21:11 <@aestuo> < used to write star wars fanfic
21:12 <@mdxi> aestuo: are you also a nazi furry cosplayer boba fett?
21:12 <@aestuo> no
21:12 <@mdxi> aestuo: good. very good.
21:13 <@solios> I wrote an FF fanfic once.*
21:13 <@aestuo> ha, I thought so too
21:13 <@solios> when FFIV still had the new car smell.
21:13 <@aestuo> heh
21:14 <@mdxi> Cecil was very angry. Gosh darnin, this isn't right, said Cecil. Too bad, said the king. Kweeee-hee-hee-hee! Now go get me some crystals! Poop, said Cecil.
21:15 <@mdxi> wait, that's not fanfic. that's the plot.
21:15 <@solios> the basic concept was that when the team left the planet in the Lunar Whale, they noticed that the area they left from was contained in some kind of energy grid (which I called a "repeater field")... and that after Finishing The Plot, they returned to the planet and out of curiosity landed outside of it.
21:15 <@solios> this was born out of my failure to grok an archipelago smaller than the japanese island chain as an entire PLANET.
21:15 <@mdxi> "Come here," said Rydia, lips pouty and wet, "and show me why they call you 'Red Wings'"
21:15 <@mdxi> there we go
21:16 < ejp> you're both damaged.
21:16 <@solios> mdxi++

*In my defense I was, like, 14. And I wrote it on a Brother word processor. And I had the good sense to stop after the above concepts were detailed.

Advance Wars : Days Of Ruin (Nintendo) Better than AWDS in almost every possible way. One of the ways that it's better - for me, anyway - is that the story has less of the Pokemon flavor of the previous game and more of a Road Warrior feel to it. This is, in fact, the first strategy or RPG on the DS in which I didn't breeze through the story bits just to get back to the killin'. Which says a lot for the story, given that you can actually skip the story bits on the game board (!). This stacks together with a few other changes to the feel and flow to form a gameplay experience that feels blazingly fast compared to previous AW games or other turn-based DS games. I still haven't beaten it - I got distracted by AoE, then slogged through an enormous optional battle that took me over 100 turns to complete and realized I was burned out on the game and needed a break. Burnout doesn't effect my assessment, really - AW:DoR is a huge improvement over AWDS and is all around a very solid, enjoyable game. jcap needs to buy it already.

Age Of Empires : Age Of Kings (Majesco) Would have been a strong contender for Best Game On The DS if the bastard hadn't eaten my save data 2/3 into the very last battle. Fun as the game was, I'm not going through that again.

Riviera : The Promised Land (Atlus) A neat RPG that is ultimately undermined by the very things that make it unique. Long story short, some fat dude bumping my elbow on the bus should NOT determine rather or not I get an item. There are no retries at treasure chests and what equipment you do get is randomly determined - it's quite possible to end up with a dozen of the same item. Since your characters "level up" by practicing with new items and can only learn one ability from any item they can learn anything from, this ultimately means that raw chance - not patience, not skill - is the difference between your party being a bunch of badasses or a gaggle of wieners. Flaws aside, Riviera is certainly an atypical RPG and despite its flaws - and despite the fact that thanks to those flaws I'm incapable of completing the game - it was fun to play.

Squenix finally got its act together and posted NorAm release dates for everything I care about, so it'll be a summer of Tactics and FF IV, with The Worlds Ends With You thrown in for effect. I'm buying it almost entirely due to Tycho's orgiastic exposition. Outside of Amazon, he's the only gaming writer I read. The rest come across like a bunch of egotists who think having an opinion about the Atari Jaguar means they ought to be accorded the same degree of media presence as Howard fucking Stern, and I don't buy it. Tycho, conversely, wields his Word Horde with a passion and precision that, in subtext, quietly proclaims he'd be doing this anyway, even if it wasn't a source of income.

So, a Summer Of Squenix, with no other games presently on deck. Konami should give us a new Castlevania or something - I seem to have run out of GBA titles to consume and there's got to be more to the DS than the enormous piles of new and used Nintendogs cartridges on the shelves of Gamestop, Target, and The Record Exchange. Seriously. Forty of them on the shelf and they only ordered two copies of The World Ends With You, both of which were pre-orders. Lolwut.

The one bit of Dawn Of Sorrow that always hangs me up, lifted from this kickass FAQ. It took me forever to find the first time, and forever plus ten to refind the last time I played the game. The puzzle is a serious pacing trainwreck, and digging up the solution is even more of a trainwreck, so I'm sticking it here for future reference.

3UP, 13UP, 15RIGHT, 1UP, 9LEFT, 14LEFT, 6LEFT, 7DOWN, 4RIGHT, 10DOWN, 5LEFT, 4UP, 10RIGHT, 5DOWN, 12DOWN, 8LEFT, 4UP, 12RIGHT, 13RIGHT, 11RIGHT, 1UP, 15LEFT, 5LEFT, 13DOWN, 8DOWN, 3RIGHT, 2RIGHT, 1UP
(1 2 3 4 done)

15RIGHT, 11RIGHT, 9UP, 13LEFT, 14LEFT, 15DOWN, 11RIGHT, 14UP, 15LEFT 10LEFT, 12DOWN, 11RIGHT, 10UP, 15RIGHT, 14DOWN, 10LEFT, 11LEFT, 12UP
(9 10 11 12 13 14 15 DONE!)

This leaves a few rooms sealed off. The room in the upper right has a mirror - swing by once you've picked up the Paranoia soul to snag Dracula's Tunic.

FairEmma++

Condensing this walkthrough into something that doesn't have to be sifted. I ran into this section of the game by accident, and found it to be a real trainwreck. The walkthrough solution is just as convoluted, so here's the context-free solution.

From the beginning (where you can read the entire sign) :

Aron Doll : UP DOWN UP DOWN (note - you can keep or huck this thing, and the default is huck. If you huck it you'll find it again outside the maze)

Ice Crest : RIGHT DOWN UP DOWN

Getting the hell out : DOWN RIGHT UP LEFT then LEFT DOWN UP DOWN then any direction.

Updating the inventory with a new post, instead of appending it. Unlike previous claims regarding the various Final Fantasies, I have no intent of expanding on any of these reviews. More importantly, I have no intent of saying I will and then not.

The Legend Of Zelda : Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo) : Reviewers aren't kidding when they say TLZ:PH makes intuitive, hopefully trend-setting use of the touchscreen. The character design is great, the animation is beautiful and expressive, the graphics are lush and gorgeous, the music and sound effects are fantastic. The hammer and grapple are sweet. I initially wrote the boomerang off as gimicky but got used to it - likewise with the bombchu. Aiming and using the bow and arrow? Awesome. The gameplay is overall pretty solid, though the fact you can't pause the game to switch weapons is really irritating - there's nothing quite like getting your ass beat silly while you're digging around in the flyout for whatevere's going to get you out of your current jam. All of this ought to build up to a glowing recommendation, and it would - but the game has a few quirks that keep it from usurping the original TLZ and The Minish Cap as my favorites in the series. First there's the menu thing. That's an issue, but a relatively minor one. Running through the Temple Of The Ocean King half a dozen times is frustrating as all hell - while it certainly saves space on the game cartridge, you don't get any of the equipment you need for your constant sojourns through the temple to be FUN until very late in the game. Repeating the temple a jillion times is integral to the story and for the most part it works relatively well, so it's ultimately forgivable. What really cheeses me about PH are the bits relating to the boat. First, it takes forever to get anywhere. This would be forgivable if it weren't such a chore to chase fish, or avoid sharks and the like. Second, you need a cohesive suite of boat parts to increase the boat's hit points - which you really, really need if you want to, say... beat the game. Getting the boat parts becomes a gamebreaker - like the kinstones in Minish Cap, they occur randomly. You never know what you're going to salvage or find in a treasure chest. There are several different boats and several different parts for each (prow, hull, wheel, cabin, chimney, anchor, cannon) - but instead of all boat parts being a cohesive, collectible set distributed throughout the game (like items, heart containers, and every item ever in every other zelda I've ever played), they're completely random. We're talking seven or eight of one part, five or six of another, three of this, four of that, one of this, that, and the other thing.... and after a couple of hours of "boat part grinding", I had almost all of two boats and almost none of the rest. This level of total randomness - especially given that having a complete boat has a very serious effect on gameplay - is something I find unacceptable in a series of games that strongly features puzzle-solving and item collection as a major theme. I could easily handle going on a long quest for a part or even saving up a few thousand rupees for one, but having to grind for hours and hours on the slim chance that the final part I need might drop? If I wanted that, I'd play WoW. In the final analysis, Phantom Hourglass is a damned fine game. But it's nowhere near the best of 2007, and it is by no means my favorite installment in the franchise. If I were going to letter grade it, I'd shoot for a solid B - if the boat parts bit wasn't an issue, I'd go for an A-. The fact that boat parts (and treasure) can be exchanged with other players over wireless doesn't matter to me - the fact that you apparently have to to conveniently build a boat or rake in the loot is something I consider to be points off, as strong multiplayer is only a selling point when your social situation allows for it.

Orcs & Elves (Fountainhead, iD, EA) : An absolutely FANTASTIC old-school turn-based dungeon crawler. I missed out on Ultima Underworld and Eye of the Beholder, so O&E scratches a long-held itch. The gameplay is incredibly smooth-flowing for a turn based game, the story is vintage Monty Hall Dungeons & Dragons, the graphics are either "vintage EGA" or "obviously unchanged from the original Cellphone version" (your choice), and damn if I didn't enjoy every minute of O&E's incredibly short 3-4 hour play time. I'm hoping the game does well enough to bring the sequel (and Doom RPG) to the DS. Orcs & Elves is an in-your-face reminder to modern gamers that one time - before Final Fantasy VII came along and fucked it up for everybody - gameplay used to matter far more than story* or graphics. These days? We're swimming in cutscenes, voiceovers, horribly emo androgynous protagonists, hundreds of pages of the latest twist on Ye Old save-the-world "story." Frankly, I'm sick of it. And I'm ecstatic that O&E has come along to remind everyone that it didn't used to be that way, and it doesn't have to stay that way. Thank you, John Carmack.

Puzzle Quest (Infinite Interactive, Engine Software, D3 Publisher) : Like O&E, a game that places gameplay above everything else, and a game with many elements of oldschool PC RPGs - namely the conquering, fortress-building and the like. The actual game-game is the most fun I've had with a puzzle game since Puzzle Fighter - addictive, making excellent use of the touchscreen, and as easy to grasp as it is complex. My first playthrough was as a druid, which turned out to be the equivalent of the "fucking HARD" setting - my second time through was as a warrior, which - with the lessons I'd learned as a Druid - turned out to be "stupid easy." Great gameplay, adequate graphics, forgettable music. Forgettable in that after a few moments I turned the music off and tried to forget about it - it's that American Fantasy Music sort of thing that works as background at renfairs. It does nothing for me. As good as the gameplay is, I'm sad to say that this is by far the buggiest DS game I've ever played - it actually locked up on me a few times! Ultimately, Puzzle Quest is barely an RPG - it's really a simple, well-designed puzzle game with RPG elements. PQ covers a lot of the "it's the gameplay, stupid." RPG elements that O&E doesn't - between the two, an oldschool gamer with a DS will have hours of fun to pep up those otherwise boring bus rides.

Scurge : Hive (Orbital Media, SouthPeak Interactive) : Bought used at The Record Exchange for 10$ - cart, case, no manual. Ought to be renamed IsoMetroid - it's got the weapons, it's got the "the guys who made Oni watched Aliens! And made a game!!!" aesthetic, and it even has little snot-colored Metriods that act like Metroids. They don't need to be frozen, though - they just blow up with the normal application of force. The weapons are pretty cool, the protagonist has incredibly strange hair that you'll eventually get used to. I gave up on either the last or next-to-last boss, which quickly caused me to go looking for something less frustrating to play. S:H has decent graphics, some cool gameplay elements, and a decent-if-totally-rehashed-and-predictable story. The thing that really stands out about this game is the music - it's blippy, it's bloopy, it's IDM-tinged, and in the context of "this game is a nearly-intact GBA port," the music is really, really good. A delightful surprise, and much more pleasing to my ear than the traditional pseudo-orchestral stuff the Japanese seem to like in their games. A good amount of fun at the used price. While I wouldn't have paid full price for S:H, I'd definitely consider paying retail for a sequel. Assuming Orbital Media decides to make one.

Castlevania : Circle of the Moon (Konami) : Exchanged the dud copy of Fire Emblem I picked up along with C:HoD for this, which actually worked after a few tries. "Castlevania : Knockback of Rage" would be a better name for the game, honestly - the knockback dial seems to be cranked up to eleven. It's crazy. A lot of reviews bitched about the color palette, but any visibility issues you'd have with the game on the GBA are nonexistent on the DS - I find the game to have the richest, prettiest graphics of the three GBA Castlevanias. In fact, I'd say that graphics and sound are by far the best of the three, with Harmony in second place and Aria looking and sounding positively 8-bit. The castle is cool, the enemy variety is pretty nice, and the magic card "DSS" system is really cool. Doubtless it was one of the contributing factors when it came to kicking the game from the Castlevania canon (as it doesn't really fit the general flavor of the series), but it's pretty sweet nonetheless. The game retains the cross/clock/axe/holy water/etc "subweapon-that-falls-out-of-some-candles" thing - of these, I found the axe and the cross to be the only subweapons of any real use. The only real kink - aside from the insane knockbck - is the relative rarity of potion drops makes the lack of a shop a real pain at times. For overall gaming enjoyment on the GBA, I'd rank C:CotM behind C:AoD for fun and ahead of AoD and HoD in every other category. Biggest gameplay cramp? No backdash. Otherwise, ++

Castlevania : Harmony of Dissonance (Konami) : Bought used from The Record Exchange. I'm glad I didn't pay full price, though a manual would have been nice. HoD really ought to be called Castlevania : Backtrack Of Tedium - you spend almost all of the game running through areas you've been through before to get to palette-swap mirror-universe versions of the areas you've just been through. It's a neat gameplay concept, but there isn't enough visual variety to offset the incessant repetition. Couple that to an incredibly strange experience mechanic (the higher your level, the less xp you get from enemies - meaning an enemy that gave you, say... 300xp in your 20s will give you 4xp in your 30s), a "traveling" shop that only opens if you meet requirements ranging from easy to incredibly frustrating (level 50 for one shop location sounds reasonable until you pick up on the "innovative" experience issue), and an incredibly difficult-to-execute griffon jump, and you have the least enjoyable portable Castlevania. I slogged through to the final boss on this one, realized I really needed to level up, experienced the experience "feature," and promptly went looking for something more fun to play. Not a waste of time by any stretch, but too much hassle in the endgame compared to DoS, AoS, PoR, or CotM.

On a Squenix note, I had intended to buy Revenant Wings until it was pointed out to me that the game is (A) an RTS, and (B) more story than game. Forget that. I looked at Ring Of Fates and would have bought it if I hadn't had the good sense to check out a gameplay movie first - talking Precious Moments! My brains! I'm not into kids-as-protagonists and I frequently play with the sound off, so that's also a no-go. Both of these bear mention in that they've actually been released in the US (as of this writing), unlike the Squenix games I want - FF IV DS and FFT A2. Get with it, guys! I want to give you money - but I'm only going to do it in exchange for games I know I'm going to enjoy!

I'd also like to try out the DS port of Mazes of Fate, but can't seem to find it anywhere. The reviews I've read have grumped about glitches and some game elements, but promise at least 20 hours of gameplay. Given that most DS games tend to run 5-15 hours (unless you're one of those spastics who absolutely MUST hit level 99 and get every single enemy drop and item and so on), that alone is a point in its favor.

Currently on order : Age Of Empires : The Age Of Kings (recommended by eric), Advance Wars : Days Of Ruin, and a used copy of Riviera : The Promised Land. Gameplay forecast for April : 100% chance of colons.

* If story was really more important than gameplay, they wouldn't be calling them Role Playing GAMES, now would they? They'd call them something else, like Interactive Fiction, Cutscenes With Levelgrinding, Button-mashing Books, or whatever. And I wouldn't play them.

I've reviewed a few of these before - this is intended as a rapid-fire rundown of every game I've bought for use with my DS since I purchased it in September of 2006. I've been thinking about doing this since the summer, though I'd have a hard time telling you why. I think it's a blog thing. Or some kind of anal-retentive list-making thing. Games are in alphabetical order and linked to wikipedia entries, with one exception.

Advance Wars : Dual Strike (Intelligent Systems, published by Nintendo) : A fun little turn-based strategy game that is as wide as it is shallow (read : a short main game but lots of side options, custom colors, practice maps, multiplayer, etceteras), with a "hard" mode that really ought to be called "Brutal Assrape." I will almost certainly buy the Sequel, hoping that unlike AW:DS, every map of the single-player campaign doesn't start with an unskippable turorial-lecture.

Castlevania : Dawn Of Sorrow (Konami) : In my opinion, C:DoS is as good as Symphony Of The Night, if not better. Bitching 80's MIDI, excellent gameplay, fantastic graphics... this game is good. This game is, in fact, a great example of what's wrong with modern platformers in that it possesses none of the elements Bad Platformers embrace. Yes, it could have either made better use of the touchscreen or have not used it at all, but that's a nit. Seriously. A nit. C:DoS is one of the better Castlevanias. Period.

Castlevania : Portrait Of Ruin (Konami) : In some ways better than C:DoS, in some ways not, C:PoR has more whip, less water, easier (read: better) level grinding, roughly the same volume of one-off "works great with the premise but only does it just that once wtf!!!".... ultimately, the only thing that keeps C:PoR from being better than C:DoS is that PoR has an incredibly gay zombie animation.

Children Of Mana (Squenix) : Picture Diablo. Now picture it with maybe a dozen maps, no random generation, four weapons, all of the repetition and none of the fun. This game SCREAMS of unrealized potential. Great graphics, great game mechanics, decent story.... all shat on by too few weapons, not enough magic (actually a really shitty magic mechanic), and incredibly stale, shitty dungeon "variety." Brand loyalty is really the only reason to buy this game - and given the Mana series tendency to shit out the weakest titles in the Squenix arsenal, that doesn't say much. If you want to play a good Mana game, get an emulator package for the DS and play the SNES Secret Of Mana. It's better in every conceivable way. And this isn't my fanboy preference for FF6 over FF7 talking - we're talking gameplay, we're talking story, we're talking pure unadulterated enjoyment. For serious.

Cooking Mama (Majesco) : Incredibly cute graphics overlay what is ultimately a big demo of the DS's touchscreen capabilities. I can't play it for more than a few minutes without cramping up, and I can't actually do well in the game thanks to dexterity / fine motor limitations. There's a reason my linework is as simple as it is: it has nothing to do with laziness, and everything to do with why I suck at Cooking Mama.

Dragon Quest Heroes : Rocket Slime (Squenix) : Elements of Super Marios Bros. 2 bred with elements of The Legend Of Zelda. Great gameplay, great message, one glaring flaw - there's only one save slot. Give me two or three so I can loan it out or let my roommates play it, please!

Final Fantasy III (Squenix) : Aesthetically gorgeous, but the gameplay is another story - what we have here is the FF Job System - as seen in FF5 and the Tactics series - in its first incarnation. This is ultimately only of interest to the oldskool hardk0re gamer set, as the original job system is horrifically limited - whatever job you're using has nothing that influences any other job in any way, so you wind up with a bunch of novelty classes that are ultimately completely useless once you settle into a specific combat style. Despite its limitations, it's still a pretty solid game... though ultimately, FF3DS serves as more as a nicely retouched example of The Old School than it does as a new entry into the Squenix stable.

Final Fantasy Fables : Chocobo Tales (Squenix) : This isn't a game. At all. It's a GUI-slash-story framework for a load of touchscreen-only minigames, all of which handle differently, some of which are fun, most of which are not. The game also includes a CCG-style combat system that fans of Magic : The Gathering and other CCGs may well enjoy, but comes across as drawn-out and tedious to anyone else. Chocobo Tales is amazingly cute, but it's just not a game I can immerse myself in or even, unfortunately, enjoy. Your mileage will almost definitely vary - the big failing for me is that this game has simply too many styles of game play. I'm not a mini-games kind of guy, so a game that's made out of mini-games (some kind of mini-game ur-golem) is over the top.

Front Mission (Squenix) : Crack. Sheer, unadulterated CRACK. I haven't had this much fun since I picked up Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. The only snag is that the game has a Castlevania-style "New Game +" mode that preserves levels and inventory.... but it preserves the story, too. Meaning your second, third, etceteras time through you'll be spending more time waiting for plot to get out of your face than you will punching trucks. Give me a Terse Mode, please. That one imperfection aside, I want more Front Mission. This one took twelve years to make it to the states. Let's have some Front Mission 2, please! Faster would be better!

Lunar Knights (Konami) : Could have become one of my favorite DS games if only the mandatory piece of shit Raiden-on-PCP shooter sequences used the crosskey and not the touchscreen. A "b" for the Isometrics and a solid "0%" for the shooter sequences - a game I'll never, ever be able to finish. Fuck you, Konami. Fuck you and your QA department. And fuck Hideo Kojima for throwing absolutely impossible twitch elements into games that are not twitch games. :P

Mario Kart DS (Nintendo) : Much like the original, the computer cheats like a two dollar whore with a spastic colon and a carton of uppers. The real fun - nay, the only fun - is in the multiplayer. Which I haven't indulged in since October of 2006.

Metroid Prime : Hunters (Nintendo Of America*) : Equal parts Fun and Frustrating, Detailed and Short, Interesting and Idiotic. A game that does nothing at all to prepare you for the last boss - consequently, a game I've never beaten.

New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo) : A solid traditional platformer, its enjoyability is marred only by the fact that you have to beat the game in order to earn the ability to quickly and conveniently save anywhere. While this thwarts the game's portability, it doesn't seriously impact its enjoyability. Admittedly, I haven't revisited it since the fall of 2006.... but that's only because better titles - titles in genres I deeply enjoy as opposed to occasionally wade in - have come along.

Sim City DS (Electronic "Arts") : I actually paid money for this piece of shit. I have never, ever played a console RTM that has been this sluggish, this slow, this unresponsive. Candidate for eighth wonder of the world is the fluke that got this steaming turd through quality assurance and out into the wild. Even with Sword Of Mana on the "Why do I OWN this?!" list.

Pokemon Diamond (Nintendo) : Crack for a decent amount of time. Best summed up by this VG Cats comic. Such a slow-paced grind that replay value is nonexistent for me... but now I know the allure of Pokemon. It was fun, but if all the other installments handle like this I figure I can stop here, enjoyment had, and call it good.

Castlevania : Aria Of Sorrow (Konami) : Dawn Of Sorrow with 8 bit graphics and a shittier, crampier interface. While it's a good game I still haven't beaten, you'll get more mileage out of C:DoS and C:PoR.... and if you have C:AoS in the GBA slot of the DS when you start a C:DoS game, you'll get a nice little bonus item.

Final Fantasy I & II : Dawn Of Souls (Squenix) : If you're going to buy two of the FF re-releases, make FF6A the first and this the second. I've gotten more than my money's worth out of this cartridge.

Final Fantasy IV Advance (Squenix) : FF IV, only with a glitchy airship, weird battle timing, and "extras" that don't do much. Feels like a practice run for FF5A and FF6A. Definitely looking forward to the DS remake, as it'll allegedly include more story. This is good, as anyone who's played through IV can tell you it feels like a few corners were cut. Ten pounds of world in a five pound bag, etc. Fun fact: I wrote fanfic of this game when I was a kid. Yes, fanfic. Fortunately it is lost to the ages.

Final Fantasy V Advance (Squenix) : The original SNES version of this game wasn't released in the US for a reason. The gameplay is a rudimentary step between FF3 and FF Tactics, and Tactics is far, far better. It's not that FF5 is a bad game... it's just that FFT is way better. Which skews things a bit.

Final Fantasy VI Advance (Squenix) : FF6 is still the best Final Fantasy story I've read. The Advance incarnation seamlessly adds in a few new Espers and a couple of bitchingly hard bonus dungeons that you'll have to locate with a handbook or FAQ file, and there's some very serious slowdown with the Palidor esper and with some tools, environmental effects, and battle effects... but all in all, FF6A is the bees knees. The only downside is that all monster, esper, and equipment names are the original Japanese versions, which confuses years of ingrained gameplay.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Squenix) : Crack. Was crack, is still crack. By far my favorite straight-to-GBA game. 80+ hours of playtime kinds of favorite.

Golden Sun : The Lost Age (Camelot) : If you didn't play the first installment (I haven't), or if you don't cheat to trick the game into thinking you've played the first installment (I didn't, but I was sorely tempted), you're going to miss out on quite a bit. One of those games that does absolutely nothing to prepare you for the last boss, which fights like nothing else in the game. A refreshing change of pace from Squenix fare, and a good mix of elements of Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star, and Final Fantasy.

The Legend of Zelda : A Link To The Past (Nintendo) : A hugely adequate port of the SNES Zelda installment. The GBA screen res cramps the gameplay in one part of one dungeon (it's a hookshot puzzle), but otherwise it is the original.

The Legend of Zelda : The Minish Cap (Nintendo) : Much more fun than A Link To The Past. Except for the last boss guy, who's a real pain in the ass - multiple battles spread out without the ability to save in between. Other than that, fun! Much more social interaction than Zelda 3, a bit more of a story, and very satisfying puzzle-play.

Sword Of Mana (Squenix) : Bad hair. Bad, bad hair. The hair symbolizes the gameplay, design, and overall quality of this horrible remake of a classic Game Boy title that doesn't deserve this kind of abuse.

* As opposed to the real Nintendo, which would explain why MP:H is basically Quake II with a Metroid skin.

21:39 < solios> every square game after the first final fantasy needs a hardwired "skip exposition" button.
21:40 < solios> you spend more time waiting for people to talk than you do blowing shit up in a Front Mission replay.*
21:41 <@ejp> you can hold down, [B] I think and it Goes Faster
21:42 < solios> yeah, but the problem with front mission is there's spots of expo you can speed up and spots you can't.
21:43 <@ejp> wonderful.
21:43 <@ejp> see, I hate that. even the fast speed is annoying to read.
21:43 < solios> naturally the spots you can't plod along at a speed of no with music I'm sure the japanese consider to be Deep and Appropriate.
21:44 < solios> but is really just plodding and grating.
21:44 < solios> on the upside, you can punch trucks.
21:44 < solios> and that makes up for everything.
21:45 < mdxi> hahaha
21:45 <@bda> haha
21:45 <@bda> solios++
21:46 < solios> (front mission)++

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Front Mission is fantastic. The inability to skip the plot on a replay is a minor nit.

* The story's predictable and traditional but still pretty engaging the first time through. With a "new game +" however, you have no need for the arena and you're stomping through maps so fast that the story becomes a brick wall you repeatedly splatter against in your mad rush to go pummel some more baddies.

Go and read the wikipedia entry for a nice lengthy description of all that is Win and Good about Lunar Knights, so I don't have to write up a condensed rehash that says more-or-less the same thing.

Done? Good.

LK - what I've been able to play of it - is very, very anime. It feels a bit like Vampire Hunter D crossed with, say.... Bobobobo Bobobo. The downside of this aggressively anime nature is that the english language voice acting - like damned near all anime - ranges between ill-fitting and awful. Vocal elements and cut scene animation (actual cartoon animation!) is fairly well integrated, and the game sports a lot of features that are new to me in my gaming experience: food items rot (!), weather conditions have an obvious, palpable impact on gameplay, and the terrenial effect on weapons gives gameplay a bit of a metroid feel.

I like the isometric top-down bits, the leveling (reminiscent of {Final Fantasy Adventure|Sword Of Mana}), the weaponry, and all the little bits and details of the surface world. What I do NOT like, however, are the giddamned shooter sequences.

Many game sites and magazines have mentioned that the the shooter bits (which feel like a cross between Star Fox and Raiden, only with none of the fun factor of Star Fox and all of the hell that is Raiden) feel completely tacked-on and unpolished, and to an extent, they're right. For every thing I like about the planet-side aspect of the game, there's a thing that blows about the orbital aspect. The big one is that you have to complete the shooter sequences to progress the game. So if you suck ass at twitch-shooting like I do, you'll get stuck just like I have. I can't get past the third shooter sequence! A lot of it has to do with the controls, which turn a mediocre twitch-gamer such as myself into a horrible one.... and that's where all of the additional flaws bite you in the ass.

Planetside, if you get your ass kicked (which can happen in a blink of the eye if you're not careful), you can chuck out some Sol (the equivalent of Gil or Dollarpounds or Woolong or whatever) and restart from the nearest doorway/area entrance with all your stats as they were when you rolled through that door the first time. This makes it possible to slowly grind your way through a large, complex, hostile level even if your level is low and your skill level sucks. Unfortunately, this doesn't carry over to the shooter sequences, which seems like a glaring flaw when you take into account the fact that each sequence is broken up into several smaller bits (usually flood-of-baddies | miniboss | rocks | baddies | boss or a longer variant, where the pipes mark either a break in the action or a boost into a higher orbit). If you die (which happens to me a hell of a lot in these bits), it doesn't matter how far into the stage you got, you're starting over at the beginning. It's a very R-Type behaviour in a situation where a Gradius (or equivalent) behaviour is obviously warranted. It doesn't help that life and energy powerups are about as frequent as streakers at a sermon, or that none of the level-grinding you do planet-side is reflected in your ship's defenses or reserves.

I love the planet-side parts of Lunar Knights. Really, I do. They're a lot of fun and I was looking forward to exploring them in greater depth... until I rammed right up against the third shooter stage. Where I shall remain until I die of old age, as I have neither the skill nor the reflexes nor the patience to grind through this bit of badly designed "tacked on" hell in order to get to the rest of the game.

Recommendation : Buy it if you're awesome at shooters. Otherwise, don't bother. The rest of the game is great, but you won't be able to get to any of it unless you're a Pinball Wizard with the stylus.

Silly, warm-hearted, pun-heavy fun for children aged six to sixty. While I haven't tried the multiplayer element, I can say with some authority that Rocket Slime is the most fun I've had with a video game in years. By fun I mean giggling at the graphics, laughing at the puns, and just generally enjoying the expressiveness of the characters and the goofiness of the gameplay.

The gameplay itself - the raw bit you'll be interfacing with at all times in any game - is best described as a mix of elements of Super Mario Brothers 2 and The Legend Of Zelda- you rocket your slimey self into objects and opponents to knock them into the air, after which you catch them on your head - up to a stack of three - and then either toss them at other baddies/objects or onto carts that haul your prizes back to town. It's simple, it's fun, and it's extremely easy - I had to pace myself and take it slow so it would take more than a couple of days to beat the game.

Rocket Slime is tons of fun, and my only complaint (my only complaint - it's rare for me not to have an itemized list) is that the game only has one save slot. The fact that you have to rescue a nun before you can access it is hilarious, but the lack of additional saves means I can't loan out The Awesome to other DS-having friends, which is a bit of a bummer. I recommend it for anyone with a DS. While it may be a bit too easy or goofy for your tastes, it's an aggressively cute pick-me-up with a positive message, and would make a great addition to anyone's game library.

Recommendation : Must Own! Rocket Slime would also make a great gift for your mother or your five year old nephew. One of those rare cases where an "E" rating really does mean everyone. :)

• Look is handled with either the stylus (which I found to be mind-alteringly unuseable but very accurate), or the crosskey. As with any FPS, the analogue input is accurate and the digital isn't. Trying to use the stylus with this game made my hand explode in under a minute, so I got the non-accurate shooting experience. It's a lot like playing Quake with just the keyboard.
  • Large parts of this game will suck ass with digital input. Unfortunately, the only way to switch between digital and analogue is to go all the way back to your ship and toggle buttons. I consider this to be a horrible oversight in the QA department.
• You fight two bosses - a giant column thing and a giant ball-and-tentacles thing- four times. Each time they're supposedly tougher than the last. You will not survive without learning how to circle-strafe.
• Dropping into ball mode and dropping bombs like a motherfucker is the best way to defeat most of the hunters.
  • Except the yellow guy - the Impact Hammer kills him dead.
  • This works very, very well with the silver guys and the Epyon wannabe.
• Like all FPSsen that have a final boss, all previous battles do nothing to prepare you. The game drops copious hints regarding strategy, but it basically boils down to "you die."
• The "Metroid" parts (puzzle solving, item-hunting, etc) are fun. The scanner thing is neat. Getting the everloving shit kicked out of you while trying to scan and puzzle-solve is neither fun nor neat.
  • Running back to your ship in the time allotted can be a pain in the ass. Not the running and jumping part (it's expected) so much as the "clock keeps running down while the door takes its sweetass time opening" part (BUG! BUG! BUG!!!!).
• I haven't bothered with multiplayer. Mainly because I have no interest in getting my ass handed to me by people who can actually control the game with the touchscreen.
• Gameplay/aesthetics-
  • The graphics are fine.
  • The music ranges from unobtrusive to out-of-place. Space Yanni doesn't really fit with the whole Metroid thing.
  • The doors are very, very glitchy. This is tolerable until you're running for your ship after beating a boss.
  • Like most DS games, it's Short. Nitpicking aside, after I got into the groove of MPH, I wanted more - more levels, more boss variety, more items, etc. It's quite fun once you get the hang of the controls, learn the quirks of the door glitches, and accept the lack of boss variety.

Unfortunately (for you) I can't talk about FF6 without talking about FF7. The neurosis is deep and complex and boils down to this: FF6 lived up to the hype. FF7 did not. FF7 : Advent Children did and was AWESUM!* but that's neither here nor there.

To this day, I still stifle the urge to punch the shit out of all the assholes who claim FF7 is THE BEST!. It usually turns out that it's the first Final Fantasy they played - more often than not, it's the first one they'd ever even heard of. My hate-turned-to-grudging-acceptance relationship with FF7 is borne out of the hype surrounding that game - the promise that it would be bigger, badder, prettier, and awesomer than FF6. Which, in many ways, it isn't. Ultimately, it's apples and oranges - FF6 is a Role Playing Game, whereas FF7 is much more of an Interactive Story. While 7 is a decent experience, it isn't the same kind of game as 6. It isn't even close to 6: it's the first of the Interactive Novels - a "game" where you're expected to be sucked into the story and ride out the levelgrinding while gunning for the next cut scene and grimacing through "..." after "...". Which kind of blows if you're the kind of person who'd like to punch Cloud in the face with a shovel. Gameplay isn't one of 7's Great Achievements, in my opinion - and gameplay is one of the reasons why I continue to consider 6 to be the superior title.

Much like the Iowa class battleships, Final Fantasy 6 is the culmination of years of evolution. There's little to no "..." in FF6. There is, instead, dialogue. The plot spins around a broad cast of characters - you can, within reason, pick your favorites and root for them instead of being stuck in the orbit of a single unlikeable (Cloud or Squall, take your pick) protagonist. The bad guy is a fucking lunatic, and is far more crazed and vicious than any FF villian before or since.** The Espers (which would be "summons" in any other FF) do their thing and get out of your way - you're not stuck watching a thirty second to five minute in-battle cut-scene for 500 damage. It's dark. It's depressing. It's the Empire Strikes Back of the series. Elements of it inspired the early formation of ATC. It's got ninjas, moogles, power tools and mecha. It's one of my favorite games ever. Even if you're one of those new-school cut scene kiddies who cried when Aeris died or Rinoa went comatose (I didn't), FF6 is still worth your time. It's an important piece of RPG history, man.

The only downside is that Cid looks like a banana.

See?

That said.

I could go into great detail about all of the differences, but I'll spare you.

The biggest issue in the GBA version is slowdown - there's a lot of it in sprite-heavy combat. Cure3 and Meteor are the most noticeable, as is The Esper Formerly Known As Pallidor- bring a sammich when you cast him, as he takes longer than some of the FF7 summons. The starting floor of Kefka's tower is another slug spot. Other than that, the only issue is that the encounter rate seems to be a hell of a lot higher than it was for the US SNES version- a fact that is sure to get under your skin if you've played the game before and still remember where everything is, as you'll now be running into monsters every five steps instead of every eight. The new translation is generally superior to the old one, though the "new" (read: Japanese) names for the monsters and espers ranges from humorous to confusing to unpronounceable. The new espers and spells integrate seamlessly, as do the bonus dungeons (unlike GBA Final Fantasies 1, 4, and 5) - though you'll probably need to consult a FAQ to actually find them. The Vanish|{Doom|X-Zone} trick has been sorta "fixed" in that X-Zone never seems to work on anything you'd really want it to - much like the Odin and Raiden espers, or Cyan's final Bushido attack.

Of all the GBAed Final Fantasies I've played, FF6 ranks Best Overall. It's the most seamlessly tuned of the lot - there's quite a bit of new stuff, but in many ways it's the least altered, the least "improved, and - as it was ten years ago - the most enjoyable.

Oh, and Kefka's theme still rocks.

* How can I like Advent Children but not FF7? Easy. AC is everything I love about FF7 with none of the stuff I didn't like.

** While you could make a case for Sephiroth, Kefka wins on the grounds that he's 100% pure undiluted-by-backstory psychotic. No Freudian fixations going on here, no sir.

Before actually loading the game:

13:06 < solios> wtf.
13:07 < solios> the FF6A manual doesn't have Sabin's blitzs.
13:07 < solios> there's a bullet-point that sez "see the in-game menu"
13:07 < solios> gay!
13:07 <@ejp> that means the manual writers had no idea what the game people would settle on
13:08 < solios> heh.
13:08 < solios> possibly.
13:08 <@ejp> it decouples the production pipeline, resulting in increased synergy.

Around 90 minutes in, Eric is proven right:

18:33 < solios> two FF6A annoyances:
18:33 < solios> 1. it has the Japanese encounter rate. Or I remember the encounter rate being a fuckton lower than it is.
18:34 < solios> 2. Like FF4 and FF5, slowdown at weird points.
18:35 < mdxi> 6 is out? crap!
18:35 < solios> last week.
18:39 < solios> also!
18:40 < solios> the Vargas fight?
18:40 < solios> where he doesn't die until you use a blitz?
18:40 < solios> the blitz commands aren't in the manual.
18:40 < solios> the manual says "go look at the in-game menu"
18:40 < solios> but you can't get to it until after the Vargas fight.
18:43 < mdxi> ...

See, in the original "Final Fantasy III" release for the SNES, all of Sabin's blitz commands are in the manual. So if you had the manual lying around and had read it, you'd know what to do. The SNES manual is much bigger than the GBA equivalent: I remember this because after buying the game (but before I was able to play it) I had time to read the manual cover-to-cover sitting in the truck while mom was grocery shopping. I picture the manual in my head and it's sodium orange.

I haven't played FF6 since high school. Blitz inputs are the kind of thing that's slipped through the cracks.

Fortunately, the quickie-blitz (left-right-left) hasn't changed. Any blitz that used the X and Y buttons now uses the L and R.

I'm assuming they may have compensated for this by including some mention of it after Vargas pounds on you for awhile in-battle, but I'll be fucked if I'm going to wait around and find out.

This Obviously Bullshit QA Error and other issues* aside, FF6 is still a fantastic game.

* My purpose for linking to that page is the details on graphical alterations re: the first Celes scene, as opposed to the bonsai-tempest regarding the translation.

Currently loaded : Advance Wars : Dual Strike (DS slot) and A Link To The Past (GBA slot).

Mario Kart DS : I hated Mario Kart for the SNES for the simple fact it wasn't another F-Zero... but I eventually grew to enjoy it. MKDS is more of the same - 3d instead of sprites for most things - and is great fun in multiplayer. The single player is a bit frustrating for me, as my reflexes and patience have never been great for twitch games. Rating : A

New Super Mario Bros. : While Super Mario Land is still my favorite in the series, this one ties for second with Super Mario Bros. 3. Oldschool hardcore platform action that makes novel use of the DS screens. My only gripe is that you can't Save Anytime until you've beaten the game - until you do, you have to amass coins to activate a save, which hinders portability somewhat. Rating : A- (A overall, - due to the portability issue)

Children Of Mana : Oof. Gorgeous graphics and cinematics. Beautiful sprites, great sound. The gem framework is a really nice addition to Manaverse gameplay, and something I'd like to explore further under different circumstances. Where this game falls down - and falls down HARD - is that the play mechanics are dirt simple, the dungeons are grossly repetitive, and the whole game boils down to toiling through a small handful of boards whacking baddies with your four weapons. Over, and over, and over, and over again. I could have handled the limited weaponry if there'd been more variety in the dungeons, but there isn't - the dungeons are easily the least imaginative, most repetitive levels I've ever encountered in any video game I've ever played. The play mechanic of "kill all baddies or all of a certain baddie to get the Gleam Drop to exit the level, repeat 2-12 more times" just plain sucks. Saving's a pain in the ass as well - your options are either evacuate a dungeon with your magic rope to save in the village, or complete four levels of a dungeon - after which you can re-equip, re-string your gem framework, and save: a method that makes more sense for a console than a portable title. Rating : A+ for graphics and sound, D- for gameplay.

Advance Wars : Dual Strike : One of the first games I got for the DS. I tried it out, couldn't get into it, and shelved it until after I'd beaten Final Fantasy 3. The second time around I found it to be much more enjoyable - as I've gained an understanding of the gameplay and CO mechanics, AWDS has become quite addictive... and quite a pain in the ass, as I suck at breaking in new levels. Rating : B+ leaning towards an eventual A+, as I'm still playing it.

Sword Of Mana : See link. Still haven't played through it beyond the first village. Rating: F Mostly for bad, bad hair and overly clunky, unfinished everything else. A+ for the original Final Fantasy Adventure.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance : Crack. Beautiful, beautiful crack. The first RPG/tactical/whatever I've sunk over 100 hours into. Gorgeous. Best instance of the FF Job System to date. Extremely portable, though waiting for your turn in battle so you can save and get off the bus can be a nailbiter. Rating : A-

Final Fantasy IV Advance : It's still Final Fantasy {II|IV}. Just with a really shitty Mode 7 implementation for the airships, some bazaar timing issues that make Kain and Yang almost useless, and a Supar Bonus Dungeon that's probably the most fun of all the FF Advance rereleases. To date, anyway. It's still the most linear Final Fantasy, and it's still a real pain in the ass to levelgrind, and it's still probably the shortest FF I've played since the first. Rating : B

The Legend Of Zelda : A Link To The Past / Four Swords : How Capcom got involved with this is anybody's guess. Snagged for 20$ at Target, LTTP was worth every penny. It's still LTTP, with a couple of tweaks to make it a better portable experience, and it's amazing how much of it I remember from my SNES days. The only source of annoyance with the game is the menu system and over-emphasis on Four Swords, which is unplayable without at least two cable-linked GBAs. The menu systems goes like this: Choose A File -> select LTTP or FS -> LTTP title screen -> LTTP load menu. While I'm sure the Four Swords sword moves are fun, the only people I know - or rather, care about - with DS and/or GBA hardware are Not In Pittsburgh. That aside, it's Zelda. Specifically, my second favorite zelda of the four I've played (in order of preference : The Legend Of Zelda, A Link To The Past, Zelda II, Link's Awakening). Rating : A

Final Fantasy III : Oldschool, hardcore RPG action with a gorgeous 3d treatment that has me lusting for an FF7 DS port. FF3 is fun overall, though the job system has some quirks and drawbacks not present in later FFs with the Job System. I intend to eventually explain this in a writeup. Rating : A

Final Fantasy I & II : Dawn Of Souls : See here for my bigass writeup on power leveling in the first Final Fantasy. I still have a lot to say about FF2 as a whole - not just power leveling, but the battle system as well - easily one of my favorites in the series. Both games are immensely playable, though FF1 is really only of interest to those who played it Back In The Day, and FF2 can be extremely frustrating without a walkthrough. Rating : A+ (A overall, + for grindability)

Final Fantasy V Advance : The story is probably the most mature instance of the SAVE TEH CRISTULZ theme. Job Leveling is incredibly tedious - bordering on frustrating - in the first third of the game, though one of the Advance version job classes makes endgame level grinding go a lot quicker than it would otherwise. FF5 will eventually get a Power Leveling post, though it'll be shorter than the writeup I have in mind for FFs 2 and 3. Of all of the Advance bonus dungeons I've played to date, this one is by far the most annoying - I dropped FF5 for Zelda 3 as soon as I realized what a total pain in the ass said dungeon was shaping up to be. Rating : B

Final Fantasy III : 210538796913

Mario Kart DS : 133229419134

Metroid Prime : Hunters : 210542756102

I used this macosxhints article to quickly and painlessly turn my powerbook into a home DS WAP. Getting my wrt54gl set up at work was a simple matter of holding the reset button in for 30 seconds, then plugging it into the LAN. Whoever says getting the DS to talk wireless is a pain in the ass is obviously using that damned security thing all the trendy kids are into these days.

Send me mognet email in FF3, plz. I want to try out the Onion Knight (see here), and get me some uberitems.

I can't imagine playing MKDS over teh wiffy - 95% of the fun of that game is group play in meatspace - I had a great time playing with john and eric when I was in Philly.

The technique detailed in section 2 has always worked exceptionally well in the original Final Fantasy for the Nintendo. FF:DoS has made some major changes to the magic system, however, which makes it a lot easier to take advantage of this method. The blawgpost assumes you have a working knowledge of the game.

1. Magic system overhaul observations.
2. Power-leveling near Pravoka.
3. Recommended dungeon/area order.

1. Magic system overhaul observations.

The old FF used a magic point system similar to the one used in the recently released Final Fantasy III: instead of a pool of MP to cast all spells from, a magician has a number of spell levels and a number of spell uses per level, up to a maximum of nine (note that FF3 increases this greatly - some of my characters have in excess of 40 uses of level 1 spells). The fact that you can only use nine spells of each level puts a lot more emphasis on using weapons and armor in battle - not only can these items be "used" in battle by any class, several items have spell effects identical to often-used magical spells. For example:

Item Name	Use Effect
Zeus Gauntlet	Lit2/Lightning 2/Thundaga on all enemies.
Black Shirt	Second-level ice effect on all enemies.
Light Axe	Second-level holy/harm/"kills undead stuff but nothing else" effect on all enemies.
Heal Helm	Heal (a low-level white magic spell) on all party members.
Heal Staff	"
Thor Hammer	Lit2/Lightning 2/Thundaga on all enemies.

By no means comprehensive, merely a list of items I frequently used and can remember off the top of my head. There are others. Point is, several of these items replicate spells that are heavily utilized midgame through endgame, and with the limits of the magic point system, such items are absolutely essential. With the new magic system, I found myself relying on the Use command a lot less, depending on party configuration.

The new magic system in FF:DoS is a hybrid of the old FF system and the MP system used in FF2 and FF4-6* - magic-using characters now have an MP pool, but they're also restricted in the spells they can use by a "Magic Level" indicator in the character status screen, which increases as the character gains levels (and increases further after the character "matures" - some spells can only be cast by Wizards). The MP pool is the big thing here, as it allows for the use of any spell any number of times until it's depleted. No more running out of Cure2 and having to fall back to Cure; no more running out of higher level black magic spells. The MP pool means the party has a much longer loitering time in the field, and, if you have a White Mage in the party, it eliminates the need for the Heal helms and Heal staff. If you don't have a White Mage in your party, you're boned - while this wasn't a problem in the original FF (merely a massive inconvenience), many enemies in FF:DoS have been "rebalanced" to do craploads of damage to all party members, practically mandating the need for a White Mage (later Wizard) with the highest level Heal spell. If you don't have one in your party, you'll find that Chaos is a right BASTARD to defeat. This is why I mention the Use/Effects items above - without a White Wizard in the party, I found the final battle boiled down to one character fighting while the other three Used the Heal items repeatedly. With a White Wizard doing the heavy lifting using a high-level Heal spell, the remaining characters are free to attack, making the final battle that much shorter.

In some respects, the MP pool is a great change to the game, as it makes the "tip" detailed below a real breeze to employ. In other respects, as detailed above, the rest of the game has been rebalanced around this adjustment. "Rebalanced" might not be that good of a word for it, really - in FF:DoS you need a White Wizard or you need to go item-scrounging through the bonus dungeons to build enough stamina (read: HP) to stand a chance against Chaos, while in the original FF, a Red Wizard was just as effective as a White in the final battle.**

While the game changes that accommodate the MP pool range from well-balanced to frustratingly bone-headed, the MP pool makes it extremely easy to Power Level, which is the whole point of this post.

2. Power-leveling near Pravoka.

Requirements for there to be any point to doing this : Black or Red mage. Optimally either a Red and a White or a Black and a White. {Fire2|FIR2|Fira} is required for this to work well. Harm2 is optional but handy.

Pravoka is the town where you get the boat. If you're playing the game normally, the standard procedure is to make your way to Pravoka, get the boat, then grind around that area and Elfheim (due South) until you can scrounge up enough gil to get the weapons, armor, and magic available in Pravoka and Elfheim. By the time you can afford the equipment and spells, you'll be strong enough to storm the Marsh Cave (which is the first step of the Crown -> Crystal -> Herb -> Key -> TNT -> Out Into The Rest Of The World quest that forms the first bit of the game). The problem with this is that Ogres, spiders and wolves (oh my!) give jack shit for experience and a pittance for gil. You'll be grinding for at least a couple of hours if you're the sort of completist who insists on leaving an area with all characters properly equipped. There is a better way - it's a pain in the ass at first, but if you put in the same amount of time on the peninsula north of Pravoka as you normally would grinding against Ogres and whatnont around Elfheim, you'll be wearing moneyhats, and you'll be much higher level - tough enough to sail through the rest of the game, providing you continue to smite everything that crosses your path.***

Far to the northeast of Pravoka is a long finger of land that points accusingly to the northern continent - the area of the game where you pick up the Chime and the best of the level 8 magic. What makes this peninsula so damned important - and what makes power-grinding possible at this stage of the game - is that the monster encounter table for the south-eastern section of the north continent overlaps the topmost four tiles - which are as far up as you can go until you blow open a canal with TNT a bit later in the game. We're talking Zombie bulls (weak against Harm and Fire), trolls, frost wolves (really, really weak against Fire), dinosaurs (a real pain in the ass) and giants here, folks - and you can hit them at a point in the game in which ogres are still giving you shit. Naturally, these bad boys are going to grind your balls into a fine paste the first several times you encounter them. The key here is to pick your battles and perform hit-and-run operations until you're strong enough to linger. The enemies are worth a good amount of experience and a serious amount of gil- a sustained grind in this little section of the map will make you so beefcake that you won't even start to feel the baddies until you hit the tower and the space fortess.

The key here is a little bit of preparation and a little bit of pre-grinding. When you hit Pravoka and get the ship, don't blow all your cash on magic. Stock up on a couple of weapons but make sure you have plenty of cash left over. Grind in the ocean and Elfheim until your Red or Black mage has access to third level magic. Buy Fire2 (Fira, FIR2, etc), rest up, save the game and haul ass. Harm2 on the White Mage will help as well, but the only things in the area weak against harm are the zombie bulls, so Fire2 is where you want to be spending your money. Blow the rest of your cash on potions and maybe a sleeping bag or two.

The rest is obvious to anyone with some RPG experience under their belt. Walk up to the northeastern peninsula. Save your game just below the top four tiles. Enter the top four tiles and pace back and forth until you hit an encounter. At first, you'll want to reset and reload if you run into anything other than Zombie Bulls or Frost Wolves, but later on you'll be able to take on everything in the area with ease. One Fire2 blast will do in an entire pack of Frost Wolves, regardless of your level - a combined assault of Harm2 and Fire2 will smear out Zombie Bulls in little to no time at all. If you can survive even one engagement at this point, you'll find you've instantly leveled up and have earned enough to buy more spells and equipment. Rest, Save, repeat - keep doing this until you have to trek back to Pravoka to recharge your MP and restock. Hit Elfheim to buy magic and equipment. A few rounds of this and you'll find that you've stocked your magicians and bricks much quicker than you would have grinding around Elfheim - and by this point your characters will be a good 5-15 levels higher than they would have been had you run around beating Ogres for money. This is one of the few points on the world map where the enemy experience and gil ratio is nice - unlike the area around Onrac, in which your'e beset by enemies that are both a pain in the ass and nearly worthless in terms of gil/exp.

Keep doing this until it gets boring, or until (in my case) your characters reach level 30-35 - by which point they're more than capable of handling all of the enemies in the area, and are strong enough to plow through multiple battles without saving or resting. If you can stomach the tedium and bother to grind up to level 30 or so, you'll find that you now have a huge amount of gil and some very tough characters. All you have to do to keep the ball rolling after this is win every subsequent encounter - you'll keep your edge in experience and stamina, and you won't need to screech to a halt in order to gain a few levels before plunging into the next dungeon - which is what you'd have to do if you were playing any other Final Fantasy****.

I've found that the changes made to FF in FF:DoS make it possible to linger in this area for much longer than it was possible in the original - in FF for the NES (where I first developed this technique), power-leveling in this area was a matter of running up to the spot, getting in no more than three or four battles (max), running back down to rest, and repeating. Given the mechanics and limitations of the original FF, there was little point to the peninsula grind after you'd scraped up enough cache for level 3 and level 4 magic for all of your mages.

Conclusion : A few hours of level-grinding northeast of Pravoka will save you many, many hours of grinding (or worse, dying) at several other points in the game, especially the ice cave. Given the choice between getting it out of the way early and stretching it out through the rest of the game (slowing everything down as a consequence), I prefer to get my grind out of the way now, before the need for it starts to hamper plot progression.

3. Recommended dungeon/area order.

The Nintendo Power Players guide and several other sources suggest running the game this way: Earth Crystal -> Fire Crystal -> Ice Cavern -> Castle Of Ordeals -> Water Crystal -> Cube Cave -> Air Crystal -> Chaos. If you've bothered to level-grind into the 20s - and even if you haven't - there's no point to doing the volcano (where the Fire Crystal is) until late in the game, as by the time you can access the volcano, you can also (with a bit of effort) access several other areas containing vastly superior equipment. My recommended order is Earth Crystal -> Castle Of Ordeals -> Ice Cavern -> Cube Cave -> Water Crystal -> Fire Crystal -> Air Crystal -> Chaos. I'd put the Fire Crystal before Chaos, but it's nice to have a breather in between the Water Crystal and the Air Crystal - you need to go back to the southern continents to get the SLAB translated before you can get into the tower anyway, so you might as well whackafiend while you're down there.

My recommended party used to be Fighter Fighter Red Mage Red Mage. Since the Red Mage now SUCKS BALLS in FF:DoS, I've changed my thinking to a Fighter, a White magician, and anything else in the other two slots (though you need a Black or a Red Mage to power-grind as detailed in section 2).

* I forget how magic functions in FF7, as I haven't played it since 1997. All I remember about FF8 magic is that the draw system sucks, and I didn't play FF9 long enough to actually use any magic.

** The Red Mage/Wizard is another one of those things that got "rebalanced" in FF:DoS. Instead of being a slightly weaker fighter who could effectively wield most of the magic arsenal, the Red Mage/Wizard in FF:DoS is now visibly weaker than a fighter, and his spellwork is moderately to massively less effective than that of his White and Black counterparts. As I remember it in the original FF, the Red magic was just as effective as White and Black - the major difference is that White and Black magicians got all of the high-powered awesome spells and more spell points, while the Red magician petered out lower and earlier. FIR2 would do, say, 100 damage cast by a Red and 100 damage cast by a Black in the original FF - in FF:DoS it's more like 55-70 for the Red and 100 for the Black. The class has been weakened to the point of being a handicap in the remake, much to my {surprise|chagrin}.

*** My second time through FF:DoS, I ground in the location I'm about to describe until all characters were at level 35. By the time I'd reached endgame, everyone was between 55 and 60, and I never broke a sweat doing it.

**** Except for FF2. I intend to BLAWGZ about that at a later date.

From one of the post-300 missions in Final Fantasy Tactics. There's also a Judge Reinhold.

Reason 12,938 why this game is full of Win.

11:31 < mdxi> Bully is the most fun i've had with my PS2 since the dualshock controller accidentally got...nevermind that. it's hella fun.
11:32 < mdxi> it's more enjoyable and far funnier than the GTA games which birthed it
11:32 < y0shi> accidentally. i saw the ziploc bags and the lube
11:32 < mdxi> SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

23:45 < solios> man, Sword Of Mana is SO unfinished.
23:45 < solios> I just killed a bat.
23:45 < solios> it burst into feathers.
23:45 <@bda> Maybe it had just eaten a bird.
23:45 < solios> yeah, and the little marshmallow looking things just ate a yak.
23:47 < solios> man, this game is making me sad.
23:47 < solios> the original was !!!!
23:48 < solios> for the remake, they tried to crossbreed Secret of Mana with a mullet.
23:48 < solios> oh, and the Magic Rope (at the top level of your inventory) looks like a fossilized turd.
23:48 <@bda> I'm not a fan of mullets.
23:50 < solios> yeah, I'm used to my rpg characters having either odd blond or odd blue hair.
23:50 < solios> this is just horrendously bad 80s hair.
23:51 < solios> I loved the original but I just can't stomach the remake. I find it visually disagreeable, and the thing feels unfinished.
23:51 < solios> I hope to hell Children Of Mana doesn't suck as bad.
23:55 < solios> fagbot: doot Sword Of Mana being nowhere nearly as engaging as Final Fantasy Adventure
23:55 < fagbot> THAT'S NOT A MILK YOU IDIOT

Damned straight. Good thing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is so damned good, else I'd be seriously considering giving up my recently acquired video game habit in favor of a return to my old habit of masturbating while staring at the wall.

Final Fantasy Adventure was awesome. Sword Of Mana isn't, and it's so non-engaging that I can't even bear to bother levelgrinding the character into the more interesting weapons and armor - especially since I know they'll be changed - and if the game so far is anything to go by, they'll be Trying To Be Secret Of Mana And Failing bastardizations instead of Prettier Final Fantasy Adventure improvements, which is what I came into this expecting. I loved FFA - I still have it (box and everything), assuming it wasn't destroyed in the Great Septic Backwash Of 2006. Hours and hours of fun, with a play control very similar to The Legend Of Zelda - which this "remake" should have stuck to. Secret Of Mana was amazing, but this feels like a really bad knockoff with puffy, chunky, "americanized" graphics. After staring at the horrible little mulletoid sprite for an hour I was seriously starting to ache for the eye-raping awfulness of Akira Toriyama's Chrono Trigger sprites- a great game to play, but one I sold because I just couldn't stand to look at it.

Game control, menus that look and feel completely unfinished, the masturbaspanded story line... I could deal with - and probably eventually enjoy - these things if it weren't for that fucking hair.

 

<@bda> That is some awful hair.

Screencap swiped from France. Box art from the internet. This ain't Battlestar Galactica (1978) and I ain't playing Boxey, dangit. The analogy holds - I picked up a remake of an old game expecting gold, and I got a pile of Galactica 1980 instead.

I'm sure Sword Of Mana has some good in it somewhere, but so does Combat - at least the modern version of that is free, moderately amusing, and doesn't have the worst haircut in the history of action RPGs stuck on the screen all the time. Out of the seven games I've aquired for my Nintendo DS, I've enjoyed this one the least - probably because I've played it before. And even in passive-matrix greenscale, it was better back then.

 

Seriously. Sword Of Mana might be pretty on the surface, but it's gutwrenchingly ghastly when it comes to the day-to-day screen-by-screen character, menu, and combat bits that you'll be staring at for the entire game- and that includes that fucking hair.

Oh, and a technical point - in FFA you could save anywhere, anytime. This could be potentially annoying, as you could trap yourself or otherwise put yourself in a compromising situation... which is why the game has two save slots. Sword Of Mana is set up like Secret of Mana in that you can only save at specific points- and, at least early in the game - you need to use a "magic rope" - cunningly disguised as a milky grey fossilized dog turd - to evacuate out of the combat zone. Aside from the appealing visual of scooting to safety on a magic turd, dropping the save anywhere feature goes against the five minutes here five minutes there pick up and go mentality of a portable gaming system.

Final analysis : Bad hair. Combat control is sloppier than Secret Of Mana and way sloppier than Final Fantasy Adventure. Menus feel completely unfinished. Bats explode into feathers. Giggly little puffballs explode into giant horned skeletons. Fucking eighties hair. Would you play a game like this?

Seriously. Play Final Fantasy Adventure instead, and hope Square gives this development team - assuming they weren't summarily executed - an extra couple of months to spitshine their next assignment.

A few weeks ago I bought my first new* gaming system since 1997 - a first-gen Nintendo DS. I bought the first-gen model for the larger form factor, though it turns out that the Gameboy Advance slot on the second-gen DS leaves the carts sticking out a bit, which means that my "bigger is ergonomically better!!" attitude is correct for the hardware as well as my hands.

The DS has crazy-awesome battery life (it's Long, and Even Longer in GBA mode, as it's only using one screen), an excellent library of titles (which includes the entire GBA library sans multiplayer ability), and is just as portable as my iPod. At 130$ for the system and 15-40$ for games, it's extremely well-priced, and the availability of a string of SquEnix ports and updates for the GBA and DS makes for hundreds of hours of brain-sucking fun for less than the price of a new video card.

Hell, the fact that I don't have to spend 120$-600$ on upgrades every few months just to play games released six months ago makes it more than worth the price tag. The technology is still non-optical, which is further cause for a change of underwear - one of the things that really pissed me off about the Playstation was load time, and the fact that load times are only getting longer as games get more complex has done nothing to ingratiate me to them- the worst I've had to deal with on the DS is a tiny bit of slowdown on a couple of GBA games, and that's it.

Unfortunately for this post, I'm still waiting on an Amazon order containing a couple of DS games to show up. Once they're in, I'll be able to soak in the dual-screen goodness and formulate a more experienced opinion of the hardware - and after Pumpcon, I should have something to say about the system's WIFI abilities. Until now - and until then - I've been using the system as a big ol' GBA for buckets of Final Fantasy IV Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I've also run through New Super Mario Brothers in single player, which is something I intend to write up whenever my blogging chops start oozing back into the headmeats.

* Okay, so a few years back I bought a used SNES (which then Disappeared) and a second-gen Playstation, which is still banging around somewhere and gets used - rarely - for Puzzle Fighter. By "new" I mean, you know, a system I haven't owned before.