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About Me: My name's Rob. I'm insane, but not in a criminal way. At least, not yet. Take the character of Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, make him older and chubbier...and you pretty much know all you need to know about me. |
Over the past week or two, I ordered (and received) Stella Deus: Gate of Eternity and Wild Arms 2 online and just started Final Fantasy XIII last night. Impressions are below:
1. Stella Deus: Through the first of five chapters. Pretty easy, but entertaining. The points system for moves/attacks/spells is pretty good and adds strategy. Nothing groundbreaking or awesome, but for someone who hasn't played a turn-based strategy game in some time, it's a good way to get reacquainted with that genre. If I'd find a battle that I struggle with, I can easily hit up the (dull) Catacombs fights for levels and money to buy stuff.
So, I started playing Stella Deus (PS2 turn-based strategy) last night. Like many games, it has an evil empire. There's a head overlord dude and four generals under him.
One of these generals, Viper, is an over-the-top insane guy. Crazed cackling before each line and a love of killing everyone he meets.
So, how does a guy like that become a GENERAL in any army worth anything? The other three generals all have come off as mentally competent and/or tough potential opponents. He's just an insane guy who the other ones seem to consider incompetent. Sure, guys like that might have a future in evil armies (as the rabid dog types you use to strike fear in the people to make them susceptible to what you're doing), but as a GENERAL? When the other generals look at him with contempt.
At one point, I was considering reworking my Rogue Galaxy review because while replaying it, I was thinking my 3 might have been a bit low and the game was more of a 5 or so. Well, that might still be the case, but finishing the game proved to be so painful that I just don't have the energy to care enough to do so.
Here's how it went (massive spoilers for those interested in the game):
1. You reach the game's final planet and find out about a huge threat.
2. Go through dungeon, kill boss.
3. Enter shrine dungeon where you have to take about eight paths so each character can have a revelation about themselves.
4. Enter final dungeon. This place is very long and repetitive, even by the standards of a game that specializes in long, repetitive dungeons.
I'm nearly finished with my playthrough of Breath of Fire II for this month's contest. I'm also nearly finished with my replay of Rogue Galaxy, where I've toughed it out and am at the beginning of the 13th and final chapter.
I'm trying to decide if I should rework that review, as I think I was too hard on it the first time. However, the "too hard" is more like where I think it should have gotten a 5 or so instead of a 3, as opposed to the sort of dramatic difference that would really warrant a rewrite. Time will tell. Just like time will hopefully tell me why I've invested like 50 hours of my time into replaying a game I didn't like just because a little voice in my head thought I should give it a second chance.
Just another accomplishment on my part. This time getting my hits over the 300,000 mark. And I'm one hit shy of having 100 reviews with 1,000+ hits each.
It's about time there was a reason to have a holiday on the first Monday in September in the U.S.!
Sometimes I get these urges to play something and they are uncontrollable. Such as a few days ago when I decided that I really needed to try beating Baldur's Gate II. I'd been playing it a few years ago, but way too much shit was going on in my life and that game's way too engrossing and life-stealing for me to handle both it and real life.
So, it's take two!
As opposed to my wuss good-guy Paladin from the first trek, I figured I'd go with a character more along my heart — a Chaotic Neutral fighter. I can excuse good deeds because of the need to help people to get rewards and I can excuse the bad things I'll do because I just don't care about law and stuff.
Very impressive, through the first chapter or so. I'm in Chapter 2 where I still have to do the main dungeon and one sidequest which involves collecting three of an item dropped by a specific monster in said dungeon.
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