For the sake of the people who actually keep track of what games I’m playing, whether to get recommendations or try to play multiplayer, a quick log of what I’m doing in gameland hides beneath the jump.
Archive for the 'Final Fantasy' Category
No That Is Not An Upcoming Square Enix Title
Look, I understand that Final Fantasy is a Fantasy game. It’s right in the title. That makes it hard to miss. Given this, I am willing to suspend my disbelief in a lot of situations.
Sharks are teal blue? That one’s easy to work with, because teal is not far from a realistic grey.
I'm a Shaaaaaark
Mermaids are pink? OK, sure. I don’t know what color real mermaids are, anyway.
All the mermaids are identical
Mermaids are suspicious of my characters’ ability to breathe underwater. This is fair. My party possesses “oxyale” (Magic Fairy MacGuffin #802), with which mermaids may not be familiar. (I mean, you can’t even buy the stuff. You have to find a pirate who’s kidnapped a fairy and sold her into slavery to a desert caravan… look, it’s complicated.)
How can YOU talk underwater?
But come on… White Sharks…
I'm a Shaaaaaark toooooo
…are purple? They’re not… white?
(This post is dedicated to my wife, who was willing to buy into all the pseudo-scientific claptrap underpinning Mass Effect, including the mysterious Element Zero (Space MacGuffin #2193) – with its ability to produce both the titular gravity distortions, and make unborn humans psychic – until they mentioned running a “negative current” through a device. “Negative current?! There’s no such thing!” Welcome to our household of nerds.)
P.S. – I almost forgot my obligatory FF8 teaser!
A gun? That's also a sword? e_e
Now With More Ninjas
Ninja vs. Gilded Lily
Still playing, after playing all weekend… It helps to have a cable that hooks the PSP up to the TV, so that I don’t get eyestrain from playing a portable game for so long! Also, this way K gets to participate.
Disassembling Unnatural Creatures
…And of course, this means that other games still have to wait!
"Try to control your emotions..."
Ongoing PSP Adventures
I have played this game many times. And seldom do I break the tradition of the first group I ever fielded, well over a decade ago1:
The Original Party
Admission: this is senseless. When I first played Final Fantasy on the NES, I was not familiar with the genre, despite coming in well after the fourth game in the series had been released on the SNES. I chose these classes because they were on the screen to begin with, and I figured I didn’t know any better. I didn’t even have the instruction manual to guide me.
(Also, it always struck me as strange that the names could only be four letters long. Later on, I learned Japanese, and then it made sense: In the Japanese kana, each character represents a syllable. So, allowing up to four characters is allowing up to four syllables, and a four syllable name is quite long enough! Allowing longer names after the translation to English would have required an interface overhaul.)
And now, I have the PSP version.
It looks and sounds very good, even by comparison to the GBA version of a few years ago:
My "Expanded" Names Aren't Much Classier
I think it’s hilarious that I keep buying and playing new versions of this game, and I love it every time. This time, it’s even pre-empted another old favorite I had started back into.
Don't Wait Up...
- One of my little brothers will have to tell me if I got the Black Belt’s name right. I keep oscillating between “Kane” and “Kage”. [↩]
After putting in another ~30 hours, bringing us to a total of about 90 hours over the course of a year, FFXII is now finished. And, no carpal tunnel syndrome.
In other news: FFT:PSP (just as in the original, IIRC) is, even more than I remembered, murderously complex. If you’re thinking about getting into the series, but are unsure whether you’ll like it, I would seriously recommend starting with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. (It looks like there is a DS sequel coming, as well.) At least that way you can learn if you like the gameplay style without plowing through all of the hours’ worth of text and diagram tutorials in the larger game, and facing crushing odds from the beginning. There are differences, and you will have to visit the tutorials to figure a few things out, but at least you will have a chance to survive.1
- Also, sage advice from The Reverend: Ignore the Zodiac System. [↩]
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