How Many Quarters for This One?

So as of today, I have a laptop again, thanks to our new author, to whom I would like to extend welcome, Sara. Yay. As such, Laughing Mike has dropped a Genesis Emulator my way, and I've decided to get started on that. I will not be using any of the shiny things like save states and whatnot. Tonight I began my journey into my game.

I started it up and listened to a child ramble for a little while, which was weird. We started off in a pretty standard fantasy RPG fashion, with the young knight in training, the king asking for his help, and a simple mission which ends with his return being met with a destroyed town. I ran into a couple of stupid snags, though. After my entire party of strangers came to find me instead of the other way around, (CONVENIENT) I couldn't actually find my way out of town. I blame this on my assumption that I was supposed to talk to someone in the castle to go out, and not having seen the way before that when in town. But eventually I found it.

In said first fight, my main character went down like a little bitch. Apparently the computer is just smart enough to tell its baddies to gang up on the guy who ruins the whole thing by dying. They accomplished this TWICE. Shining Force indeed. Then I got my act together, and kicked some goblin ass.

Outside that spot, I then ended up in a fight with the various other bad guys on the overworld map, which was a very foreign idea to me. Having the fight right there, I mean. Odd, but no problem. After squeezing through this little choke point, I trashed those bad guys too. Once I was in my now ruined town, I picked up a new party member I had met at the bar earlier, and went to the king. Who promptly died, along with the main character's mentor. So I geared up, got ready to go, and headed out again. The map was full of bad guys this time, who I took care of without much fuss. Then, at Laughing Mike's gracious suggestion, I checked out this little hut and got another party member. He's this awesome monk guy who can fight AND heal. Nice.

Then I went to the other town. Now, let me just say that I am liking this game a lot, but I HATE the fucking inventory system. You have four item slots on each character, as opposed to a group bag, and only the main character can pick up new items. So, if he's full up, you have to drop or give other people his stuff so he can get anything else. Kinda lame. Also, the character's weapon still takes up one of those four slots, even when equipped. Apparently there's no armor, which is interesting. And speaking of items, this town had a weapon shop which only sold our starting items. Dammit. Then I got arrested when it turned out the King was a traitor. Of fucking course. I hate this damned town.

What was cool was, I kept hearing NPCs looking for this girl named Khris, who they said was always running off and wanted to be an adventurer. So I thought, awesome! New party member. She broke me out of jail and turned out to be ANOTHER healer. So I have three healers, one of whom can fight well. Nice.

After that, there was a huge fight in the town, which was pretty awesome. More ass was kicked. The evil archers and mage never even attacked me for some reason though. They just... stood there while I killed them. Haw.

So shortly after that, chapter 1 ended, so I figured this was a good time to take a break and post about it.

So far, having fun, have a few gripes, and I look forward to seeing where this goes. One thing I would like to mention is that I LOVE being allowed such a big party. When you have to choose between active party members, I feel like you're missing out on what all the characters can do, so I like that it's letting me use so many. It's enough that I can break easily into multiple teams in a fight and cover more ground if need be.

Now, since Sean has no idea what a Haiku is or how it works, I have composed two about my own game experience, to counter balance him.

Shining Force Haiku #1

"The evil Lord Kane
Loves him some monologueing
An evil cliche."

Shining Force Haiku #2

"My inventory
Is really quite minuscule.
Time to sell some junk."

I like that first one... Anyway. Keep gaming! Hopefully posts from Bren and Mike are forthcoming.