4 weeks have passed pretty quickly, and I still haven’t written my Earthbound review. I’m pretty much still trying to figure out how to present my opinion on the game, so I’ll still need a bit of time to organize my thoughts. Anyways, this is pretty much just an “I’M ALIVE!” post. I haven’t got too much to say, though. Christmas break started, and I got the red ring of death. Not cool Microsoft, not cool. Anyways, I’ll be recieving a box tomorrow or the day after tomorrow to ship my 360 in. (I haven’t even used my damn 360 since summer!) On the other hand, I’ve been playing video games, as usual. Specifically, Chrono Trigger DS, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, Gears of War 2, and Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, so I guess I’ll talk about those in seperate blog posts. So let’s start with Chrono Trigger! Because nobody expects me being lazy!

CHRONO TRIGGER [DS]
I’m pretty sure everyone reading this blog has heard of, or has played Chrono Trigger, so I won’t go into too much detail. Basically, Chrono Trigger is the story of Crono and his friends, and their quest to travel through time to save the world. Despite the fairly cliche premise, Chrono Trigger delivers an amazing story at a steady pace, topped off with a whopping 13 endings. I haven’t beaten Chrono Trigger DS, and I don’t remember beating Chrono Trigger on the SNES, so I can’t really comment on the endings. The game plays just like how you’d expect an RPG to play. There are no random encounters; battles are triggered by the *touch to battle* kind of system. There are no battles on the world map because of this, meaning battles only occur in “dungeon” maps. Actual battles are your standard Final Fantasy-like flair. You have an ATB bar, you can attack, you can use techs, you can use items, and you can run. However, two things set this game apart. One thing is the top screen (assuming you’re playing in DS mode). The top screen is basically your battle screen. On that screen, you will see your party members attack. What’s important about this top screen is that there are attacks that damage a certain portion of the screen. For example, in the beginning of the game, Crono learns an attack called “Cyclone”. Cyclone is an attack that hits all the enemies around a certain enemy in a circle. If an enemy is out of range, you won’t be able to hit them. This adds another layer of strategy (until you get Dark Matter and Luminaire, that is…) because some enemies move a lot, and you want to hit them at the right time. There’s Active and Wait timing options for the ATB, but it’s the same as all the other Active and Wait options in every other game, so I won’t develop on that. On active, you’ll require a bit of timing with your skills, since enemies will be moving while you use your techs. Interesting. Another thing that’s worth mentioning is the dual/triple techs system. Each combination of party members presents you with different dual/triple techs. Basically, dual/triple techs are techs where you combine the techs of different party members? Make sense? Think of it this way; Marle has Ice spells, and Lucca has Fire spells. Combine the two of them together, and what do you get?

Crono, Lucca, and Marle prepare for a fight.

A fire/ice spell called “Antipode Bomb”. Antipode Bomb is a dual-tech. It’s knid of hard for me to describe, but you get the point, right? The music remains the same. Yasunori Mitsuda did a great job of it. I’m particularly fond of this specific tune; not sure why, but it’s my favorite song in the entire soundtrack. *shrugs* The new translation… I can’t really comment on that. I don’t remember the old translation well enough, since I didn’t really appreciate Chrono Trigger back in the day. I just noticed that Frog didn’t speak in his “olde english” anymore, which is good, since everyone else in his era spoke in plain, SIMPLE english. But hey, he’s still just as formal, so it doesn’t really detract from his personality. Anyways, as far as I’ve played, if you’re a fan of JRPGs, definitely get Chrono Trigger DS. Unless you’ve beaten the original 12321 times. If you have, just get it if you want to, I guess. The visuals are exactly the same, the soundtrack is exactly the same, and the gameplay is practically the same (although there are two new dungeons, an extras menu, and an arena. not sure if it justifies a purchase over the SNES version…) But if you haven’t played the original Chrono Trigger, you’re in for a treat! It’s got interesting characters and a touching plot riddled with twists and turns. Either way, it seems like a pretty short game, and 13 endings add to replayability of the game. Fun Toriyama art is always a plus too!

Anyways, I thought I’d write a lot on Chrono Trigger, and I did. Hopefully, I’ll be able to update some more over the winter break. I’m gonna go do something else, but have fun, and enjoy yourselves over the holidays, people! I know I will!

HELLO WORLD. I haven’t been here for a while, and you guys know it.  There hasn’t been much going on with my life.  Well, actually, there’s been a lot. I don’t think you want to read about it, but I can’t think of anything else to write right now that I can finish in 38 minutes. Anyways, I’m going to talk a bit about what’s going on with me for the last 3/4 weeks.

Anyways, the last post I wrote was back when I was at my old house. Review of Mother 1, if I recall correctly. I moved at about the beginning of the month.  Ever since then, I’ve been pretty much busy with school, work, gaming, and such. I finished Tales of the Abyss, and I finished Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Great games, I highly recommend them (more on them on future reviews, when I get out of school for the Christmas holidays). I haven’t really been gaming that much compared to during summer, actually, but hey, nothing’s wrong with that, RIGHT? My brother came back recently. He got me a few games; Animal Crossing: City Folk, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, Gears of War 2, and Fable II. I haven’t really started Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World yet (mainly because I haven’t played Tales of Symphonia yet), nor have I indulged myself into Fable II yet, since I’ve recently been trying to adjust to the bad taste Fable left in my mouth. Seems like a promising game so far, though. Ran out of monthly bandwidth today, now I need to pay $2.50 per 1 gb. I have no clue how I bursted through 25 gigs in a month. I don’t even download music. Err.. but really, like I said, my life is dull and boring; tiem4gaems and impressions.

Impressions

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

Because of the most recent edition to the Megaten series, Persona 3, people believe that the Megaten world is filled with emos and suicidals who like to shoot themselves. This, in essence, isn’t true (not saying Persona 3 is a bad game, Len, you still need to play it, Sousuke, it’s about time, DAAAAAN, GIVE IT A CHAAAAAAANNCE). Shin Megami Tensei is a mysterious game with a mysterious plotline. No, I’m not overusing the word “mysterious”; after all, that’s all I’ve seen from the game so far. The game opens up with a girl in what seems to be a hospital. She asks you for your name, and you give it. Like most respectable SMT games, the main character has no default name (of course, respectable SMT games also provide default names), and you are forced to give the main character of the game a name and a nickname. After this, you are thrown into the world of Nocturne. The main character starts off at a subway station, recieving a phone call to go to the park. You go to the park. Apparently, there’s just been a turf war there, so there’s a journalist there. The journalist recognizes that there’s nothing there, and that the park is blocked off. You recieve a phone call from that particular person, and you have to go to a hospital; devoid of people. Well, there are about… 5 people in the building. Anyways, a person tries to kill you because you “know too much”, and a woman saves you. …and then the world blows up. …and then you get turned into a demon “with the heart of a human” by this weird old lady, and a weird little kid, which for some reason changes to an adu– GAHH, JUST PLAY THE DAMN GAME! The story is too weird and too confusing to divulge anyways. Anyways, the game is solid and cheap. Meaning it’s a fun, deep, amazing, but cheap game, like every Megaten game. You have the potential to get your ass kicked in the first turn of a battle if you get ambushed, because of the “one more!” system. When an enemy attacks your weakness, YOU ARE KNOCKED DOWN. The sound is atmospheric, and the lack of voice acting makes the game creepier. The art style is beautiful, and the game is amazing. I can’t really think of anything else to say about this game. It’s such a unique game in terms of plot that it’d be hard not to recommend this game. I’ve only played the game for about 2 hours, so I don’t have a ton of impressions on this game, except that I know that this is the kind of game that I like to play. The game’s really hard to pick up. I picked it up a few years back, but you’d be hard pressed finding a copy of this game today.

Animal Crossing: City Folk

Alright, so we’ve established that I’m pretty much braindead from that SMT: Nocturne impressions section of this post. Animal Crossing: City Folk is… uh.. Animal Crossing: Wild World with a city and 4 houses. That means it’s a good, solid game that improves on its core experience. That also means that it’s the same game as before. But better. In my opinion, if Animal Crossing: City Folk didn’t look like the old games, it wouldn’t be Animal Crossing. If it didn’t play like the old games, it wouldn’t have been Animal Crossing. If it didn’t SOUND like Animal Crossing, it wouldn’t be Animal Crossing. Finally, if it didn’t have Tom Nook, and the Able Sisters, and Brewster, and Blathers… and the Mayor Turtle guy… it wouldn’t be Animal Crossing. In my opinion, Animal Crossing: Wild World nearly perfected the formula, and City Folk improved on the perfection. Anyways, enough of that. ENOUGH OF THAT. I don’t really have much more to say about this game. I don’t know enough about the additions. Well, I guess I could talk about the city.  The city is basically your average place to spend your cash. You can buy expensive clothing, get expensive haircuts, expensively change the colour of your shoes, expensively learn emotions from Shrunk, expensively buy things from Redd. Er… uh… That kind of stuff. Of course, you can always get your clothes from the superior Able Sisters. Uh. This sounds really disjointed and biased, so I’m going to stop now. Actually, I’ll end off by saying that Animal Crossing: City Folk is a great game, and if you like Animal Crossing on the GC, you’ll like this one even more. Online play takes the cake, even though it was in the DS version. Except it’s unstable. BluFin can tell you.

Anyways, this is a really pointless post, so I’ll post something less pointless in the form of a video. Hmm, maybe it’s just as pointless, but whatever. Enjoy!

(did anyone else notice that youtube now displays views in widescreen?)

So, I just figured something out about WordPress, but It’s nothing worth mentioning.  I was planning to write this Dissidia blog post earlier this week, but I’ve been playing me a lot of Mother 3 and Persona 2: Innocent Sin.  Talking about the week, I’m eagerly anticipating the new DS Metroidvania; Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.  Yes, eagerly, eagerly.  Quite eagerly.  It’s coming out tomorrow! This week is one of my best weeks for gaming.  I almost couldn’t imagine it getting any better.  It probably will, someday.  But for now, let’s take a look-see at the rest of Dissidia.

We’re still talking about character designs, but we’ve only visited the heroes of the game.  Mind you; the villains are gonna be pretty hard to rant about.  After all, they all look pretty awesome.  Seriously, I barely have anything to say.  I’m going to ramble on for a little until I figure something out.  Oh, I got it!  Read on!

The villains of Dissidia.

Like I said above, all the characters do look pretty damn awesome.  Jecht looks super happy, Kuja looks amused.  (He also still looks kind of like a manlier woman.  Hm, how does that work?) In fact, as the FF number decreases, the characters’ faces become more and more serious.  Except, you can’t see the faces of three of the characters.  Guess who they are!  Anyways, the only thing I can really point out is that Exdeath and Golbez look the same.  Accurate to the Amano art; but their visors… look the same. *grumbles @ the Amano art*  Side by side, they’d look ugly.  Pitting them against each other would look pretty cool. A-a-a-anyways….  Anything I rant after this will come off as nit-picking, so I won’t continue with this.. *sees Sephiroth’s blue tint on the ear..*  Instead, let’s combine two short sections, and turn them into one.  That said, let’s take a look a the gameplay.

Garland fighting a Warrior of Light.

So far, in terms of footage, Final Fantasy: Dissidia looks pretty cool.  Actually, from what I’ve seen, it looks like a compilation of Kingdom Hearts bossfights; except no Disney, and you use actual Final Fantasy characters.  Oh, and make it a little more fast paced… and a little more flashy.  Without those random enemies jumping around.  Anyways, you get the picture.  The visuals are appealing, and the game looks fun.  Of course, I haven’t played this game yet.  The game looks just as good as any other 3D fighter.  It looks good, but can potentially fall short.  Of course, that won’t stop the hardcore fans from puchasing it, but that’s another story. The music also sounds nice and fitting, as do the sound effects. Well, I did notice a few flaws.  The behind the back perspective blocks your view from the enemy a lot, and so does the debris.  That, of course, is a bad thing for a fast paced game.  Furthermore, the game looks so fast, that it looks like a button masher.  I don’t remember KH2 much, but I’d assume Kingdom Hearts 2 at about 150% speed.  Some characters are pretty slow (Gaaarlllaaaannnnddd….), though so I guess it does have some kind of balance. The quicktime sequences look cool, but they also look annoying and pace-chopping.  It may sound like nitpicking, but if you’ve played a fast, intense game, you’d know how much your hands would shake.  Also, how come after Tidus does an epic air-dash attack, he falls like a rock? (see the gameplay video below)  I don’t know if it was the player or the game, but if you can’t maneuver after fighting in the air, that’d lead up to some pretty nasty vulnerability.

Well, from what I see, Dissidia has a 25% chance of being fantastic, a 25% chance of being a great game to play on the go, a 25% chance of being a decent game, a 25% chance of failing, and a 75% chance of being drastically overrated for being a Final Fantasy game .  This game is so cinematic that it might be more fun to watch than to play.  Square is obviously aiming Dissidia at Final Fantasy fans, but in my opinion, there’s that chance that because Final Fantasy appeals to such a wide range of people, the fighting game they develop will be half-assed and unsatisfying.  Of course, that probably won’t happen.  It’s got the Square-Enix seal of quality *chuckles*.

Anyways, I’d actually like to end this blog post off at a high note, so I’ll post up some gameplay footage.  Most of you have probably already watched this though, but enjoy!  My next blog post will be my last on Dissidia; it’ll talk about EX forms/attacks.  Sorry if this post disappointed you; it disappointed me too. ;|

(Also, has anyone else been wondering why Jecht had black hair , and Tidus, his son, had blonde hair?  Probably the mother, but we never see her, do we?)

UPDATE:
Noi: lawl
Noi: btw, there’s one thing you could have mentioned.
Noi: I can’t remember who it was that said it, but it’s confirmed that Dissidia has twice the text that Crisis Core had.

Mach and Len are really stepping it up, so I suppose I should too.  Some of you may be wondering; WHERE’S MAH FFXII RANT?  Truth is, I’m not going to do it.  You see, Sephiroth from Backloggery made me rethink what I was going to rant about, so I’m going to play the game and finish it first.  That said, the FFXII rant will be delayed, and perhaps cancelled if I start to like the game.  If I don’t like the game….  FFXII, YOU ARE.. *licks blade*.  Anyways, let’s continue. Let’s talk about Final Fantasy: Dissidia.

Anyone who was on the Resident Evil 0 – Hard Mode Backloggery Live Stream must have read about people talking about Final Fantasy: Dissidia.  If you weren’t on the Backloggery Live stream, well, you probably already know what Final Fantasy: Dissidia is.  If you don’t, you have been living under a rock for the last goddamn year.  For those of you who have been living under that rock, Final Fantasy: Dissidia is, in short, Final Fantasy fanservice.  To make the short story long, it is a PSP fighting game based off of the entire Final Fantasy universe.  Of course, Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles aren’t mentioned.  Not that they suck, of course. Well, not that Tactics sucks, anyways.  Anyways, a list of characters known in the game so far… hm…. here’s a link.  OH YEAH, AND NO FINAL FANTASY XII CHARACTERS EITHER.

Anyways, let’s start with the character designs.  Hmm, where to begin, where to begin?  Let’s start with the best of Nomura’s designs.

Cloud retains his Final Fantasy 7 game look, opposed to the Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children and Crisis Core look. This means he has spikey hair, and a SOLDIER uniform.  He looks pretty cool; too bad it doesn’t mean I’ll use him. Zidane looks like Zidane, no real changes there. The Warrior of Light, Frionel, and the

Onion Knight…. hmm… they look pretty cool. I like the Warrior of Light and the Onion Knight’s armor, and Frionel doesn’t really have any rough edges either.  Cecil looks pretty cool as a Paladin.  A little purple, but that’s how he looks like in the game.  Well, not really.  He has purple hair and green eyes.  That can be overlooked, because he still looks cool!  Tidus looks like Tidus.  Except he has random jewelery on his body now. Not like he didn’t have it in Final Fantasy X; he just has more now.  Squall looks like he did in Final Fantasy 8.  Only, I have a problem with his clothes.  Be patient now, I’ll talk about that very soon! Now, let’s switch to the “bads”.  Hmm, hmm….  Let’s start with Bartz/Butz.  Bartz, Bartz.. why do you look so feminine?  Bartz, the main character of one of my favorite Final Fantasies, what has happened to you?

As a freelancer, you looked normal.  You didn’t look that skinny!  You looked like a common character, ready to kick some ass.  Your clothes weren’t lame, and your face wasn’t dark!  In fact, I thought you were a light-hearted character.  Makeupless, light-hearted character.  You have failed my expectations.  Even so, you’re from FF5.  You look cooler than Exdeath, although both of your storylines were weak.  Exdeath, I’ll talk about you later.  You and Golbez.  Squall, my god.

Squall, now comes with man-skirt (thanks Noi) and bra. Oh yeah, and the gunblade. Can't forget that!

What has Nomura done to your clothes?! No wonder Squall recieves so much hate.  Because all these designers keep womanifying him!  Well, that’s not the reason, but Squall looks pretty damn annoying.  I thought he was cooler with his regular grey shirt and leather jacket and pants.  Of course, people who like Final Fantasy 8 will still want to use Squall (that includes me).  I just wish they didn’t try to increase his “stylishness”.  He was awesome enough as it was.  They didn’t need to add those extra accessories to make him look cool.  In fact, it’s having the opposite effect on me. Unfortunately, that is…

Terra.  Terra.  Terra.  I must admit, Terra does look much cuter when Nomura draws her.  Too bad she dyed her hair.  Too bad, too bad.  Like my friend rshadowkirby said, a yellow haired Terra is a Celes.  Well, I can’t complain about the change in actual design; Amano’s art kind of freaked me out.

Terra from FF6.

I would have preferred moire accuracy in this case, though.  I can’t really see any other differences between versions.  Of course, Terra’s ingame portrait from FF6 has purple lips, contrary to the orange-lipped Terra from Dissidia.  I can’t complain about her new design, though, unfortunately.  SHE WOULD HAVE BEEN COOL WITH GREEN HAIR, THOUGH!  Then again, that isn’t really green hair.  More like turquoise hair.  Whatever.  Now that I look at Terra’s face again, she looks braindead.  She looks like she pities the world.  That’s not a nice look.  Can’t imagine her looking like Tidus, though.

Anyways, this is taking up way too much of my time.  I’ve got around 3 more projects to finish tonight, and a couple of tests to study for the day after.  How about this?  The Heroes of Dissidia; Final Fantasy: Dissidia rant, PAAAAAATTOOO WAAAANNN!!! That’s a pretty long name.  Whatever. I guess I’ll just leave it at that.  Phew, 900 words.  I hope  I don’t take up the entire page again.  I guess this entire rant will be about 2200 words.  I can’t not post it tonight, since Mach and Len have been bothering me for the last week.  Well, for the last night.  Now I’m just rambling on.  Anyways, cheers, guys.  Post what you guys think of Dissidia! AND ALSO, I CALL THE RANTS FOR THE MOTHER SERIES~ SOUSUKE, DAN, MACH, LEN, DON’T. YOU. DARE.