Let's try this again.

Has it really been two years since the last post here? Damn.

Anyways, I've decided to start plowing through my backlog of games both unfinished and never played. I'm starting with Lost Odyssey for the X-Box 360. I have played it before, but dropped it at the beginning of the fourth disc. Luckily, it's been about a year (maybe more) since I last played it so I've forgotten quite a few details and am pretty much starting completely fresh.

I picked the game up two days ago and have since gotten up through maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of disc two, about twenty-five hours of time (including a bit of grinding) sunk into it thus far. The world this game takes place in is your typical JRPG fantasy-ish world, where there is mixed technology and magic. In this world, they had their own industrial revolution but it was caused by magic energy. All of the machines are powered by magic, from cars, to tanks, and factories. The main characters is an immortal named Kaim Argonar who has lost his memory and is currently a Lieutenant in the army of Uhra.

In the beginning of the game we are introduced to Kaim who, after having survived a catastrophic disaster (a giant meteor fell on the battlefield) in the middle of a battle, is sent on a mission by the Gongora and the council of Uhra to go to the construction site of Grand Staff and figure out if the Staff caused this disaster and why. Grand Staff is a giant magic engine designed to gather and focus magic energy. He is accompanied on this mission by another amnesiac immortal, Seth Balmore, and a mage sent along by Gongora himself named Jansen.

So far, I've gone to Grand Staff, barely gotten to investigate before being captured by the army of the nation of Numara, been held prisoner as a suspected spy, and then been set free and regained Kaim's memories by finding the daughter he thought was dead grown up, with two kids, and dying of an unknown illness. In his memories Kaim learns that he and Seth are part of a group of five people (Kaim, Seth, Queen Ming of Numara, Kaim's wife Sarah, and Gongora) sent to this world on an unknown mission (haven't remembered that yet) but were then betrayed by Gongora and stripped of their memories. On my way out of Numara I kidnapped Ming and stole the general's (who is trying to take control of the country) new ship and set sail for Gohtza to try and get aid against Gongora. On the way to Gohtza, Kaim is reunited with Sarah, who has also lost her memories, and it's here that I've stopped for the time being to grind for a bit.

I do believe that that was my longest post yet. Now to see if this will keep going or go another two years before another comes along.

A Short Shining Force Post

So I've started up Shining Force a couple of times over the last few days, but I keep noticing that I don't actually have enough time to play much when I do. But I had some time today, and so I played for a little while.



It was weird seeing that weird little girl again. Familiar, but distant, you know? But what's weird is that shortly after I started playing, I realized something: I have no idea what I'm doing in this game right now, story-wise.

Luckily, I was reminded quickly enough.



This fight was pretty standard, honestly, and I'm surprised at how easy most of it was. I was sort of excited to fight Elliot, because I remember him seeming like a pretty cool bad guy.



But I would like to know why he had artillery. At least it's not a giant laser eye thing though, right? By the way, when I got to Elliot himself, he had a good 60 HP and a healer standing right next to him. Also, he's pretty scary looking.



Like much scarier than the sprite and portrait would have me believe. Also, he hits like a truck, so I'll need to be really careful. The one attack he pulled off before I egressed out of there almost dropped my MC. I plan to grind the fight a little because with a number of my characters, I'm either very close to promotion, or I just did it.

Oh, also I got yet another centaur knight thing in the group. So, there's that, then. More to come.

UNCOOL, GAME.

Okay... So, here's the deal. I've been playing Shining Force a lot lately. Just ask my roommates, who I think are now officially sick of the battle music.

I entered Chapter 3. I ended up in Bustoke, and solved everyone's problems with serious violence, properly applied. I also got a new archer, PLUS my awesome werewolf dude I've heard so much about. I have promoted a bunch of my team members, which is pretty cool. I might very well post what they all look like some time. But for now, I need to briefly discuss something with you guys. I knew the Runefaust dudes were after a secret weapon.

Here are my thoughts about that.



WHAT. THE EVERLOVING. FUCK

To Battle!

WARNING: THIS POST IS GONNA GET REALLY LONG!

Last night I decided to play some Shining Force, because I had recently decided to move past the fight I've been grinding for a while and see what was waiting for me. Part of the reason for my over preparation was the veritable host of horror stories and warnings I had received about the fight I was coming up to, in which I am forced to face The Marionette. I have been dreading this fight, to some degree. However, I'm getting ahead of myself here.



Hell yeah I am. We begin here. The spirit of this lake has been summoned by the Orb of Light, which I've just received after defeating the monsters of the Cave of Darkness. What a naming scheme. She tells me a bit about Darksol's plans, and insists that I have to stop him. I concur. Then I head upstairs to talk to Otrant, who someone has recently referred to as a "He" and I take issue with that. Mainly because of the purple lipstick.



Just saying. So I'm officially the Chosen One or whatever, and now we're going to be known as the Shining Force to everyone, not just the few people in this story who aren't trying to kill me. Otrant tells me I have to cross the sea, and I know just how to do it. The only boat around belongs to the mayor of the last town, whose son, as I find out upon arriving, has gone missing. I have a hunch as to where he is. As I come to the circus tent, I have to take a second. This may be about to go horribly wrong.



Into the breach! The tent is housing one of the big players for the bad guys, who sics her "pets" on me. These mostly include a lot of puppets and Dire Clowns, and other unsavory such things, including this one. The man himself, the Marionette.



Seriously, look at that. He has potentially unlimited MP, and Freeze 3 to throw at me, which I am certain is going to hurt BADLY. The fight went pretty well at first, though. I was mopping the floor with the puppets and things, minus one bit where I screwed up, and lost Anri, my second mage. Damn. Then I got up to Marionette. He had a good chunk of hit points, but my first hit on him went pretty well, and everybody moved in. I had to be careful, because my main character has been getting pretty badass lately, doing the most damage in the party, and having some of the highest health in the party. But if I screw up and he goes down, it's all over for me.

However, after losing not one, not two, not even three, but four party members total, I managed to take down Marionette. On my first try! I was pretty pleased with myself here. Marionette was less so.



He explodes, like baddies usually do, and I picked up all the neat items lying around in chests for me. Heading back to the mayor, he's incredibly grateful for his son being alive.



Awesome. I was kind of excited to jump on the boat and see where it goes. BUT YOU CAN'T EVEN LET ME HAVE THAT, CAN YOU GAME?!



Of course you can't-OH FUCK BLUE FIRE.




...Well. On the plus side, I managed to get that screenshot right before the ship disappeared under the water. Luckily, a nearby man was able to give me some good advice.



Or rather, advice that basically amounted to "DAYUMN. You're screwed." The mayor really wasn't much help though. He basically said, alright, well go to Shade Abbey and talk to my nephew. He can probably help you. People have been mentioning Shade Abbey a lot in the game, so I knew I would eventually end up there, but I didn't think they were going to play it up to be... you know, a good thing. When I got there though, things were immediately weird.



So if I remembered the list of characters correctly, this was one of the guys who would be joining my party. Also, he had a character portrait, so that basically confirmed it. The thing about Shade Abbey is that everything is VERY CLEARLY WRONG.



That's just one example. Check out all of those dug up graves. There was even a zombie in one of the rooms with the Abbot. The bitch is, I couldn't seem to do anything about whatever was up. I knew it was going to get all explained, but then when I went inside the chapel finally, I noticed every character from around the building was now following me, and when I tried to talk to them, they said the exact same thing that they said when they had been outside as well. It all sorta came together in my head after that.



OH SHIT. Luckily, as I was completely surrounded by undead, the game made the mistake of letting my mage go first.




This fight was fun, though. Darksol had showed up for just a second to taunt me, right before I beat his minions senseless. AGAIN. After that, I got one of the bird guys on my team. On the way out I got the other one. The first one had been stone, apparently, which does raise the question of why he was able to yell out some Admiral Akbar shit at me.




After that, I reached the end of Chapter 2, which seemed like a good place to stop since it was late last night. I thought these little bubbles of NEXT CHAPTER ON SHINING FORCE! dialogue were funny, so I put them in the same picture for your convenience.




This chapter was a lot of fun, and stuff feels like it's rolling along a bit more now! I'll do a bit more later on, because I have some characters up for promotion now and I'm in a new spot. Keep playing!

A Game Haiku or two to bring us into chapter 3:

I have been chosen
To defeat Runefaust's armies
Let the fight begin!

They have a weapon
To stop me from saving Rune.
Let's see them try, then.




P.S. - This video is awesome.

Some Thoughts

WARNING: The following post could potentially be a little long and a little rambly. What it will definitely be is a little link-heavy, (No, no a Hyrulian hero in the Iron Boots) with a couple of pictures.

Recently, Sara, Brendan, Laughing Mike, Sean and I were all hanging out and experiencing something of a failure of a night. Don't get me wrong, though. It was still fun as hell. While we were there, I started talking to the guys about this web series I had recently watched, partly with Sara. It's called There Will Be Brawl. (Links will be at the bottom of the post.) Basically, There Will Be Brawl is a parody of the Super Smash Bros. world, and so by extension, the Nintendo Universe we all know and love. Now, TWBB can be funny at times, in an absurd sort of way, but it is by no means a funny sort of parody. Instead, the makers of it wanted to take a broken, dark, noir-esque dystopian Mushroom Kingdom, years after a golden age of heroes.

Here's the thing. It sounds a bit silly, I'm sure. And it is silly. The acting is pretty wobbly in a lot of parts, the writing could use a little fine-tuning, and let's face it. At first glance it's really hard to accept Luigi freaking Mario as a hard-bitten PI trying to save a place that's no longer worth saving. But what you find, if you get to watching it, is that it is actually a lot of fun to watch, and it's a very interesting concept, and for me personally, it made me think, and from time to time, it got real emotional response out of me.

I think I know why that is, actually. I didn't want to make this post as a review of TWBB, but in fact I wanted to talk about what I got out of it. These characters from these games are not real. They have never been real people, and they never will be. Yet, for many of us who grew up with their adventures, they are our sort of heroes. Let's take a look at Link and Mario, specifically.

What do these two do? I mean, yeah, jump on Goombas, and smash pots, and get power-ups, but at the core of the characters, what is it they truly do? The answer is, they beat the bad guy, and they save the princess. It's as simple as that. Every single time, no matter how many times it's happened before, they save their princesses. TWBB asks us a question; what happens if the hero doesn't save the princess anymore?

We make jokes about it, of course. We say that sometimes, Mario just gets sick of rescuing Peach over and over and over. Why the hell is she so good at being captured, anyway? In the series, we see what happens to the Mushroom Kingdom when its heroes no longer act heroically. But what about our world, the real world? I begin to think very seriously that if our answer to the question, "what do these heroes do?" was something other than "save the princess," this place would be very different, and far darker indeed.

Throughout TWBB, you keep thinking to yourself, alright, so which character is it that's going to still be like he used to be? Where's the character who's stayed true to themselves after all this? Where's the last hero? You want it, and you expect it to come, and it never does. Luigi is by far the closest thing you get, and while he does decide to act heroically, he seems to beaten and broken at times that it still feels like you just want someone to come and make it all better. I imagine that's what the makers wanted you to feel like the characters had been feeling for years, and I think they succeeded.

That's why TWBB managed to get to me. It challenged not just years of storytelling, and took a different look at some of the most widely recognizable and established stories told in the modern day, but it also challenged the things that were important to me from my very childhood. It challenged, to some degree, my silly ideals.

Now, I realize this post has been awfully serious-face, which is not generally the tone we take here at Zuul Arcade, so to transition back to having a good time and playing games, I've got some neat stuff to show you guys. If any of you read the blog Geekologie, you've probably already seen this, but it's awesome, and it felt like it fit in with what I was talking about.



That's right. It's a Mario and Peach version of Michaelangelo's La Pietà. I happen to think La Pietà is a pretty damned amazing piece of art, personally, so I thought this was incredibly cool. Best part is, this Mario and Peach version is a massive sculpture. I expected it to be tiny. Granted, this is in polystyrene, not marble, but still. How cool is that?

Let's face it, Video games have become their own art form, much like how film making has been for some time. Now, as incredible as the gaming experience can be at times, it's still making a transition from silly frivolity just made for having fun to a full blown art form, but it really is getting there, and for me, that's exciting. The other thing I love is that video games can have such a fantastic visual and aural quality to them, that even after some artist has made something that becomes the video game's visuals and music, it can still inspire other artists to do amazing things based on the originals. Just look at the Video Game Orchestra, and that sculpture there.

From that, I also found this other really cool thing where this artist has been making these very pretty digital paintings of what updated old games could look like. Some of them are fantastic. The Altered Beast one, the Metroid ones, they're just fantastic. I wish I could post all of them, but there are a LOT, so I figured I would post one and then a link to the gallery. The one I picked is because it's got some relevance to some of our people here!



Click the picture for full-sized, by the way. Oh yes, it's for Final Fantasy 6. You have to love that he made the characters look as Amano originally designed them there. Anyway, that's about enough for me. I'm happy to report that it seems like most of us have been playing their games, and are just waiting for a good spot to make a post. Me, I'm still grinding. One of my characters just hit level 9, so I'm almost to where I decided I want to be before I try to take on The Marionette.

Links!



Okay, fine. I know, I made the same joke twice in this post.

-There Will Be Brawl -The series has 10 episodes ranging from 10 minutes to 35.
-TWBB costume photography -The costume photo gallery that alerted me to this thing thing's existence before I ever saw the series. These photos are fantastic.

-Orioto's Gallery -The gallery of video game remakes. There are two pages!

-Mario Sculpture -Geekologie's post about the Mario sculpture. Includes a picture of the artist next to the piece, and a picture of the original Michaelangelo sculpture for comparison.
Kordiana Lewandowskiego -The artist's portfolio. The Geekologie post links to it too, but I thought I would anyway if you want to go straight to the source. The piece, which is called "Game Over," by the way, is easy to find on his site, and includes more pictures, a 360 degree turning image, PLUS a description of how he made the sculpture. It's in Polish, but Google Translator actually does a decent job of translating it for you.

The Video Game Orchestra -Because I mentioned them, and they're awesome.

An Update

WARNING: This post is a little long. And full of great pictures. And awesomeness.

So I've been playing Shining Force most days, which is feeling pretty good. I've been grinding the same fight over and over to level a little, which feels less good. It should be noted that I hate grinding. I would rather run right through the story any day, but that doesn't always work real well. But anyway, the fight I was working on over and over was the last one I played the first time around; that is to say, when I beat it before, the town right after was the one where the game died. So, with some trepidation, I entered the town, having decided to grind on the next fight for a while. This is what I was met with.



A really sketchy dude in a cloak. Awesome. Every city should have a guy like that. If you go to Boston, there should be a guy in a cloak waiting for you, and if you talk to him, he says, "Welcome to Boston, a land of history, culture, and silly accents. Also we have chowdah."

I went around talking to people a bit, and was a little surprised by what I found:



The first couple guys I talked to were very apologetic about attacking me outside the town. That begs the question, why the hell did they have zombies and giant bats in their employ? And why don't they care that I killed so many of their guys? Oh well. I went on to find the King's daughter.





God damn right I am.

She was, of course, less than thrilled about the news regarding her father and our home. Considering how the LAST fucking town I was in was FULL of people, and even a PLAY devoted to taunting my destroyed home, I was sympathetic. She ran off, and the... um... blue dog guy who follows us around... I dunno what the fuck that guy is. He's like the Shining Force Band Manager or something. Anyway, he told me to run after her and reassure her, or whatever. But since I thought doing so might trigger an event or something, I decided to explore a little first. Doing so got me that egg I was so strongly advised to find and hatch, as well! Now, how to hatch it? Anyway. I quickly discovered something about Manarina. This place is fuckin' weird.



I also found this three-eyed lady, who started giving me all this advice out of the blue. I felt like my main character was saying to the rest of the party, "Listen guys. I know everyone we meet tries to kill us, but looking at this woman, with her three glowing eyes and her shadowed face under that hood, while she instructs us to all go into some sort of cave full of monsters, I think we can all agree that she seems pretty much legit."



So before talking to the princess, and before going into some sort of cave of evil, I wanted to keep looking around. I got that egg, like I said, and then I found this totally awesome machine, and this woman said she could use it to turn people into animals. She asked if I would like a try. Now, the rational part of my mind was like, "well, maybe we should figure out if the procedure can be undone first..."

Sadly, my impetuous side is very loud, and Reason only got out "well," before Impluse screamed "DUDE BEING A FUCKING ANIMAL WOULD BE THE TITS!" This is the result.



So I ran around like... Well, like a chicken for a while, trying to figure out how to change back. Fuck. I even ran into the Princess, who was like, "Oh, hey... thanks for trying to cheer me up and stuff, but I don't really like hens..." Everyone was like hey, it's a chicken! Or what the hell is a chicken doing in here? I mean, that's not an unreasonable question, but why aren't they worried about me being a TALKING chicken screaming "TURN ME THE FUCK BACK!" I ran all the way to the priest, who I hoped could help. This was the helpful response I got from him:



Great. Fucking thank you. Luckily, going down to HQ made me all better. I talked to the Princess after that, who promptly sacked up and joined the team. Awesome. I have two mages now. I also found this guy who seriously said to me, "Sorry, you can't come in here. I only let cute animals pass." Sigh. I went, got turned into a chicken again, found some lady who turned me back, and got to explore a little more. I got a little info out of the place, which was nice. The cool thing was that I found this totally sweet slide on the top floor.



It was then that I made a decision about Manarina. That place is bat shit crazy, but it's also the best damn place I've been in this game thus far. It has it all! Books, surly mages EVERYWHERE, a machine that turns people into chickens, some sort of evil cave which is full of stuff, AND a giant slide? How badass can one town get? Even that guy who wouldn't let me pass until I was a chicken agreed.



Anyway. After all that fun, I went down into the cave to kick some monster ass. The place is full of chests and zombies and evil mages and stuff, so it's gonna be my new grinding spot for a while. It's a much less annoying fight than the last one. I'll update you again when I've moved past that fight!

We Kinda Suck

So, let's be honest with ourselves, this isn't going so well. The last post that was actually about a game someone was playing for the project was a while ago, and it was when Eternal Sonata decided to be SUCH a dick, that even Mike said to hell with it.

Since going to school, I have hardly touched Shining Force, and I hate that. So since I'm on spring break, and staying with the lovely Sara for the duration, and I have very little homework to do, I will be trying to get back on the wagon, and hopefully it will help you guys get back on with me.

I might be going to bed in a few minutes though, and won't have quite the time to make a full post right this second, but I did want to share this tidbit, because it's true, and important.



Of fucking course it does. Giant bats are assholes.

And I just thought of a game haiku:

Stupid giant bats.
They all go for your main guy,
And then they evade.

With that, I bid you all happy gaming and a good night, and let's try to get ourselves back on track!

I Am Stuck

I can't believe I am stuck on the Vargas fight. I get to the point in the fight when Sabin shows up, and you have to use the blitz attack to win, (Left, right, left, then X) but after 4 tries at it, I still cant do it. Maybe I need help, or my timing is off. I do not know.

Yeah, I am here

Hey all, it's Big Mike here finally. I will be starting my game today, which will be FF6. I would like to say good luck to me and that is all.

Despite the Lateness of the Hour...

So I've just finished my first painting assignment, and am nearly through with cleaning up all of my materials, (thank god soap gets oil paint off hands and sinks) and I was checking my various internets. All I can say is that I wish I had found these before I found those yearbook things from that other post I made. You know the one.







I'm sorry, I just thought these were funny. It's really pretty late, so I don't feel like watching something, but I feel like doing SOMETHING before sleep, so I've decided to play through one fight in Shining Force before I throw on my audio book and sleep. Might as well be productive if I'm awake, right?

Right.

Some Progress!

So I was playing Shining Force a bit today while hanging out with my new roommates at school, and I made a bit of good progress. I'm not a ton further, but I'm roughly where I was before my unfortunate restart. I've found a fight which seems to be productive enough that I'm grinding it for a while. I'm thinking that I want to do this fight until I can just about get everyone promoted who I want to promote. Then maybe keep going a little bit to re-level those characters a little before I move on.

I'm still debating my plan a little, but level 10 is only a few away, so I'll be doing promotions pretty soon either way. My two knights and all of my casters are the ones I should focus on a little bit right now, which, thanks to the first useful weapon salesman I've met yet, should be a lot easier than before. Normal attacks managed to yield as much of a punch as some of my weaker fighting characters, which means that they should be able to do some damage of their own, as long as I'm careful.

Just thought I should do an update. My first one from school! Game on, people.

The oh so famous opera

Sean here. It's been forever since my last post, so I figured I'd post a quick update. I just completed the famous "opera house scene" in FF6 in the world of balance. SO GOOD. It just reminds me of how much this game rocks.

However, I have been fairly busy and have been procrastinating on playing the game. This is one such reason that we created the Zuul arcade, to help curb these issues and FINISH these damn games! The good part about this blog is now it feels like an obligation to complete ff6 rather than a casual "do what I want" playthrough.

Not much more than that to update. I'm sure we'll post more silly video's and zany blogs soon.

GAH!

So every time I feel that i like Eternal Sonata again, the game does something to irratate me. I got to use a character that I REALLY liked for one section of the game...and now she's disappeared. grrrr....

Time to Give In!

Well, the votes came in here and there (from where, I still don't know), and people talked me into it in person. I have restarted Shining Force. My having waited angrily for this long has actually made it less annoying to jump back in. I'm nearly at the end of Chapter One, after playing a little bit this morning. I got the Monk a little earlier this time around, which has been handy. Sadly, on my way out of my starting town, I lost towards the end of a big fight that had been going quite well until a bunch of the baddies got their turns all in a row and managed to gang up on my main character.

So, being annoyed about that, I took a break for a while, because frankly, Shining Force and I need to take a little time to rebuild our relationship.

Random point of interest; I spent several minutes this morning staring at my old Turbo GraphX 16 and thinking, "I could just take you downstairs, hook you up, and rock some Blazing Lazers...

That's really it, for now, just wanted to mention that in fact I have restarted my game.

The plunge!

Last week I began Chrono Trigger again. At this point I'm probably about 15 hours in. I've already completed the Masamune and have met all the main characters. I forgot how much I love this game. The music, the forced grinding, the forgetting where I left off and wandering through the different time periods until I find the right story line. The beginning took forever as I was determined to complete each of the three games at the fair. Each game took points and points had to be obtained at the fair. This meant I spent at least an hour fighting a robot and effectively becoming super powered in the beginning of the game in order to successfully finish the games. @_@;; Over...kill... Also gained enough points that I could trade in for gold to get the best sword available at the time. The 4000 gold silver sword. Woo!

And now a haiku for all those poetry loving folks out there.

The real time hero
Chrono wanders the deep past
With friends close at hand

Take that, newbs.

New year, new post

Sean here. Happy 2010 everyone!

So, the 1st part of my blog I will regale everyone with my most recent trials and tribulations on ff6. In the 2nd part, I will offer words of encouragement to my fellow bloggers who ARE ALL EXPERIENCING PROBLEMS. This is the exact reason we created Zuul arcade, to help us get through the minutia of different issues that are going to arise.

So, ff6 has been well and good. I'm remembering much more of the game than I realize and I'm playing it in what I refer to as "episodic content". I'll get to a part of the game (I.E. the phantom train) and I'll go "OOOH YEAH...this part. crap. I really don't want to do this right now." So what I do is I'm playing in 15-20 minute stretches and putting the game down when I'm sensing I'm getting bored with it. I'm also switching up and using party members I almost never used on my previous playthroughs just to make it a different experience this time. It's actually helping quite a bit. For example, in previous playthroughs I almost never used Celes...now as I'm older and wiser, I'm realizing that many characters abilites become useless later on in the game, that earlier on are really powerful (such as sabin's blitz moves.) Celes's "Runic" ability is ALWAYS HELPFUL. she essentially neutralizes all enemy magical attacks. So I'm learning to be a bit more crafty with my party selections. I've currently just found terra in Zozo and recieved the chainsaw for Edgar. (quite nifty!) and now I must infiltrate the empire.

Good times.

Now for my friends in need.

Teague, that issue with Shining Force SUCKS. Life has decided it is testing you, and your patience and your ability to not smash your computer to bits. Frankly, as people voted, it looks like a restart is in order. I would offer you an actual genesis with the game, but I can't guarantee a save battery circa 1993 is still going to work. the damn thing is nearly 20 years old, and the batteries are supposed to have a life span of about 5 years...I'm actually wondering if there are companies that offer replacement services. something to look into. What we need is to find a Rom that isn't going to fuck you over. So, I would give it one more try, and if you find a similar issue with another rom, I don't think anyone will blame you for passing this one over. But it will attack your well being because you'll be feeling like you "gave up". So we'll figure something out.

Brendan. Your issue is a little harder, and is more like a mental block. My best suggestion is to run the game in the backround while your doing something else, or multiple things. Maybe watch a movie you like and while your watching just kind of pay a half sort of attention to the current part of the game your at. If it's an issue were you don't know where to go, Mike is essentially a goddamn ff6 expert and can pretty much point you in the correct direction at any time, but I'm not thinking that's the case. Since your in the WOR, there is a ton of content that needs to be addressed before you go about trying to fight God Kefka. But yeah, my suggestion would be just turn the game on even if you don't feel like playing it so that it's right there in front of you so you'll kind of feel obligated to dick around with it.

Mike, I like the critique of eternal sonata. But I agree that having LESS time the more POWERFUL you get is rather gay. I can see the thinking behind this, some developer was sitting at his cubicle going "Well, since there more skilled at this point, they don't need as much time". And to this I say "Where the hell was the rest of the development team that has any SENSE? Why didn't they kick this guy in the teeth?" Because whoever thought of this, that's what they need, a goddamn kick in the teeth. Or a good curbstomp. Where's Teague?

Oh, for all you Zuul arcade readers/posters. Poetry is free form and I'm a goddamn haiku PIONEER. Years from now millions of failed haiku's will be attributed to my name, because I was brave enough to break boundries, and I will dub these "Seanku's"

"Kefka is evil"
"His laughter scares small children"
"He needs a curbstomp"

All right I'm out. We are still working on the challenge bat, and have many good things in store this year! - Sean

A turning point....

So, onward I have played in FFVI, and I've at long last come to an important way point. The same place I stopped playing every other time I've started this game. Kefka has just torn the world asunder, our heroes are scattered and despondent, and I'm left to gather them back and go whip me some sally clown ass. Now, this is noteworthy in and of itself, but then you find out that I got here SATURDAY. I haven't touched it since. It's exactly what has happened every f@(%!#& time I've started this game. I don't know what it is. You couldn't pull me away from it all Christmas, I'm still loving the story, and there's now literally an entire new world to explore, and I can't bring myself to sit down and beat it. I have no idea why. I just feel so unbelievably blasé, it's maddening.

But this is where this blog comes in. This entire experiment was created for the explicit purpose of helping us get through these doldrums so that we may take our rightful place amongst the other gaming elite of our generation. I'm going to give it a day or two, get through new years and then if I still don't feel the need to finish, I'm going to strap myself to a chair and power through it if it kills me. This does raise some interesting questions for debate though. Is there something in the game that keeps me from wanting to finish? Are there other games out there with the same phenomenon? I'd love to hear examples and ideas.

Shit.

So... It's probably for the best that I'm not playing my game on a Genesis right now. The Genesis has controllers, not a keyboard. I could throw a controller. Hard. And probably break stuff in the process. And if this was happening on a Genesis, I would probably do that.

I can't play right now. Not just because I'm pissed off, but because I literally CAN'T. I just got through a big long fight that took me like 4 tries, so I was really happy about that. So I headed up to the town I was supposed to go to, and what do I find?

Nothing.

A black screen. Nothing happens when I enter the town. The screen fades to black like it should, and then... nothing. It stays black. Music keeps playing, and nothing else works. I tried playing on a different emulator, and the same thing happened. I tried replacing the rom, and apparently it's different enough from the original one that it doesn't have my save file.

WOW am I pissed at this game right now. If I were to not finish this game and try something else, I wouldn't even feel like I gave up so much as the game screwed me into it. What the FUCK.

Finally

So. Eternal Sonata.

I've had this game for about a year (maybe more) now and until we started this thing I've yet to really touch it. Started the game and the story started out very intriguing but now that i'm 8 hours in and the story hasn't picked up AT ALL I'm more than a tad disappointed in agame I've heard nothing but good things about. The (seemingly) main villian has this scheme to control his country using a medicine that turns them in psychotic monsters that he can control (I think?) to dominate the world. This medicine also gives them the ability to use magic. The medicine in question, mineral powder, is a rather useful cure-all that also slowly but surely mutates people who use it, eventually killing them. Beyond that the game has been nothing but pointless cinematics and mostly boring combats. Which leads me to my largest gripe about the game.

Combat.

For some unknown reason, the stronger you get, the less time you have available to fight. To explain a bit, during combat you have Tactical Time (TT) and Real Time (RT). When you start the game you have infinite Tactical Time at the start of a battle. This means that the timer you have on the side of your screen doesn't count down at all until you move. It also stops counting down when you stop moving so as long as you aren't doing anything you aren;t using that characters turn. As you progress in the game not only do your characters gain levels, but you also gain party levels. Each party level changes how combat works in some way. Once you hit party level 2, you keep infinite TT but as soon as you move your RT depletes even if you stop moving. At party level 3 you gain some more ability slots (neat) but you are suddenly limited to 3 seconds of TT before your RT starts to deplete...you also mysteriously lose 1 second of RT. I almost don't want to see the higher party levels. The idea that getting stronger causes you to lose time lke that is more that a little stupid to me.

Other than my gripes about the game though, it is rather pretty and some of the characters are enjoyable (I could deal without another monologue from Frederic though)

But everyone else was doing it!

So in the spirit of getting things underway with everyone else, I busted out the old emu-later, and my well worn rom of FFVI. Ah nostalgia!

Now, I've had this argument too many times to count, so I'll state my position right now. This is without a doubt my favorite kind of RPG. You have a simple system, with intriguing stories, deep characters, varied game play, evil douche villains and over the top sprite animations to show simple emotion. There is arguably no "main" character to this game. Everyone gets screen time, and everyone has a measurable role in advancing the story. It takes almost no time to work out how to play the game, but provides hours and hours of play time.

I think this is why I've never actually finished. It takes a good solid 40-60 hours to beat this game I'm told. Spread that out over several weeks and some other thing steals my weak as a kitten attention span. I must have about 7 different save files on several different systems and computers. Now arguably I could just boot up one of those and save myself a lot of repeating, but it's been so long, I don't remember half of the puzzles and twists so it feels more fun to go back and be like "oh yeah! That octopus fucker ultrose! I hate that douche!"

And after 2 hours logged, I'm at that exact spot. Floating down the river, and BAM octopus douche. Now for those who don't know/remember, you have this guy Bannon with you, and if he dies, you lose. not a huge deal until you see that Ultrose can one shot the poor schlub, and there's really not a lot to be done, but restart and try again. Not the best example of the finer points of this game, but one of those things that strikes me as defining of the game. You feel accomplished when you roast the bastard and float on victorious, even if you do go over a waterfall 3 seconds later.

We'll see how that damn cephalopod likes a few dozen fire spells to his face tomorrow.

And since Sean rather stunningly failed at a FF haiku *ahem*:

Big purple squid thing.
likes to use his tentacles
fuck, what a douche bag

Chocobo riding,
really just a mini game
but such a great song

The Returners boss
heals like a doctor on speed
'till Ultros ate him.