Sweet And Sour Alchemy

After some pondering and a bit of dubious flirtation, I decided to just put Kingdoms Of Amalur down for the time being.  I may or may not break down and find some DLC (if it's still available) for it later, but right now I just something a bit more flavorful.


I went ahead and popped my copy of Vagrant Story in.  It's just about what I envisioned; a strange blend of Diablo and menu-driven RPG.  This one is far from bad, but it seems to require focused play for longer stretches than I can manage at the moment; real life keeps interrupting me, to the point where I was making very obvious noob mistakes.  After some agonizing over dropping what could be a very rewarding campaign, I pulled it back out and put it on hold until I'm in the mood for another 'dark' game.


Then came a bizarre combination of depression and gamer's block.  Honestly (and in danger of sounding like a boastful ass), my list of on-hand, unplayed games has reached critical mass; it took something akin to a will save to go ahead and pull another one out.


I think I picked the next outing very well.  This time it's Atelier Iris:  Eternal Mana.  Just watching the damn intro movie managed to bring a smile to my face.  Like pretty much all Atelier games, the whole point of the gameplay is to tear around and collect materials to make into all sorts of goodies.  There's a whole lot of traditional RPG plot and gameplay elements (much to the chagrin of hardcore Atelier fans I'm told), which thus far gives a fair bit of flavor to unleashing the Harvest upon the oppositional hordes. 


There's a special nerdy joy to be found in tearing about the countryside and grabbing the absolutely absurd amount and variety of things you can use.  Throw in some of the nicest backgrounds (especially the towns and more flavorful dungeons) and some of the most cartoonish mooks this side of World of Mana, and we've got a real winner here.  Oh, and barrels actually hold stuff for you to use.  Can't think of another game that gave me gears and giant logs from searching barrels so far.


Anyway, the hours grows late and it's time to get back into the real world.  The Harvest Never Rests!