Happy New Year! No resolutions for 2017, at least for now

Happy New Year everyone! May your 2017 be full of peace and joy and God’s grace and as few celebrity deaths as possible!

I think the way you ring in the New Year sets the tone for the first month at least. I spent New Year’s Eve trying out the 7th Dragon III Code: VFD demo (it works great) so we’re off to a good start. This is where I’d want to jump right in and start planning all the other games I’d like to play in 2017, but I’m going to hold back for a number of reasons:

1. I still haven’t played most of the games that were on my list last year. They get priority this year where possible.

2. There isn’t much I want to play that isn’t on the 3DS, which isn’t working right now, and the VITA, which I haven’t bought yet but totally will. When I do get one later in the year (God willing) I’ll make a mountain of resolutions for that alone.

3. The few other games are on aged consoles and handhelds and there’s no telling how long any of them will hold up. My PS2 has been threatening to die for years, my DS has been half-broken for almost as long and even the buttons on my formerly strong PSP are starting to feel a little soft and mushy. I don’t want to make a long list of games and then come back all like “Whoops, can’t play this. Can’t play that either.”

4. I’d like to try harder to finish what I start. After I wrote my Legend of Legacy post a few days ago, a new reader asked me “Do you ever finish a game?”
“Of course I do,” I protested, innocent tears filling my girlish eyes.* “How could you say that, haven’t you seen my track record?” Then I went back and actually looked at my record for this year and… it’s pretty bad. I only finished 7 games in 2016 as opposed to 15 in 2015 and 25 (!!) in 2014.
*Parts of this account may have been slightly embellished.

On one hand it’s not my fault if a game isn’t worth finishing. And it’s only to be expected that my completion rate will drop as I hit the dregs of the gaming selection on my aging systems. And since I’ve been busy IRL these days, I played far fewer games to begin with and thus naturally completed far fewer.

But still! All those excuses aside, there’s plenty of room for improvement in 2017. I need to make better use of my time by picking better games to play in the first place. For example, even if the mountain of bad reviews didn’t give it away, it was obvious within the first hour that Mind Zero was a useless game. I should have quit sooner and started something else. This policy will likely lead to more dropped games, not fewer, but with any luck it allow me to clear out the dreck quicker, leaving more time for the stuff I really enjoy.

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice I’ll probably still end up playing anything that looks good and regretting it, just hopefully at a faster rate than before. I’ll also try to work a little harder at finishing one game before starting a newer, shinier one. That means my goal for January is FFXIII + Summon Night 5 + 7th Dragon III = No looking elsewhere until those are done!! I’ll take the rest of the year on a game by game basis.

Have a fun 2017, everyone!

Can’t play The Legend of Legacy either ;___;

A belated Merry Christmas to everybody! I would have posted earlier, but I was still recovering from pigging out like a piggy thing at our Christmas family reunion. I actually skipped breakfast that morning because I was planning to do a real number on succulent roast chicken and roast pork, but my stomach gave out after the third plate. Traitor!

Since I knew from long years of experience that there’s nothing better for pig-out recovery than a long gaming session, out came the 3DS and on came The Legend of Legacy. And it was going pretty well to begin with. I started with Meurs as my main and explored the Forest Ruins quite thoroughly – I love maps that fill in as you explore. The battles seemed really hard at first, but after a few skirmishes Meurs and Bianca both picked up some extra HP and ATK and everything went much better. Went to the next area, found the Singing Stone, fought the flying boss, beat him on the last attack after both Garnet and Bianca went down like chumps. So far so good.

After that I went back to town, met the Lord-Mayor, got the elemental scale, went back to the dungeons and that’s where the trouble started. Back with Rune Factory 4 the Y button would randomly stick and unstick itself, skipping large bits of text, but it wasn’t that critical to gameplay. Now the button seems to be stuck permanently, so every time I get into a battle the screen pans up to the elemental chart thingy and just stays there. No chance to select anything in battle or even run away or even SEE the options on the screen below. Completely useless. And it’s super weird because Y is also what’s supposed to bring up the menu in town and on the map, but everything’s fine over there. It’s only when I get into battle that everything goes pie-shaped. So Y plus something is off? Is it the touchscreen? Something on that corner of the screen? I just don’t get it. The only thing I could do was turn the game off in sorrow.

I thought the internet would have some good ideas, but Nintendo recommends the toothbrush technique that did diddly-squat for me last time (but I tried it again anyway) and the other solution of dripping rubbing alcohol under the button and pressing it rapidly sounded too risky (but I tried it anyway). All that effort fixed the problem for ONE battle and then it was back to square one. It looks like nothing short of a replacement of all the keys and pads will solve this issue.

In the meantime, I’m going to drown my sorrows in cake, ice cream and more cake. I also downloaded the demos for 7th Dragon III, Stella Glow, Yo-kai Watch and Etrian Odyssey Untold in the hopes at least one of them can be played without triggering that error. But first, cake! And ice cream! And cake! See you *burp* later!

Started Final Fantasy XIII – Exhausting to watch

Actually it’s not Final Fantasy XIII I wanted to play. What I really wanted was FF: Boyband Edition Final Fantasy XV. But since I didn’t quite want it enough to buy a PS3/XBOne for, I had to settle for the next best thing, FFXIII on PC. All in all it’s not such a bad trade-off. I had a rough beginning and almost quit a few times early on, but I think I’m in it for the long haul now, hence this brief progress report.

Status: 8 hours and some minutes in, somewhere in chapter 3? 4? Right after Lightning and Hope fight Odin and then finally, finally take a break. I was tired just watching them run and run and run and run and run almost non-stop from the beginning of the game. Run, fight, talk, run, fight, talk, run run fight fight, come on guys, stop to breathe already! Eat something! Drink something! Go to the bathroom! I know they’re video game characters, and I’m all for action-packed beginnings but 8 straight hours of non-stop running is too much even for me. That was one reason I almost dropped FFXIII early. I couldn’t play for more than 30 minutes at a go before mentally burning out.

The other reason was the horrible battle system, at least at the start. I hesitate to even call it a battle system, because it was just a matter of spamming the auto-attack option until the enemies died and you automatically got a 5-star rating. For doing what? Beats me. Luckily a few hours in someone realized “Whoa, this is terrible!” and added in some stuff about Paradigms (sort of like classes but not quite) and a pseudo-sphere grid thingy called a Crystarium. Paradigms I don’t care too much about, but I’m a huge sucker for upgrade systems where you use points to boost your skills and stats and stuff, so I’m happy there. These two additions haven’t quite made everything hunky-dory yet, but hopefully once I get some more skills and classes and paradigms under my belt – and maybe upgrade some of my weapons and accessories and stuff, things will pick up even further.

Final Fantasy games tend to be 50 hours long at a minimum, so 8 hours is barely scratching the surface. That’s why I’ll save any major complaints for the next report, whenever I get round to it. …Oh, but I can’t resist just a little one: I need more battles! And more boss battles!

And also I need the characters to get all their talking out of the way at the start of a dungeon and just let me get on with fighting. It’s annoying to fight a bit then get some pointless flashback, then a little more fighting, another cutscene or flashback, run a few more steps, cutscene, REALLY ruins the pace of the game. Do you mind? I’m trying to get stronger here! FFXIII is probably going to end up like Xenoblade/The Last Story/Arc Rise Fantasia/other similar games where I just suffer through the story to get to the battles. I’m already flirting with the idea of skipping all the cutscenes and reading the story on Wikipedia later.

Incidentally, this isn’t my first brush with Final Fantasy XIII. I watched someone play the first 15minutes several years ago and immediately concluded it wasn’t for me. And I think I was plenty right in that assessment and wouldn’t have enjoyed it if I had played it any earlier. FF is just something I have to be in the mood for, and now that I am in the mood, chances are high that I’ll see this through till the end. And if I like it, that opens the way for me to play XIII-2 and Lightning Returns. Win-win for everyone. So don’t mess up, Lightning & the gang!

Started both Rune Factory 4 and Summon Night 5

Rune Factory 4 – Started it only to discover that my 3DS keys are in even worse shape than I’d thought. There’s definitely something wrong with the L and Y buttons, and X and R are suspicious as well. It’s not something you notice much playing a point-and-click game like Spirit of Justice, but in an ARPG, keys that randomly stick and unstick themselves and don’t respond when you need them spell disaster. I bumbled my way into the first dungeon with the butterfly boss. Okay Frey, attack her. Attack, I said, don’t just stand there! Okay now dodge. DODGE!! Arrgh! Heal! Heal! Eat that herb! Why are you throwing it away?! Aaaahhh!!

Long story short, I got my bottom handed to me by the very first boss in the game. Oh, the shame! Me, losing to a level 2 monster. How possible? I wouldn’t even dare show my face around here again if the controls hadn’t been responsible (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it). It’s such a shame because I really like everything about RF4 so far. The music, the sound effects, the character designs, the items, the whole game feels so… Rune Factoryish. Love the mood. And Doug looks like a fine romantic prospect so we’re good to go on that front as well. I’m a bit iffy on the Princess Points and Orders and Licenses, but it’s early days yet. If I could just fix these controls somehow.

Until I can work that out, Rune Factory 4 is shelved again for what, the 20th time this year? Maybe I’m just not meant to play it. I’m thinking of trying something turn-based or at least less free-roaming. Either that or just scrap the 3DS for good. Buying a new one is not on the cards at the moment, I’d much rather get a VITA/PS TV if it came to that.

Summon Night 5 – Since RF4 was not working out, off went the 3DS and on came the PSP. I didn’t die in the very first battle this time, I waited till the second ^^;; Serves me right for ignoring the instructions and just assuming it would be okay to let one or two characters die. Because of the way EXP works in Summon Night games, I usually play them pretty recklessly. I’ve been more cautious since then and things are working out okay. Chapter 2 right now.

And since it’s such early days, I will refrain from commenting too much, but I’m not really liking this game. It’s rubbing me the wrong way somehow. It doesn’t FEEL like Summon Night. It’s too pretty, too polished, too… fussy. It’s just… wrong. All wrong. The worst part is the moving character portraits when I’m used to them being static. And Arca is too ‘cutesy’ with her little rabbit teeth. I don’t like her. I don’t like Yeng-hua. I don’t like anybody. I was going to say their mannerisms remind me of the girls from Agarest Senki Mariage but I googled around and whaddya know, same developer. You know you’ve been playing too many games when…

But at least the gameplay is sound so far, nothing too complicated. I miss having to experiment with various objects in battle to get new summons, though. The mini-games haven’t unlocked yet, looking forward to those plus the fishing game. Dunno how to feel about skills. They broke Summon Night 4 in half like a cheap pencil and they add a layer of fussiness I don’t usually like in my SRPGS. You know what, let me just shut up and give the game some more time to develop. There will be plenty of time for complaining later.

La Corda d’Oro – Tsukimori Len GET!

And with that I can say goodbye to La Corda d’Oro (at least for now), not because it has done anything wrong but because I’m ready to see what La Corda d’Oro 2 has to offer. I’m mostly interested in the new songs, because I’m a little tired of MC’s current repertoire. You can only play La Campanella and Aria on a G String so many times before you start craving something new. Now that I’ve cleared all the routes for the main guys (except scruffy gross teacher and boring OB), the way is open for more new and exciting things to come my way.

My final target was Tsukimori Len but alas, I botched my playthrough and only barely got his date ending – the fairy gave me the “Love’s Miracle” score the day before the final contest, it was that close – so I never really got to delve into his objections to the magical violin the way I said I would last time. The problem is, I got greedy because I knew this would be my last run. So every single day after school I would go round talking to all the characters, not just Len, which wasted a lot of time. It paid off nicely when I got new CGs for Yunoki, Hihara and Shimizu, but this is what you call winning the battle and almost losing the war. (As an aside, it’s super nice of Koei to have the date ending for casual gamers and the true ending as a reward for the kind of people who actually buy guide books and follow FAQs.)

Apart from spending time with him, the other chief obstacle to getting Tsukimori’s true ending is the high BP requirement to trigger many of his events. To get a lot of BP you have to play your music for as large a group of people as possible. Ideally you would like Len himself to be included in that group for the affection boost, but he tends to shun crowds. There’ll be this nice big cluster of students over here and then Len will be over there in a corner somewhere… why? Or it’ll be a nice sunny Sunday and everyone’s in the park but he’s holed up by himself in the music room or the forest… WHY??? Actually if you talk to him he’ll tell you exactly why, but it doesn’t make it any easier to fulfill his parameter requirements and raise his affection at the same time.

Also there’s the simple truth that I got bored following the FAQ and decided to just let things happen naturally. Bad idea. I got to the final selection and realized Len’s affection stat was lower than a kick to the groin. What to do, what to do? Scramble, dash to the store, buy him lots of presents, and stalk him day in day out while half-heartedly learning a score for the contest. As a result of this mad rush I only got third place in the final selection, but it was enough to barely give me the overall winner position and a very cute, hesitant confession from Mr. Moon Forest himself. *^_^*

In the course of his confession he also states his final position on the magical violin: “The ends justify the means.” Basically it doesn’t matter if you used a trick violin or not or if you achieved in 4 weeks a level of proficiency it took him 10 years to reach, as long as you were able to make the listeners happy and convey the joy of music, that sort of thing, it’s all okay. Since I missed most of his event flags, this came across as a little sudden. Early on he’s as mad as a hatter about the violin, then radio silence for a while as we both studiously avoid the subject, then end of the game he’s cool with it? Uh, okay then. He’s a bigger man than I am, that’s for sure.

Final opinions of La Corda d’Oro are the same as my initial ones: I LOVE IT!!!!!! Nothing more to add to it, except you can stick a few “really”s between “I” and “love” if you’d like. Really looking forward to the added seasonal changes and school events and stuff in the expanded sequel. Between this game, the Harukanaru Toki series and the early Angelique games, Koei is probably the champion when it comes to offering meaty, satisfying otome games that I can’t stop myself from replaying even when they suck *cough*HTND 4*cough* Contrast that with this Crimson Noble gamething I started recently which was obviously created only to torture me. *mutter*No wonder Quinrose went out of business*mutter*

Ahem! Anyway, so that was that. Now to toss a coin about what game to start next, Summon Night 5 or Rune Factory 4. Heads, SN, tails RF. *flip* Tails. Rune Factory, here I come!