Now that I have completed Dragon Age: Origins, its time to play Suikoden II. A few years ago in college, I started the game, and got pretty far, but I remember stopping because of school work or something. As usual, I’ve forgotten a lot…so here I am replaying it. 
And next up is Tales of Destiny 2, another game that I had quit in college. So basically, I’m finishing what I started. 
Okay, since the last play session, I’ve completed Dragon Age: Origins. I pretty much attempted to speed past to the ending, so I can play the real classics.
Due to rushing to the ending, I had to stop my trips to camp to get to know my party members and skip some side quests. I didn’t get to find much about Oghren, other than he’s a drunk and crude. One of his memorable lines was upon returning to camp after the Deep Roads, I brought up something about Branka and Hespith and he excuses himself to his tent…laughing. So maybe there wasn’t more to him.
I rushed through the Landsmeet, and I guess I lost it, as Loghain tried to arrest me. I guess in another play through I’ll attempt to win it and save Loghain. I killed him on this play through, at the request of Alistair. I guess at that point Alistair had gotten on my nerves. Not sure why I would have let Loghain live despite all he did, but Alistair came off too whiny for me.
After the Landsmeet, is the final battle with the Archdemon. The outcome of the Landsmeet would have determined my party, but since I killed Loghain, I took my usual party of Alistair, Morrigan and Wynne. I thought it was kinda cool how all your characters say goodbye and thank you before you charge into the city to fight the archdemon.
The fight with the archdemon wasn’t that hard. I did die twice however. I died once because I had no clue what was going on and the archedemon got a lucky crit on me and on the second try I had the game crash. Third try, I did lose Morrigan and Alistair when the Darkspawn attacked. I won that battle with Wynne, by summoning the dwarf army and spamming health potions. I did feel a bit bad about my gray warden, thinking she’d die upon killing the archdemon, but with Morrigan’s ritual she survived. So I got the happy ending.
For now I’m not sure if I’ll play the expansion or the downloadable content. I’m sure I’ll get to it at some point, but for now, I need to get back to the classic RPGs. I did enjoy Dragon Age: Origins and I’ll probably go on to play Dragon Age II, but that won’t be for a while as well. Need to play the classics first.
Finally forced myself to play Dragon Age. After not playing in two months, I’ve forgotten what I was up to. When I forget what I’m doing in a game, I tend to want to start all over. It was tempting to do so, but while I do enjoy Dragon Age, I don’t feel like starting over so soon. I’ve put a lot time into this game.
My last save file was in Orzammar. I couldn’t remember if I had chosen Lord Harrowmont or Bhelen for king. Judging from my quest log, I chose Bhelen. At this point, I’m not sure if that is the right choice. My reasoning for choosing Bhelen was because my dwarf character was a commoner, and her sister, Rica had married Bhelen. While I don’t particularly trust Bhelen, it felt like the better storyline choice, for my character at least.
Still not sure what I was doing, I headed down to Dust Town to ask around about Jarvia. I guess I had a quest to go take her out. Upon visiting Dust Town, I bump into Leske, a companion from the beginning of the game. Gave me some info on where to find Jarvia. After crawling through the old Carta hideout, I find Jarvia and Leske. I wish there was a bit more dialogue between them, other than just “What? You betrayed me?” I wasn’t exactly thrilled to kill Leske. As a character, I thought he was okay. Never really annoyed me and seemed friendly with my dwarf. I was also disappointed that he had no shred of regret for attacking me. I guess this could have been more interesting, given the background of my dwarf. Even Bhelen didn’t comment much upon turning in that quest…
Next destination after the crawl through Jarvia’s hideout is the Deep Roads. I bumped into that drunk dwarf, Oghren? I had the option to put him in party, but I figure I should send him to my camp. Or at least I think I did. I never got the chance to check if he was at camp. He better be there. I just didn’t want to give up one of my mages for him. Thought I could crawl through the Deep Roads and find Branka myself. Guess I’ll have to find out next time.
How horrible that I haven’t updated this blog in almost two months. I’m sorry. As mid December rolled in with the holidays, I was kept busy with family and friends. After New Year’s, my computer also began to become more unstable. It had been having issues since November, but the number of restarts it needed to post grew. Starting up the computer felt like I was playing roulette, and my odds were getting worse. So the combination of holidays and computer fail, not much gaming going on and obviously no blog updates.
I did play one game this month, Ace Attorney: Miles Edgeworth Investigations, on the DS. I enjoyed it a lot, but it’s not exactly an RPG and I didn’t find it too practical to update via phone. My phone isn’t too smart, yanno.
Back to the computer, after multiple operations, it should be stable now. Faulty RAM has been replaced, hopefully things will be fine now. I don’t like to be away from Wiggler too long. Now that things are settling, hopefully I can get in the groove of playing some RPGs again. It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten what I was doing in Dragon Age. I just remember I was in Orzammar, picking either Lord Harrowmont or Bhelen. Hoping to get some game time maybe during the weekend. Need to finish Dragon Age so I can get to the real meaty classic RPGs!
I’m loving Dragon Age. It’s so different from the J-RPGs I’m use to playing. The striking thing about this game is that its not linear. If you’ve kept up with my last two games, I’ve mentioned how linear they are, more or less. Dragon Age, just gives me so much control in the story line. Sometimes I find myself overwhelmed because I cannot decide which is the right action to take. I haven’t looked up much information on the game because I don’t want to be spoiled…so essentially, I have no idea what I’m doing in game. But, it IS fun.
Yesterday, as I was playing, my character and her buddies made it to the town of Redcliffe. I helped the folks defend their town from the undead assaults coming from the Redcliffe castle. After that, the party goes to investigate said castle and discover the Arl’s (I’m guessing an Arl is like an earl….some nobility title) son has been possessed by a demon, and this demon is the one causing all the trouble. So here is where the game makes me decide on what action to take. It’s not the first time, the game has made me choose, but yesterday, I guess I had more trouble choosing.
To save the Arl’s son, I’d have to kill the boy or perform some ritual with mages to get into the Fade and face the demon there. Now for my second choice, I can either do this ritual the legit way, by grabbing all these mages from the Circle of Magi and some lyrium or…let this rogue mage I caught earlier in the castle do his ‘blood’ magic which consists of offering a sacrifice to reach the Fade.
Tuan wanted me to kill the boy, and I kinda wanted to as well. Ok that sounds mean….but hey, how many games let you kill demon possessed children? But anyway, I figured Alistair wouldn’t approve of that, nor would the Arlessa (the Arl’s wife) or Bann Teagan. So I chose to do the ritual instead.
I guess I was divided on who to please, Alistair or Morrigan. Alistair would like to do the ritual the legit way, where no one dies and it’s all good. Morrigan, who dislikes everything I do, maybe would like the other option…given that choosing option #2 would be the opposite of what I would have normally chosen. I’m not sure why, but I just want all my party members to like my character. Though with Alistair and Morrigan in particular, you could develop romances. My dwarf may have some flings with the men, but I do like trophies and achievements, sooo you know where that might go.
But anyway, I thought of doing the ritual with the Circle of Magi, but then I thought, I’ll have to walk over there, probably do some more quests for them just to get them to aid me, oh and where do I get lyrium? I figured it’d be a lot of work, and I don’t have that much time to play, so I ended up opting for the easier, yet grisly solution. To sacrifice the Arlessa to reach the Fade. I thought Morrigan would be pleased, but guess what!? She wasn’t. Apparently I never asked her and just volunteered her to do the job. In my defense, the game never asked for my input. /shrug After the ritual was done, Morrigan saved the boy and that finished the job in Redcliffe for now.
Interesting how my plan backfired on me. I intended for Morrigan to approve of my actions, but she didn’t. Oh, and Alistair scolded my poor dwarf upon returning to camp. Big disapproval there. Ouch.
Ok, I think I might have been sucked in by Dragon Age. I was supposed to play Suikoden II, but I ended up playing Dragon Age…It’s funny because I wasn’t that interested yesterday. I was annoyed that they had me pick talents and skills so early on when I had no clue about the game, but I kept on going and now I can’t stop. The game play feels like a mish-mash of PSO and Baldur’s Gate. But hey, Baldur’s Gate was made by Bioware too, soo that explains the similarities there.
I’ve been enjoying the game so far, though I’ve spent most of my game time talking to NPCs, than fighting. There is A LOT of dialogue, but I find it interesting despite not knowing much of the lore. I love having options when I’m talking to my party members or other npcs. I think it gives the game so much more depth. I’ve been nice to everyone, except Morrigan. Whatever I say seems to cause disapproval. Meh.
Only thing I don’t like is the interface. I guess it would be fine on a PC, but it feels all clunky for me on the PS3. Maybe I’ll get use to it as keep on playing…
Since the last post, I’ve completed Eternal Sonata. I do have an entry in progress all about it that hopefully will be up later this week. I also have chosen the next game to play and it is a classic RPG. I did side-track and start Dragon Age over the weekend as well, but starting tomorrow I’ll focus on my next game, Suikoden II.
Also in other news, you may have noticed this default WordPress layout up for 2 months now? Well, I’ve finally gotten around to creating a custom theme for the page, so that will hopefully be up later this week or the next.
I haven’t gotten much play time since the last post due to some distractions. These distractions consisted of a few games and a TV show.
I took some time off Eternal Sonata to try out some new PS3 games. In one weekend I played Castle Crashers and Sonic 4. Castle Crashers was super fun. It’s been a long time since I’ve played a good beat em up game, that also had some RPG elements such as leveling and stat pumping. My only complaint about the game is that it felt short. There are additional characters to unlock and an insane mode, but I haven’t had a chance to go back and do all that. Too many games, too little time.
During the same weekend, I gave Sonic 4 a try. Lord, this could warrant its own entry, but Sonic 4 is not an RPG and at the moment, I mostly want to keep this blog for the RPGs I play. But anyway, as a long time Sonic fan, Sonic 4 was something I was skeptical about. I loved the old school Sonic games, but everything after Sonic and Knuckles, I hated. However, I remember enjoying Sonic Advanced. So I see a pattern; I enjoy Sonic games that were closest to the originals. I do enjoy innovation with games, but Sonic is that game where I’d be scared of extreme change. Upon seeing some footage on Youtube of Sonic 4, I begged my Boo to buy the game.
The first level, was something hill like zone. At first, I was thinking, “Hey, this is like all the Sonic games. That first “Hill” zone.” I enjoyed the level since it brought a lot of nostalgia from the original Sonic games. After the Hill zone, I tried the Casino zone. I’ve never been a fan of the Casino zones in Sonic, so I wasn’t too excited about it. After a while, I started thinking, this is exactly like Sonic 2′s Casino zone. I shrugged it off…thinking they were paying tribute to the other games. I continued forward to the next zone. I forgot what it was called, but it looked a lot like Sonic 1′s Labyrinth zone. At that point, it started to feel to me that a lot of Sonic 4′s levels were just remakes of older Sonic games. Proceeding to the next level, it just hit the nail in the coffin for me. The level was very similar to Sonic 2′s Metropolis zone. At that point, I felt was playing a mishmash remake of Sonic 1 and 2, rather than a new Sonic game. I enjoy seeing things from the older games being brought back, but whole levels? While its nice for nostalgia, I was expecting a new game…New level design within the 2D constraints? I’m hoping episode 2 will bring newer things to the table.
Third distraction, which is probably the major distraction, is that I have started watching Law & Order. So when I visit my Boo, instead of playing games, we’ve taken up to watching Law and Order instead. I guess I’ll need to pry myself off Law & Order and continue playing before our gaming journey comes to an end!
Ok, this game isn’t a classic RPG, but I’m a bit obsessive compulsive and I need to complete this game. I started playing this game while I was back in college and never completed it. I checked my original game file and I was about 30 hours into the game, but I don’t remember anything about it. When I don’t remember anything about a game, best thing to do is replay it! Unless I hated said game…but recently I find myself wanting to complete games I hated and left unfinished…
I don’t hate Eternal Sonata, but I do feel a bit lazy about restarting the game. I just remembered a few dungeons and I feel all lazy. I remember two particular levels I disliked. There was some watery place…was it a dam? And this mirror world. Ugh. I’m not excited to replay those levels, but there’s no other way, since I don’t remember much of the game’s storyline.
I started playing the game around last week, and I’ve got maybe 5 or 6 hours so far of game play. I’m starting to remember more, like all the stuff involving the mineral power. Something else about a rebellion. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll remember as I keep playing. So far I’ve been enjoying the game.
One thing that stands out to me is the game’s visuals. The levels and towns are all beautiful and explorable. These early levels do suffer a bit of the linear nature that plagued Final Fantasy XIII, but its not that extreme. I think it got better as the game progressed. I thiiiink. Other thing I liked too is the music. So far its been great. I love Tenuto Village’s theme, it just gives me this ‘classic village’ feel. I love it. Love it love it. Overall I like the classic RPG elements they’ve kept, such as finding random things when exploring the environment.
Replaying the game, I’ve been reacquainted with the characters again. My boyfriend says the characters’ dialogue is too preachy, but I just can’t help to be amused at the bickering of Alegretto and Beat. I think I enjoy listening to Beat the most so far. I know he’s a kid, but it amuses me to no end. “Let’s go ask the Count of Forte to lower the taxes on everything besides Mineral Powder”.
Yes, lets just ask. My college textbooks are overpriced. Yes, let me ask the publishers to lower the prices because I’m a poor college student and can barely afford them. /snicker But hey, most of the cast are kids. Expect some cheesy dialogue.
I’m hoping to get some more play time this week. Keep an eye out for more updates and maybe if I can get some footage, I’ll post that too.
I’ve finally gotten around to finishing this game and also write about it! After finishing the game, I still feel somewhat divided. I really tried to like this game, and am still trying to now, but I find myself thinking that I can’t. I certainly don’t hate this game anymore, but I certainly don’t love it either. Upgrading weapons and maxing out all the crystarium trees certainly pushed the game from hated to more of a neutral feeling. I’m thinking, would I recommend this game to friends? I guess its ultimately boils down to how tolerant are you to spending most of the game going through straight corridors. I’m trying to view this game from the perspective of new gamers, and I still feel Final Fantasy falls short in comparison to other games out there right now. Don’t get me wrong, the game is well made; good visuals, tunes that stand out, smooth gameplay, decent characters, but I guess I don’t have much tolerance for crawling through corridors.
I also found the ending a bit lacking. I’m struggling to remember what exactly happened, and it wasn’t that long ago that I finished this game. Guess it’s showing that it wasn’t too memorable…or my memory is seriously failing. Lets see, there was Orphan’s Cradle, the last level. While not being a corridor, I felt it wasn’t that great either; nothing that felt huge and epic. Then we had the boss fights…Barthandelus again. Third time you encounter him in the game and still trollin’ Lightning and her crew. I don’t remember the fight being too hard, but then I did grind a lot. A LOT. I had max crystariums and weapons, so I might have been a wee bit overpowered.
But anyway, while Barthandelus wasn’t that great of a villain, fighting him was always fun. His theme is just that epic and awesome. Here, have a listen.
This is perhaps among the most memorable tracks of the game for me. Following Barthandelus, there’s two more battles. I don’t even remember the music in those battles, but I do remember thinking they were lacking, compared to Barthandelus’ theme. I was expecting something even more epic, to make me think “Oh shit, I’m gonna get owned in this fight”. That thought did come into my mind, as I fought Orphan and had a death timer on Lightning, though the fear was eased when I took Orphan down within seconds. I’m assuming the fight was supposed to be short, but I don’t know if they had meant it to last half a minute at most. Oh well, its fun being overpowered.
Upon defeating Orphan, you finally get to see them ending cutscenes. I’ll remind myself to record next time, or if I do another run through of the last level. The ending is a happy one, which is good for me since I like happy endings. The world is saved and everyone is reunited. You even see Lightning finally smile too. I was left a bit confused though. I’m pretty sure I read the datalog a lot and mostly kept up with any dialogue that had to do with the storyline, but I still can’t figure out why certain people broke out of their crystal stasis upon the defeat of the Fal’cies but not Vanille and Fang. After all, they did complete their focus. I guess the ending wouldn’t have been as dramatic if they did join everyone else, but holes in the lore bug me. When I finished the game, I unlocked the final crystarium trees, but I have yet to go back to doing all the missions. Perhaps those missions will bring some additional insight on the whole crystal stasis stuff. Maybe it will answer my questions.
I’m not sure when I’ll get around to going through all that though. Right now I’m focused on the next game to play. And next time I’ll be sure to update the blog sooner so it won’t be “Hey guuuys, I forgot most of the game already derp derp”