that once you hit this timeline of 12,000 BC, you're about 85% done with the game, and this probably the first time you ever meet any form of conflict and plot in this game aside from Lavos in general and each timelines specific troubles ( Azala, Magus ). Anyways you begin to learn that these people you've met in these different timelines all came from this era and were sages along with Janus who is actually Magus. So we finally get some form of plot, except ONCE you learn all this, the game just stops giving a shit.

Gaspar doesn't ever explain to you how he managed to set everything up. In fact, if I reember correctly, the most he ever says is just "Yeah, I'm Gaspar.". I don't think Melchoir ever says anything different aside from "Wow, Black Omen!" and Balthasar is dead.

Now Janus is where it really bugs me.... as I said he's the Magus we know. It shows us a cutscene of him being attacked by Ozzie and.... that's it. He went from good kid with a kitty, loving his sister to dominating countries with an evil army without even delving into any reason of: How, why***, or anything. And I honestly wanted to know the details on all of this, like why Janus had changed so much and how exactly he did that. It's like the writers just didn't care and wanted to get through the game as quickly as they could:

What happened to Schala?

Why was the Black Omen not present previous to when Crono got there; before Crono and Magus intruded, whatever happened there, happened. This might actually be something that I missed but before Crono intruded on this, the Queen's plans were successful. And last I recall, her plan was the Black Omen. Or better yet, what exactly DID happen previous to Crono? Like... if I hadn't interrupted, what would have been the result?

The same argument could also be said with 600 BC. Guardia was losing that fight against Magus, they'd destroyed Zenan Bridge and taken over the lower continent. The only reason in current Guardia the statue of him doesn't exist is because you beat him as he was trying to summon Lavos. Or better yet, when you interrupted him summoning Lavos, what happened when you didn't interrupt? Did it just not work? So what happened to his army? Did they just give up? I mean, Ozzie's ancestor is the Mayor of the country over there so clearly they lived on. Did Frog end up beating them? What happened to Frog?

Honestly, in those cases, unless I competely missed something, which please... go ahead and tell me what I missed... These seem like plotholes rather than just details that weren't explained

The one thing that I was genuinely curious about was how exactly Zeal was formed... How was magic found? How was Zeal created? Like, you'd imagine after the entire extinction of the dinosaurs from Lavos, something you were clearly there for... Especially in a timeline where they were SUPPOSE to be primitive... Why exactly were people in the sky, making: machines, airships, and other robots. It's NEVER addressed!

I could go on and find even more to complain about but the point will pretty much remain the same: Chrono Trigger is the most glossed over game I've EVER played. It just doesn't care about itself past "Lavos bad, you beat."

*Get it. Ahead of its time?
** Shes the ANCESTOR of Marle? With a 65 million year difference, is this really worth noting?

Online Achievements

2012-11-06T03:51:00.000-08:00

There is nothing I hate more than online achievements. These things are the bane to pretty much every completionist back from the Playstation era when you could get into Final Fantasy, collect every weapon, level every skill, get to lvl 99 and do all secrets. It was fun, you knew you completed everything and in the end you could brag for exactly this. The idea of a game or system that actually kept track of this and even advertised it online was awesome! Just think of the possibilities that your friends could know that YOU beat Ozma without help from Friendly Monsters!

So I try to play games and collect a gamerscore, I used to rent games just to see how bad some games are, but one thing I tend to notice a lot is these games require some form of Online play to collect these achievements. I think one of the best things I ever saw the Call of Duty series do, was not include ANY for their Online for Modern Warfare 1 and 2... but sadly Black Ops broke this tradition. Where they now force you to do co-op for so many missions in Zombies...

I tried to rent Brink... which of course had a lot of online achievements. Now let's bare in mind here, this game is fucking awful, it was designed to be a piece of garbage and the people who designed the game clearly never played a game in their life, because this could hardly be considered a game much less a chore for how awful it was. But I digress... The game's achievements were actually quite easy to get..... if you went online. And SINCE this game is as awful as it is, hey look at that... Not a single person plays it. So what does this mean? These achievements are now impossible to get, unless you know someone who also owns this game. Which I suppose would prove they are true friends since he's also willing to trudge through this complete shit fest of a game....* Point being, the online achievements are near-impossible now.**

I could probably point out a better example, but the few that come to mind still have an online, but to make an example... In 15 years, let's say I decided I want to play Assassins Creed 2. A game that focuses completely on Single Player, but.... for some stupid reason also has this tacked on Multiplayer which you can do what you can do in Single Player, except to people trying to hide from you. So I pop the game in, complete the game and then notice that hey.... 800 gamerscore.... wonder what these 200 that Im missing are... Oh hey, look at that... this shitty multiplayer that's tacked on? That's my missing gamerscore is from. Oh wait... nobody plays this game, nobody has played it in 10 years. These 200 gamerscore are now impossible to get. What great game design.

What I just don't understand is, we managed to go from Atari all the way to the Playstation 2 without relying on Online Multiplayer whatsoever. And now these modes HAVE to be tacked on as if they prolong the life of the game. How about we just go back to actually putting EFFORT into games, instead of artificially prolonging the game with multiplayer which isn't content by competitive repetition. It just goes to show that these generations are losing their taste and using cheap tactics to entertain their audience.

Indie Games

2012-10-21T20:32:00.001-07:00

When I was first thinking of writing an article on Indie Games, I was thinking "You know, if anything sucks about the industry; it's indie games." Then I realized that... games now-a-days are what suck in general and that the few Indies that I HAVE played were generally awesome: Dust, Bastion, Braid, Super Meat Boy. To me these games are EXACTLY what we need in this day in age with the garbage that publishers keep trying to shovel out to us like we're some cattle that just enjoy the same slop we get every day.

With the 40th Street Fighter that plays exactly like the previous game, the 10th Call of Duty game, all the copycat games, all the reboots... It's refreshing to see a game where the developers literally had to put their life savings into, they put 14 hours of every day, they lost their girlfriend, their child died of loneliness... Just so your game is released on time and what is the end-result? Quality.

We gamers generally have the best ideas for games. How many times do you say to yourself, "Man, if I could make a shooter, I'd do _____ and make ____ happen and---"? Now imagine that actually HAPPENING and saying to yourself "Well, I gotta sell my car to make this happen". It just means that YOUR ideas will be put onto paper, YOUR ideas will drive you and NO ONE can tell you that they aren't good enough. This is something that I believe the industry desperately needs, in an era where graphics hail over content and everything is reused; afraid to take a chance.

What gets me is though, is that Xbox, Steam, and all these... really do a poor job advertising what could be an amazing game. And the fact that most Xbox Indie games are covered by all this garbage of Advertisements, screens, and just a really poor layout, it just shames me to see such an era of gaming where developers can bloom from nothing... are being hindered just to further advertise useless fucking DLC that no one should buy like Mass Effect 3 DLC with MORE GUNS, YAY AWESOME, GUNS. For example, Protect me, Knight is an Indie game with a ton of imagination where you protect a princess from a screen full of monsters. And level your characters further to battle. GOOD LUCK FINDING IT THOUGH.

My Collection

2012-09-08T00:51:00.003-07:00

- NES -
Castlevania
Castlevania 2
Castlevania 3
Final Fantasy
Star Tropics

- SNES -
Earthbound
Chrono Trigger
Soul Blazer
Illusion of Gaia
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
Lufia 1
Final Fantasy III x 2
Zelda: Link to the Past
Super Metroid
Super Castlevania IV
Super Mario RPG
Terranigma
Secret of Mana

- PLAYSTATION -

Suikoden 1
Suikoden 2
Xenogears x2
Star Ocean: The Second Story
Final Fantasy 7
Brave Fencer Musashi
Final Fantasy 8
Final Fantasy 9
Legend of Dragoon
Final Fantasy Tactics
Metal Gear Solid
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Castlevania Chronicles
Vagrant Story
Parasite Eve
Parasite Eve 2
Lunar 1
Lunar 2
Arc the Lad Collection
Persona 2
Chrono Cross
Valkyrie Profile
SaGa Frontier 2
Alundra 2
Legend of Mana
Diablo

- PLAYSTATION 2 -

Suikoden 3
Suikoden 5
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2
Valkyrie Profile 2
Xenosaga 1
Xenosaga 2
Xenosaga 3
Ys: Ark of Napishtim
Tales of the Abyss
Tales of Legendia
Wild Arms 3
Makai Kingdom
Phantom Brave
Grandia II
Fatal Frame 2
Disgaea 1
Disgaea 2
Soul Nomad
Odin Sphere
Ar Tonelico 1
Ar Tonelico 2
Mana Khemia 2
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2
Shadow Hearts
Persona 4
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Shadow Hearts 2
Shadow Hearts 3
Atelier Iris

- WISHLIST -
Breath of Fire 1 - 4
SMT: Devil Summoner

BLUE = COMPLETE IN BOX
RED = GREATEST HITS OR DISC ONLY
LIGHT BLUE = SEALED

My Collection ( Pictures )

2012-09-08T00:32:00.001-07:00

Clannad Review ( Part Deux )

2012-08-23T04:55:00.001-07:00

So we went over that Clannad, the first season was fairly disappointing. It was filled with tons of filler, half the characters were forgettable, and was a horrible successor to Kanon. So they go ahead and release the second season, something which... if it hadn't come, Clannad would have been a complete catastrophic failure. However, considering this is based on a Dating Simulator, it was clear the story didn't end where Clannad did, so it's clear that Clannad wasn't meant to end when it did, so this is by no means a savior chapter, but just a continuation.

So it starts off Nagisa getting past an illness which eventually makes her lose her chance to pass the 11th grade, and also lose out on being with Tomoya. Tomoya moves out of Nagisa's house and into his own house where they end up living with each other and he gets a job to pay for the place. Honestly, this is a very nice change of pace because it's kind of like showing the growth of a character; learning the new jobs, learning responsibility, watching their relationship grow.... all in exchange for every single side character that we knew. That's right, every single character is pretty much gone: Kyou, Ryou, Tomoyo, Ichinose... Forget you ever knew them cause you got about 2 episodes for them, which further cements what a waste of time their 'arcs' were in Season 1.

*SPOILERS ARE TO BE HAD*
*IF YOU WISH TO WATCH THIS. DO NOT READ*

So within a few episodes we find out that Nagisa and Tomoya are going to be getting married which eventually leads to her being pregnant.

Actually, I'm going to stop right there because this is something that kind of bugged me about this whole love. I always thought that the relationship they had was just going really slow; I never saw them kiss. They always just hung out like friends, she cooked for him. No cuddling, no kissing, no nothing.... And hey, she gets pregnant.

Wait what? They never kissed ONCE in the entire anime and she's pregnant which means they've been fucking. So me as a viewer feels kind of cheated--- afterall these are BASED off of a dating simulator so clearly it's a romance anime yet they leave out the kiss? That's pretty important if you ask me. But moving on.

Yes she's pregnant now. However Nagisa has been going on life with an illness which makes her weak. The illness has no name, no real description, it just shows up randomly, makes her sick, and... makes life suck. No doctor can cure it, no one knows what it is and... yup. It sucks.

Oh and another thing about these kinds of sicknesses in media? They kill. Yes, Nagisa dies during child birth and you can imagine how sad this is. You see, I came into this anime knowing it's sad and that it was much worse than Clannad. And knowing this, I figured this would happen and it's pretty deep. I definitely am already more interested in this season 10 times than the first season. In my opinion, compared to this... it failed catastrophically. So Nagisa dies giving birth to their child Ushio, which promptly flashforwards 5 years.

Tomoya is in a deep depression and Nagisa's parents are raising Ushio while he pretty much suffers in deep depression. He works long hours, drinks and is slowly becoming his own father. Something that I kind of never mentioned. There's this thing about Tomoya and his father... he hates him and it's kind of hard to understand why. He kinda just tells him to shut up, yells at him, and is just a huge asshole to him even though his father just acts like a nice man... I never saw it. But anyways, he's becoming his father and eventually the parents plan a vacation which is actually just them tricking Tomoya into watching her for a week and bonding with her which is planned beautifully.

*END SPOILERS*

I wont go into anymore detail but this season definitely saved the entire anime and it's just a shame that you have to sit through 24 episodes of absolute shit just to enjoy this and it ends really fucking sad too. However Clannad suffers from Japanese Ending Syndrome* where every anime ends like shit because apparently Japanese have no idea how to end an anime.... but that's always something to get over.

* I coined this term because seriously, every Anime ends like shit.

Capcom

2012-08-17T04:00:00.003-07:00

Oh Capcom. You people are adorable in how you just keep trying. You try and try and try again, and for some reason people keep flocking back to you. It's kind of interesting if you ask me... that people will continue to bash you, boycott you, rant about you.... and then you release another Street Fighter add-on that outsells the previous Street Fighter add-on. You KNOW this happens, you KNOW it pisses us off, yet you clearly do not care. It kind of puts a unique perspective on things because for so long were we under this impression that the consumer is your biggest concern*, like when we walk into Walmart, Target, Costco... and you want to return something that's outside the return date, you KNOW that if you complain hard enough, they will still take that return BECAUSE they want you to be happy so you'll continue to shop for them. We assume that a game developer will be the same way; we are the ones buying your game.

Not Capcom though. Capcom takes it a step forward, they deliberately do things in bad business just to make money. Of course they're TRYING to make money, I'm not saying they aren't. Afterall, Capcom is a business first and a..... friend... next? However all of this is pretty common sense now. This is all pretty much common knowledge that any person who knows something will tell you... So where exactly am I going with this?

Well recently there was a survey for the worst Company in the world and I would like to put out there that, I believe the real candidate for this would either have to be: Capcom or Square Enix. Well, I suppose if this was just in the gaming world, I mean. And I'll get into Square Enix another time... this is devoted to Capcom. And I don't want this to be just a big long rant about how much I hate Capcom; I actually don't hate them... I just want to humor myself with how low this company has become.

Devil May Cry pretty much is a series I never really got into. The first game was kind of a big thing with how awesome the combat was, how cool Dante was, and how stylish everything was. It was a very unique game and it was a big thing. Capcom did something right for something that originally was nothing more than just a mistake considering it began was Resident Evil 4. And to me this game remains a classic and easily the best in the series. But one thing you need to understand about Devil May Cry is it's an arcade like fighter; it's story is paper thin, it's development is next-to-nothing, and it's pretty much just a show-off game. It has nothing to offer in terms of story... hell, if we were to take Devil May Cry 3 with the Vergil relationship to Dante, and then move onto Devil May Cry 1, you'd think the hidden potentional there for something real was completely missed as Neo Angelo** ( I think that was his name ) is just a mutated Vergil and you fight him like he's just some random enemy. There could have been something much bigger here.

But besides all that, they of course had to continue the story on.... so they made DMC2, 3 and eventually 4.

What I find funny about these games are just how.... poor the focus is. The second game literally shat all over everything the first had, so they decided on a prequel. Which is funny because to have a prequel just means that Capcom is fully aware that DMC had no where to go, so let's give him a deep backstory! And yeah... it kind of worked, but it was still not enough to make him interesting.... so they decided to give the game a new lead: Nero.

Now my point with this game actually has two sides: Capcom did a very good idea and at the same time did not. Letting Ninja Theory take care of their series pretty much gave Dante a fresh new start, giving him an actual personality and character to develop as right now he was just a cardboard cut-out. To start these new games with the same Dante would draw confusion thinking it's the same reality; it wouldn't work. However the fan reaction has been across the board negative. Even the original Devil May Cry producer hated the idea. And yet... Capcom doesn't care, they continue on. But this is small if you ask me.

Can anyone tell me if this series still exists? I mean really, I can see why people think they're trying to kill off Megaman because.... so far all he's done lately is get cancelled and appear in other games ( even as a mockery ). Just the way Capcom is handling this guy amazes me. I UNDERSTAND that the idea of MML3 on the 3DS is absolutely stupid; the handheld pretty much bombed and there's little potential to make their money back but clearly there IS demand for this game. I honestly do think the 100k petition was stupid since it was a Facebook petition, however it filled pretty quickly and still grows and I've heard plenty of people who wanted this game to come... Capcom there are other methods out there for your game.

But you don't care.

Street Fighter is pretty much what makes Capcom tick however. Within the last 5 years Capcom has made SF4 and Super SF4, SFxT, MvC3, UMvC3. And whats funny with all these games are they all do exactly what pisses us off: DLC on the disc, paid extra characters, and rerelease of the same exact game you purchased 60 dollars for with a few extra add-ons rendering your purchase completely inane. To me as a player, I am scared to purchase a fighter of theirs.... I was pretty big into MvC3 and now it's useless to me because no one is online because of UMvC3. SF4? Probably empty. Does Capcom care? Nah, because us fans just buy the next game... and with EVO out there with SF and MvC being the biggest things there, of course we're going to keep buying them. It's been around for so long, that it's imbedded into us and the community. And what gets me is... CAPCOM KNOWS THIS.

I guess if I had to tl;dr this entire thing it would be:

Capcom knows you want their games. Capcom knows they can abuse you and your wallet. Capcom doesn't care else they would address this.... But they are still doing exactly what we hate.

*You know, cause without them they kinda wouldn't exist.

** Pardon me if I am inaccurate with this... it's been a long time.

Why Star Ocean 2 is the Best RPG Ever

2012-08-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

So I'm just going to do you all a favor. I'm going to post a link to Amazon where you can purchase this game. If at the end of this review you haven't already purchased the game, you are a disgrace to the RPG community and to the human race; yes it is that serious.

Star Ocean: The Second Story ( PS1 )

Star Ocean: Second Evolution ( PSP )

There you go, I did all the dirty work for you. I solved the "But Romalia! This game is out of print, how am I suppose to play this! Well, you have two options: PSP which is like 10 dollars and PS1 which is like 20. So expense, availability, and access are already out of the question as excuses for purchasing this game. Now, unless you're one of those people who like... get welfare and you get JUST enough money to feed your 6 kids, you can stop here ( but honestly, I'd just starve one of those kids because this is a fun game ).

Anyways! Star Ocean 2. It's the sequel to the Enix game Star Ocean on the SNES which was never released in America. It follows the son of the characters: Claude who, well.... stubbornly decided to check out this anomaly on a planet which everyone kept screaming "Don't fucking go!", but he did anyways and it got him transported to this planet which he immediately meets your second main character: Rena. Rena happens to be the strange young magical girl of unknown origins.

Lemme just say, the worst part about this game is the first 30 minutes of it. Claude is an idiot, Rena is a cliche, and it's nothing but talk-talk-talk. So what I do is save RIGHT after leaving this area because it's pretty much where the fun begins. It suffers from, what I like to call, "Slow RPG Intro syndrome" where the first 30 minutes.... is just nothing but "OH MY GOD... JUST GET TO THE FUCKING POINT".

So skipping this, you start off.. and right away you notice something: The world music is fucking amazing. No seriously, this is easily the best world music I've ever heard of in any game. Listen for yourself:

The entire sound piece is one full piece of music. It doesn't repeat. And the more it goes on, the more epic it sounds. It's completely orchestrated... something I don't think I've ever seen in quality in any RPG. It's truly remarkable the amount of effort and quality that goes into this one song... Well, there's ALSO the 2nd world map music as well, which.... not as good, but still just as good in terms of effort.

So the battle system is pretty simple. It's an Action RPG which you hit X to attack, L1&2/R1&2 for skills. You choose any person in a team of four to control and everyone controls differently in terms of skills and attack patterns, and trust me.... One of the most fun aspects of this game is trying out different characters. What I love most about this battle system is it's not TRYING to be complicated, it's literally just mashing X and watching your character just destroy everything. Later in the game, you could equip Bunny shoes to run 5 times faster and just do laps around the enemies... It's so fun.

Now I mentioned 'trying out different characters' because this game is unique in that each time you play you can get different characters. For starters, I ALSO said "two main characters", because you can either have Claude as the main character or Rena. Both stories play out relatively the same, a handful of cutscenes are different... but who you choose decides on what characters will join you later on: Rena gets you Dias the swordsman and Claude gets you Leon the magician. But aside from that you also do private actions which can get you Ashton or Opera, assuming you do them in the right order, or if you visit a town early enough you'll get Precis instead of Bowman. And if you get Opera, you can get her boyfriend Ernest*. But each time you play, you have so many different methods of obtaining different characters that it's a different experience each time you play!

Skills make a HUGE part of the game. They alter how your character grows, like for example in the picture above 'Functionality' raises your STR, DEX, AGL, and INT for 20 levels, and below those you gain Combat Skills which affect the way your character behaves in combat: Feinting, Parrying, Casting faster, Cancelling attacks, Hitting weak spots for more damage. Each time you level up you gain Skill points which can go to any of these ( 40ish ) skills, and how you decide to accumulate will decide how your character grows. And IF you know what you're doing, you can break the game and DESTROY your enemies with these skills.

Something else skills give you: Item Creation commands. And these things are what make the game fun: Art, Customize, Metalwork, Compounding, Alchemy, Survival, Machinery, etc. They ALL help you if you use them correctly and once again, can help break the game. For example, before you're even 20% done with the game, you can make a weapon with about 1099 attack ( you can buy a weapon with about 150 ), which will pretty much one-shot every enemy and some bosses til near the end of the game. And this is how you get your weapons ( and best weapons ) for all your characters... from Minerals which you VERY easily ( for the most part ) obtain.

Leveling in this game so fun. You have 255 levels and by the time you beat the game, you'll be around level 120, which opens up a bonus dungeon with enemies MUCH harder than you've ever fought before. Each level in the bonus dungeon has higher level of difficulty much higher than the last one and as you progress, you start to grow levels much and much quicker while also obtaining godlke armor to pimp your characters out with. Each time you finish a level in this, you truly feel like you've accomplished something since each level contains a puzzle and challenge to get through them. I would say this is probably half of the games entertainment right here.

Now you might be saying... "Wow, so far you've said nothing but how easy this game is to break. Where's the challenge?", which is fair... this game is veeeery easily broken**, however with a simple private action, you can make the final boss harder than the boss of the bonus dungeon BY FAR, and even your best armors and weapons will still be a huge challenge.

Now if at this point you haven't already ordered the game. I apologize for your tastes being so awful, because what I just described to you was the best RPG. And what's funny was, I didn't even MENTION the story***, because honestly, when an RPG is already this fun without mention of a story, you're in for a ride and it's definitely something that I believe no one should ever pass up. I stumbled on this game by complete accident, it was purchased on a whim and I was completely hooked from Day 1.

The game was re-released on PSP. The translations are better****, the combat was changed a bit, voice overs were added, and a character was added. Honestly, I think the original was better, but I still enjoyed the PSP port. So do yourself a favor and help yourself to either one of them; you will thank me.

* Though I only got him once. I honestly think he's useless.

** IF you know what you're doing. If you DON'T know what you're doing, then you will very easily miss a lot and the game will be very challenging.

*** The Story actually kind of sucks... Haha

**** The Translations might be better but half of them felt completely needless and unnecessary.

Gurren Lagann Review

2012-08-02T04:35:00.002-07:00

So like usual, this review will have spoilers. If you don't like spoilers, then quit reading reviews. Because it's kind of stupid to read someones opinion of an anime without going into detail of why they like it or don't like it. But that is neither here nor there. Let's jump right into this!

So Gurren Lagann. I've heard a lot about this and like usual, I ignored it BECAUSE people wouldn't shut up about it. It's kind of strange how the natural reaction to popularity is to go the other direction, it does this with music, video games, movies, tv shows... With enough popularity, it's no surprise people hate Obama!*, however work has been extremely boring and during my down time, I am able to pull up some Youtube and I decided, rather than search for something, I'll just watch this. And so I did... and I have to say, I can see why people enjoy this show.

The story centers about two people:

Kamina

This guy is easily what makes the anime interesting. He is the guy you want to be. He leads Team Gurren and managed to help break out of the underground caves with his little brother and in doing so hi-jacked an enemy mecha so he can fight back. Kamina pretty much embodies hope, bravery, and dreams. And by embody, I mean these three words describe him perfectly. That's all he does is dream, hope, and achieves these with his bravery. His entire philosophy is 'if there's a small chance of it happening, i'll make it happen' and despite all odds of failure, he will always succeed. He never runs from a fight, he never backs down a challenge, and he refuses to ever admit defeat. And of course, he has his catch phrases of "Just who the hell do you think I am?" and a few others... Now with all this said, you'd ASSUME with a character like this, there's no WAY there's any bad in this anime.

I'm going to say this once more. SPOILERS. <spoiler>

Well, he kinda dies 1/3 of the way through the anime. Something that... to me... ruined pretty much all motivation of continuing considering he pretty much held the entire show together

</spoiler>

Simon

Pronounced 'Sih'mohn', this is Kamina's younger brother. And my god is he just one big trope for half the anime. He's the "I don't have the courage" trope. He spends literally half the anime doubting himself, worrying, whining, and just plain getting in the way. It's because of Kamina's long morale boosting speeches does Simon ever do anything, and right after he'll just revert back to the way he was; just getting in the way. To sum him up in the first half, it would be "Big bro. I'm scared!", if it weren't for Kamina's incredible charisma. This kid, by himself, would make me turn the anime off. He was just that annoying.

So after Kamina dies, Simon takes over as the lead of Team Gurren and also the main character of the anime. So, OF COURSE, he has to drop this entire whiny attitude, cause even the writers are aware that we're annoyed of this shit. So what do they do? Give us 4 more episodes of even whinier and more self-loathing shit where he wallows in self pity over Kamina's death. And FINALLY gets over it, with like... little reason other than just "Yea, ok, I'm over it."**

</spoiler>

7 years later, he's now Kamina's age. Which pretty much takes all those tropes we just had to deal with and throw them out the window thankfully, and he eventually grows into an interesting character! Truthfully, he almost feels like a completely new character the way he COMPLETELY reverted his entire personality after this. And let's just say, it's very nice to see this....

There are two others who the story centers around: Nia and Yoko. But to give an analysis on these two would just be silly because they're such underdeveloped characters that you really would be wasting your time. Honestly, you could just look at a picture of the two and know exactly what and who they are:

Yoko wears extremely revealing clothes and wields a huge gun. Her personality is pretty shallow and that's about it.

Nia is the sweetest person in the world and everyone loves her. She isn't knowledgeable, but this doesn't stop her from trying. And she has long hair....

To be fair, I liked Nia. She just came out of no where and kind of helped Simon grow as a character, and without her.... I feel Simon would have been completely empty and pointless to the anime. But Nia's character is just so underdeveloped that I have a hard time growing attached to her outside of just sympathy. And that's pretty disappointing considering I DO like her a lot.

< SPOILERS >

To sum up Gurren Lagann, it's pretty much just that story you had with your friend when you were 13 years old, playing with your action figures. You kept trying to make everything more interesting by one-upping everything your friend did. The entire story is just that, "You know what would be awesome is if the characters were like... these underground people and like.... they busted out!"

"Yeah! And then these people in big machines attack them. And they STEAL it from them! Like, almost effortlessly!"

"Oh my god, yeah. And then they combine these machines and become even stronger!"

"And then we take over an even BIGGER machine and it becomes their base!"

"AND THEN THE MOON IS ABOUT TO CRASH INTO THE PLANET AND THEY USE THOSE MACHINES TO STOP IT"

"Yeah and they stop the galaxy from invading with even BIGGER machines"

"YEAH AND THEN THEY BECOME AS BIG AS THE GALAXY AND FIGHT AGAINST THE OTHER MECHA AS BIG AS THE GALAXY AND THROW GALAXIES AT EACH OTHER"

< /SPOILER >

Gurren Lagann is pretty much an anime where ANYTHING can happen for almost no reason. It happens because it's really cool and we like cool. Like, mechas combining in ways that make no sense and healing themselves, mechas powering just from motivation, mechas growing in power just because you just happen to be more confident in yourself, growing technologically more advanced within mere days of just crawling out of the ground, etc. And this is pretty much why the reason the anime works. It WANTS to be a cliche. It WANTS to yell out these awesome names of Attacking Moves that are completely silly, but gets the job done.

This entire anime sounds like something a child thought up, and after episode 17, you start to notice that the tone of the anime grows too loud and it starts to go from Hope to Absurd and it goes downhill. I guess your suspense of disbelief stops ignoring the flaws and starts saying "Okay seriously, this is just going too far" and I have to say.... the ending of it all was just... terrible. And for an anime that honestly goes out of its way to be cliche, I'm not surprised.

All-in-all, I liked it but I definitely wouldn't rewatch it. If you happen to have the time, nothing to watch, and feel like wasting some time, I'd definitely put it on. It's pretty fun.

Pokemon Creepypasta: Inadequate Gold

2012-07-27T04:45:00.001-07:00

Been working on this for a week or so. Give it a watch. It's a completely true story!

Clannad Review

2012-07-23T03:55:00.000-07:00

Before I get into this. I want to throw this note out there; this is ONLY for Season 1. After Story is going to be a completely separate review. There is a reason I'm doing this as well which I will get to when I get to it.

Key anime are usually something that I enjoy more than others. They have a unique style of storytelling, they are handled in a way that the one watching can't expect what would happen what with supernatural coming into play like time travel and magic. But like I mentioned, it's handled in a way that it's not ABOUT the supernatural... it just happens to be involved. Like for instance, a character could find a bracelet which is known for causing unusual things to happen. They find it and put it on and all of a sudden, they start hearing voices and altering stuff... but that's about it. It doesn't get involved much than that. Because the anime is more about the story of just them living their lives rather than the Supernatural occurring around them.

The way Key anime usually works is: Each character has an Arc. You'll have a few set of unique characters which are introduced in episode 1, sometimes episode 2. Each of these characters will be unique in some way and throughout the anime you'll be in suspense to figure out just what is up with these characters. They'll all act something different than usual from everyone else, give off small hints to their true nature, and in the end it all comes together. It's kind of Haruhi, where the three friends were an Esper, Alien, and Time Traveller.. You didn't find these out until the end but it all eventually makes sense when it happens.

Now the reason I felt this one was particularly suited for a review was because this one was the odd-man out for the entire patterns these anime generally go on. And for me to figure out a way to explain what I mean might be a tad bit difficult since.... well, to be put it simply; I think Clannad was handled.... extremely poorly.
I hate to throw out my opinion of something so early in a review, kind of destroying interest of what the conclusion will ultimately be, but this is my review. Get over it.

Now when it comes to the characters, you got:

Nagisa: The female love interest to the main character. She's shy, weak, a crybaby, a very sweet girl. I like Nagisa a lot. She reminds me of the perfect girlfriend to have. She doesn't care about little things and just takes life on day by day. She's been held back a grade because she's been sick so long that she fell behind in school. All she wants to do is to have a Drama class and make plays.

Tomoya: The main character. Now let me say, Key's main characters are pretty much the same guy over and over. They're all confused, silly, amnesiac, and kind of self-centered. Tomoya takes no exception to this rule. I think of all the main characters throughout the series, Tomoya might be my 2nd favorite? It's kind of hard to put them all on a scale when they're all the same, pretty much. I like him though.

Kyou: She is kind of... Tomoya's best female friend. Pardon me if my information is wrong, but I think these two have been friends for quite a while and she kind of looks up to Tomoya. She's pretty rash and protective. I think she's probably the second most interesting female character in the anime. If Nagisa wasn't Tomoya's obvious love-interest. I'd like her to be...

Tomoyo: Tomoyo kind of just... is there. I never understood the point of Tomoyo. She reminds me an awful lot of Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh. But only because they're both very athletic, strong, and loves animals. About that loves animals part, she tends to show up dressed as a bear... this is kind of unexplained... I really don't think she has much point to the anime outside of kicking Tomoya's friends ass for hitting on her and challenging her.

Ichinose: She's smart and can't play the violin.

That's about the extent of her.

Ibuki: I cannot stand this little girl. She likes starfish and thinks they're the most amazing thing ever. She uses them as invitations to her sisters wedding. She's so boring and stupid and serves no purpose. She's not really even a friend to anyone outside of them pitying her for trying so desperately to get people to come to this wedding.

You see, the first problem this anime has is the characters. To compare it to previous installments, the arcs "supernaturality" are almost non-existant. They're just small little stories which even have trouble holding their water in being called stories... because they're just so rushed and uninteresting that the entire anime would be unchanged without them. But this is something rather interesting because, like I said earlier about Ibuki and her starfish, she's the ONLY PERSON in the entire anime with a hint of Supernatural surrounding her, which is a shame because she's such an annoying character in the first place. I get this hunch that she was intended to be this adorable character which I'm suppose to empathize with... but she's just not. She's not interesting.

Aside from Ibuki though, the story centers almost TOO much on Nagisa, like normally the idea is to kind of give you a bunch of options for what the main character would like as an interest. As the roots of these anime are based off of dating simulators.... and they even attempt to make it a plot element; who he will end up with. But I kind of assumed it would be the girl who 80% of the anime is based off of. How surprised I was when I found out I was right.

The second problem the anime faces is the point of it all. What was the point of the anime? You see throughout the entire season(s), there's always this story going on about this little girl whose the last person in the world who is trying to build a robot because... well, she can. And this robot is the only thing to keep her company in this world. At first this entire story was very interesting to me, and eventually turns into the play that Nagisa wants to put on. And as for the first season, this entire subplot is rendered pretty inane.

The overall feeling I got from this entire anime was that it couldn't take itself seriously. You see, Kanon and Air both had it's fair share of goofiness which helped tell the story and keep you interested, but Clannad kind of takes it to the next level where almost entire episodes are brought to this level of goofiness that it wastes time that could have been used to develop characters or even make boring characters ( Tomoyo, Ichinose ) even more interesting than they were. Ultimately, I had a VERY hard time watching this completely, and it was pretty much the the 2nd season that motivated me to continue on, which I will get onto next.

Pokemon Cards

2012-07-17T01:56:00.000-07:00

So lately I've been in a real pokemon mood lately. I've been working on this creepypasta, I picked up Pokemon Platinum, and I've been researching new and old glitches which were completely unknown to me. So things have been really interesting to me... so I began to reflect on my past of Pokemon and the greatest parts of them. Looking back on all the games and stuff relating to said game; I'd have to say Pokemon cards were probably the crowning moment of Pokemon... or to be specific, Generation 1 of Pokemon.

The awesome thing about Pokemon cards were actually the things that you didn't know about them. Like when I was a kid, the Japanese cards, Ancient Mew, Charizard, and Gen. 2 were probably the biggest things in Cards. Hell, I remember at one point in time, I went to a Toys-R-Us during a Pokemon convention and I traded.... something... for a Southern Island Togepi. Something that was very rare and very valuable ( back in the day ), and that to me was very exciting; you didn't run into these cards, you didn't know where they came from and it was something special to have them in your possession.

My most valuable cards I have now are probably Zapdos, Allakhazam, and Ancient Mew.... Looking back on it, I really don't have very many holofoils as this all happened when I was in 6th grade. It's a shame too because as I reflect on these things, trading and collecting these cards was probably the most fun I've had. It even got me slightly interested in Magic the Gathering.

It's kind of a shame that the fad ended so quickly. With the saturation of Gym cards, Diamond and Pearl, and whatever other decks that came along; once the original series was ousted, I officially quit caring about the trading card game. I remember going to the mall one day and Pokemon Cards were like... 1.99 a pack, and I was like "Oh shit! What a deal!", so I decided to buy a pack and sure enough I got a Holographic Nintetails; this was from the original deck... EXCEPT it had a giant "Second Edition" on the lower left. This pretty much cemented in my head that this entire game was dead to me. I could no longer collect the original decks and considering the newer decks were not that cared for; they were worthless. This was a horrible day.

I remember my very first Pokemon booster pack. I got a Hitmonchan from it... I remember back in these days, finding an actual store that sold cards was almost impossible. I had to convince my parents to drive 50 miles north to some mall for, not a Booster pack, but a Deck Starter kit ( the ones that contained a Holofoil, a bunch of cards and energy ). To my knowledge only ONE store ever sold them, and they wanted like 5 bucks a pack for them. My parents were always broke so I never had the opportunity to get them...

Sometimes I have the urge when I'm shopping around at Walmart to just pick up a pack and see what I get. I know that I'll probably end up being disappointed, I'll get some worthless holographic card vs a more rare worthless holographic card. And I'll just get some nostalgic depression afterwards, kind of like I am now. But you know what? I think it's still kind of cool that the card game is going on. Something that I enjoyed as a child can be enjoyed by other children and hopefully the game will become popular again. I know it's unlikely... but anything to revive my old childhood hobby would make me really happy once again.

My Diablo 3 Review

2012-07-09T01:47:00.002-07:00

So Diablo 3 has been out for a while and I was crazy enough to preorder the game about.... a year in advance before any one else ( my friend worked there and confirmed this ). Now I'm gonna go out on a limb and let the lot of you know, I NEVER pre-order anything. I think it's a stupid waste of time, it's going to be there and having a piece of paper that says you're entitled to it just seems like some unneeded self-satisfying busywork. So for me to pre-order this tells you how excited I was to play this game.

Now what's funny about Diablo 3 is, considering how excited I was for it... I KNEW there was no way that it could ever compare to Diablo 2. Diablo 2 was THE perfect RPG. It was pristine upon release and just got better with version updates and expansion release. I remember the days when you could buy an inventory full of Hex Small Charms and duo Amazon and Barbarians; this was what make Diablo great. So I had to come into this game with little expectations; I already had perfect. For anyone to disagree with this, you either got into Diablo 2 VERY late or you just don't like RPGs.

So what was my reaction to finally playing this game?

Bitter.

I mean, I knew what I was getting myself into. I can get over the removal of stats, I can get over the lack of skill trees, I can even get over the lack of Rune Words.... but for how long this game was on the stove, it could not feel any less finished, like I couldn't tell you what took so long for this game to come out considering how half-assed everything seems. And what's funny was it wasn't even released complete. But let's not jump right into my opinion.

My first impression of Diablo 3 were actually pretty good. You start off in a town next to the old Tristram and investigate a meteor crashing right on top of the old Sanctuary from the first Diablo game. The graphics were pretty good, the gameplay is spectacular with its phsyics; each swing feels powerful and it never gets old when attacking monsters. And the interface of the game is far superior to the older games. So yes this game DOES have it's higher points to it.

Act 1 was probably the best act though. as it felt the most finished... but it's "finished" parts are kind of what bugs me about Act 1. Let me explain, Tristam and the Sanctuary were kind of redesigned, and by kind of I mean... completely. Like the walk to Adria's hut was, rather than a small bridge past a small river was changed to a 2 mile hike past a huge river and into this cave system which was FAR out of Tristam. Tristam no longer looks the same, the only similarities are the well and.... well that's about it.

I mean, I can kind of understand why they would do this but it also contradicts your source material, even Diablo 2 was faithful to the source material for the most part. Now it looks like a completely different town with a completely different Sanctuary; the original had a blue tint to it... now it's dark red and looks NOTHING like the original. It's a small gripe, but I excused it.

Okay so now we have the stats and bonuses to weapons. This is something that kind of prevented me from getting attached to the game. You see in Diablo 2, I ALWAYS played as the Sorceress. She was always my favorite to play as, she teleported with little cost, did great AoE. So clearly I'd choose the Wizard in ths game.... THE PROBLEM is the Wizard's only stat is INT and damage+, which is fairly boring. Hell, in Diablo 2 I had Sorc Skill+, Faster Cast Rate, Mana regen, Resistances, Lower enemy resistances....

Yeah, a few of those are present in this game, but it's no where on the same level as 2. It feels like Im forced to just take the INT and HOPE that a second stat is attached to it. Which is kind of easy to find because you also have the Auction House, which in my opinion was a great addition and a huge flaw to the game. I think the Auction House actually might contradict the entire point of Diablo 3 which is to FIND loot. But anyways, I digress on that point... Finding loot in this game was Too Easy and Too Hard all at the same time.

You see, when leveling my Wizard I notice that on bosses I was doing SEVERELY low damage and dying pretty hard and this is because of my previous point; there are next to no stats on these weapons and armor you find. And with the lack of stats to put into whatever you want, you cannot alter the damage you do on the base. So what does this mean? I can either: Kill the same few enemies and hope for something or I can pay a piddly amount of gold for something with the level capped amount of Intelligence. Yeah, this is where the Too Easy comes in, because there are PLENTY of these items available which all benefit you the same.

The problem with this is... Diablo as a series is kind of like a casino. You kill the enemies and get a chance at getting the jackpot ( Uniques or Rares ). But in this game, I don't think I EVER found a piece of armor or anything that benefited me because I always found better at the Auction House. This lottery has become much harder to work because Blizzard made it next to impossible to find anything so their Auction House works in their favor; they WANT you to abuse it because it eventually means more REAL money Transactions later on. So stat scaling is unfair, drop rates are unfair, and even the gold is hard to come by.

The story. This is probably what turned me off the most. And this part is going to contain some spoilers. But if you're reading a review for a game and not expecting spoilers, well then you're an idiot. You see, the story is just lacking all over the place, and I'm not sure if I want to explain why it sucks or just list everything that was just poorly conceived. So instead I'll just list my three biggest complaints ( off the top of my head ):

1. Tyrael: Okay, so that meteor I was talking about? That was Tyrael. And I thought this was actually pretty badass. Tyrael's back after the Worldstone was destroyed. What happened to him? Where has he been all this time?

Well... I'm not sure if this was even answered because.... well, I was so bored with the guy I kinda stopped caring. You see, what made Tyrael so badass in Diablo 2 was just how we spoke and how looked. He LOOKED like you don't wanna fuck with him. He was an Angel with Wings bigger than Boeing 777, he glowed white and his voice echoed like he couldn't give a shit to speak to a puny mortal like you.

Now he's some black guy who doesn't really do anything but stand there and tell you what needs to be done. I don't know if this guy is suppose to replace Cain ( I kind of think Adria is actually ) but my god he just is out of place now. His entire purpose was just to warn us. Got it. Warned. Why are you still here?

2. The Black Soulstone: So this random sorcerer like guy just so happens to have an Anti-Soulstone which just so happens to absorb evil souls, contain them, and destroy them and all evil all at once.

Is this... not just the laziest writing? I really don't have much to say about this except this is stupidest thing in Diablo history.

Image of Belial

3. Belial/Azmodean: So these two were supposed to be the biggest badasses in Hell. You see these two tricked Diablo, Mephisto, and Baal all out of hell and waged war on all of Hell to be rulers. These guys were amazing. This guy was suppose to rule this desert nation with an iron fist... people were scared of him, towns were all on fire because of these guys. They were in the heart of the storm.

I killed Belial in SECONDS. I'm not even sure this guy touched me, he was so pathetic. And my god did he look stupid.

Jared from ScrewAttack said it the best: "Is there a way to turn this game off of Baby difficulty?"

The story is just so stupid. It feels so rushed and forced. I wish I could throw some metaphor and elaborate just how I came to this conclusion but... no, the story is just flat out stupid. I mean, it was like Blizzard worked on act 1 for the first 5 years of development and finally said "Oh shit, this game needs to come out sometime this year, we gotta do the remaining acts!"

In my opinion, all this game did was make me want to play Diablo 2 more.

Introduction

2012-07-08T20:22:00.000-07:00

So true to my word, I decided to make my own Blogger, following Kaz's footsteps. Truly he inspred me to do good things and good things I shall provide. But what will I do? Reviews? Rants? Maybe even go in depth into my mind? I don't know but I'll figure something out.

So to start things off, I just want to say I want to try new things and I definitely want feedback from you. You know who you are. So make sure you view daily because it's definitely going to be updated as often as I can.