When Life Gives You Lemons

Go murder a clown!


Things have been cooking along very well in Final Fantasy VI,  in fact well enough that I believe I've managed to surpass the overall power of any party in my previous playthroughs.  Some of it is making use of newer information (I can't do circle motions on a d-pad to save my life, finding out there's alternate command inputs was awesome; finding out you can still learn Ultima via the Paladin Shield, making the Ragnarok sword far more attractive than the Ragnarok Esper), buckling down and using the leveling mechanics as intended (OMG look at them stats), and brining a RPG veteran mindset into things.


Using the Esper bonuses has been the major difference.  The short version is that this game's magic system is based on Espers' essence (the local magic rocks of magicness), almost all your characters can equip an Esper's magicite, with the majority giving a small but significant stat boost when that character levels up.  These bonuses are permanent and persist even when you switch to another Esper, meaning a bit of basic XP management can result in huge dividends.  This results in even the wimpy characters turning into meat-mulching agri-combines of death, and with their powers combined THE HARVEST IS UNLEASHED and not much can get in the way.


I also decided that the open-ended gameplay of the World of Ruin is actually pretty fun, never really realizing that this was a very major departure from the JRPG tradition of linearity.  There are a few oddities; there are bits of gear exclusive to one particular character you can buy, but the process of re-recruiting that character also comes with far superior gear choices, plus using his special skills (he's the local the--I mean treasure hunter) can result in more unique but redundant stuff for him.  There's also some areas on the world map that have random encounters far more dangerous than what you get elsewhere, that you can't even claim as a player nudge or beef gate, since the major dungeon in the area has far more manageable enemies, even the bosses are less lethal than the mooks prowling around outside.


Things are starting to come to a close, with only two dungeons really left (there's a couple I've already cleared than I'll probably return to use as grinding spots) before the big showdown with Jack Hamill in his big trash tower of terror.  The Harvest Never Rests!

Always Wish To Catch A Fish

Well, things are cooking along pretty well on Final Fantasy VI.  I managed to get all the way through the Floating Continent without a whole of trouble (except for 'level acclimation' yay RPGs).  I even managed to wreck Atma Weapon's face on the first go-around pretty handily.  Though I came hilariously close to getting ganked by some mooks immediately afterwards.  Imagine the Harvest coming to such an ignominious end.  Things would have flung and then burned.


I've done some things I've wanted to do for some time; a decade or even more.  I've managed to pull off a handy victory over the dreaded Intangir.  For the uninitiated, Intangir is especially nasty pseudo-megaboss, found in an out-of-the-way area as a random encounter.  It starts off invisible (and therefore immune to physicals) and absorbs all elements (so no skills or magic either), has ridiculous heath and moves that completely crispify your dudes if you don't know what your doing.  And it only spawns in the first half, with all the really good moves and gear still locked out.  On the plus side, invisible enemies can be hit by magic of any type, and it is not immune to Stop.  Cast one Stop, then go to town whaling on the smug freak. 


I've also managed to complete the little fishing minigame successfully and save Cid.  It's much easier in the original SNES version, since the RNG is much more likely to give you the speedy little 'yummy fish' (that's what the game itself calls them).  I have reason to believe that the GBA was tweaked with a much more stingy RNG, likely since the bad ending of the minigame is much more dramatic overall.  Frankly, I'll take yummy fish over depressing melodrama any day.


And now I'm in the World of Ruin.  Everything's been wrecked, but now I can get the awesome stuff.  The lemons of life have been given, and soon that clown will face the beatdowns.  The Harvest Never Rests!

Boom Goes The Fireballs

Things are going along rather well in Final Fantasy VI.  There have been a few eye-openers thus far, mostly in dialog and combat patterns.


I didn't catch how the 'noble rebel leader' Banon was actually a blunt douchebag.  Way back when, even though I knew I got a better reward for refusing to help out (or simply hesitating) I used to always choose to help right off the bat.  Then comes my current playthrough, at least a decade after the last, where I talk to this guy, and the bozo starts barking at a conflicted young woman, mangling the myth of Pandora, and barks again so he can take a freakin' nap.  Way to impress your potential trump card, mister leader!  Needless to say, I went ahead and took the neutral choice and got the better goodies.  Watching him act similarly to other potential allies (Narshe) makes the unstoppable march of the Empire of Doom seem a good bit more believable.


I also remembered just how broken magic is compared to plain old physical attacks.  It makes some sense from a thematic view; magic is explicitly a very powerful force in this world, and very much one explicitly for high-intensity warfare.  Magic users are a major part of Final Fantasy, since the beginning, but VI is where magic users are on a whole different level of power compared to you usual combat troops.  I wouldn't see an in-universe gamechanger like this again until SaGa Frontier 2 where the opposite effect happens; steel weapons and armor completely smash the magic-user masses in-story, and actual in-game combat reflects that.


Well, it's time to go back to smacking freaks (and FF6 has extra gribbly looking freaks, I can tell you).  The Harvest Never Rests!

A Nerdy Little Secret

Well, it took some doing, but I managed another RPG double-kill last weekend:  Atelier Iris 2 and Secret of Mana.  Things got so hairy that I actually burned out and haven't even picked up the controller for a good few days.


Now that I've actually played my two favorite games from the Mana and Atelier fanchises, I still strongly suspect that Atelier (or at least the Iris subseries) borrowed a lot of elements from Mana.  I plan to natter about that later, after a bit more research and pondering.  Truth be told, I'm actually still burned out on both games for the moment, which is surprising considering neither claimed my free time and resources quite like the last few--hell, the last dozen--RPGs.


Anyway, I've decided on my next big endevour, and a bit of confession time. 


I've never actually beaten Final Fantasy VI. 


Way back in the day, I played the hell out of it, but for one reason or another, I never tackled the final dungeon.  Some of it was that I was playing a borrowed copy, so my savefiles tended to go poof.  Other reasons came along, some good, some stupid, and one very bad.  When I was an aspiring nerdling, I asked my friend if I could just beat the final boss on his already completed savefile.  My friend, being a wonderful dude (I was such a spoiled little prick, but he let me play with his SNES and his games anyway, without griping) let me do so, therefore giving me an excuse to say I beat the game.


I honestly think this is the moment that spark some really nerdy commitment issues, the ones where I pick an RPG, play it up to the last dungeon and just stop.  I've managed to get over it, at least for now.  So it comes to this.   It's foolish, it's childish, and it's frightfully nerdy, but it is long past time I've put this game on my finished list one and for all.


The Harvest Has Triumphed Twice Over!  And now it's time for that wonderful little saying:  When life gives you lemons, go murder a clown.

Finally a Dragon

Hail to the spambots!

The wild ride through fantasy known as Tales of Vesperia is finally coming near its conclusion (for now anyway, all hail New Game+).  I've been gathering up and harvesting the not-so-helpless wildlife for all sorts of materials, since the last third or so of the game included all the wandering around and sidequesting behavior.  Gotta get them shinies!

I've finally gotten to a dungeon where the boss is a dragon.  It kinda stands out, since there have been little to no signs of draconic enemies at all in the entire game thus far, despite coming from a series that tends to have all sorts of dragons tearing around and burninating the countryside.  Abyss managed to keep them rare, fairly epic battles, while Legendia had a gazillion palette swaps (fire dragons, ice dragons, undead dragons, holy dragons that were powered by the sea, you name it).  It got me to thinking about how this game treated its rarer critters.  This dragon (spoilers) is part of a race called the Entelexia, which are quite similar to say, Final Fantasy's Espers, down to leaving a powerful magic crystal upon death, being rather noble-minded, and coming in all sorts of forms.  There fairly unique in style and characterization.  This games airship is actually just a small merchantman hauled by the rigging by an Entelexia that looks and acts an awful lot like The Legend of Zelda's Wind Fish.

It might be a bit too far off, but I wonder if this game is actually the Tales crew's take on Final Fantasy VI's War of The Magi, with the Tales-style storytelling and nuances tossed in.  There's a fair bit of animosity on both sides, humans are grabbing apatheia (Entelexia crystals, much like FF6 magicite) to power all sorts of machines, with some bad apples using them to power weapons and war machines to Take Over The World.  There's a a great many differences, but the parallels are very much present.  Just a thought, and I know I'm not the first one to think of it.

In any case, let's hope that things actually come to a nice conclusion, because soon afterwards, it's like to conquer the kooky netherworlds of Disgaea!

That's Treasure Hunter!

Hail to the Spambots!

Did a fair bit of shooting and looting today.  The World of Tanks highlight is when I was driving one of my VKs.  Everybody else charged up the left side, I took the right and did some sentry work to cover the arty.   After helping to lay waste to the Hetzers that came into my zone of control, I snuck off and around the map.  Blasted one arty piece, then some...person on my team decided it would be fun to block me from getting into the base cap.  After a whole three seconds, I gave up and just sniped the last arty, and won the game.  I repeat, I was being shoved around by some retard, and still managed to stick my gun over him and win the fucking game.  Got Reaper out of the deal too.

I wonder if they even figured out what happened.

In other news, I've been doing a fair bit of old-school rampaging and pillaging in Final Fantasy VI.  I do have my issues with the Game Boy version, mostly that some luminous soul decided that this is the one version that didn't need an official Strategy Guide.  ALL of the previous versions got one, along with every other FF released on the Game Boy Advance (I, II, IV, V, FFT Advance).  I have decided that all is now forgiven.  Some other, far more luminous soul decided to include alternate input commands for Blitz moves.  For the uninitiated, Blitz commands require input commands much like fighting games, with the best ones requiring circle motions.  I'm very bad at this, and the teeny d-pad on the GBA doesn't help at all.  These alternate inputs require directional tapping instead, which makes by life much easier, and the pixellated forces of badness are now in deeper shit than ever.  >:D

Set phasers to burninate!