It IS Fun to Touch!

05/04/07 11:39 am

So I had this dilemma, in which I possessed a number of gift cards for Best Buy, that I was planning to use toward a Wii. But I finally came to terms with the fact that, even if I want a Wii, even if I have the money for a Wii, I still can't get a Wii. Unless you're willing to devote a good deal of time and energy to frequently searching high and low, you just can't get your hands on one. So, while I still want one, I decided to give up on my hopes of getting one any time soon... and bought a DS with my gift cards instead. And I'm quite pleased with it ^^ I've already got a list of games I want to play, but if there's one (or more) that you particularly love, leave a comment - recommend it. Actually, I've never owned a GBA either, but since the DS is backwards compatible, you could recommend me some of those as well. :)

Particularly, can someone vouch for Nintendogs? I've heard good things, but I fear it may be too kiddie to hold my attention. See, I've been thinking about wanting a puppy lately, but it's not an appropriate time in my life to get a real puppy... so what's the next best thing? Nintendogs, right? ^^;

I've also still been playing Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+, but I've gotten up to the "nitty gritty" at the end, where the story is basically finished except for the ending itself, and I'm running around collecting synth materials, fighting bonus bosses, stuff like that. I'll perhaps write up a post about it later; it's just less interesting to write about, since it's about 80% the same as the original Kingdom Hearts II. Most of what's new is boss battles, and a couple of cut scenes, most of which are kind of pointless - Juusan Kikan sits in the basement and pummels you with repetitive plot points - but some are worthwhile (particularly the one with Axel and Roxas after you defeat Roxas... I'm no shipper, but, awww, *sniffle*).

As for skins... to be honest, I just haven't felt like making 'em lately. If I force myself to make 'em, they come out poorly, so I'd rather simply wait until I want to do it again. "On sabbatical," I suppose ;) Also, there's about half-a-quarter left of school before I graduate (!); even if I have sufficient time, it's become difficult to focus on schoolwork, resulting in it taking longer than it should. ^^; So I just need to tromp through a few more weeks... And finally, there's some new stuff I'm working on that's just not ready for distribution yet.

Oh yes, and, after taking a look at my traffic stats for the month of April, looks like hits were up 70% from the previous month :O Gee Golly! (Pardon my French.) So that explains where all the bandwidth went.

Filed under: Games  Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix +  Life  Skins  

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Re:CoM Wrap Up

04/17/07 2:38 pm

A few words (hmm, actually it turned out to be a lot of words...) after having finished up the Re:CoM disc of KHIIFM+. In general, the game exceeded my expectations for it by lasting a good 30 hours (though people more skilled at the card battling system could probably go considerably faster ^^;), providing fun, if a bit flawed gameplay, and, in my opinion, deeper supporting characters than those found in KHII.

Maybe it's just me, but I didn't find myself very enthralled by [most of] the Organization members in KHII; they're standard villainry, not a whole lot more. Re:CoM, on the other hand, reveals more character in them through in-fighting, manipulation, varying loyalties and the like. Riku also gets far more character development in this title than any of the others, which also fostered a greater liking of him. And of course, if you'd never played the original CoM (as I have not), the connection of story between KH and KHII is far more clear now. ^^;

The gameplay of Riku's story was, however, a bit shallow. In total, his story took me about 6 hours, and that's being generous. Losing in battle was a rare event, limited to incidents of personal inattention (or stupidity), basically. It was also frustrating not being able to edit my deck - I would never intentionally suffer the shame of having such low-numeral cards in my deck - and not being able to heal unless you had a Mickey card with a high-enough number not to be broken; though, presumably as compensation, it was fun having nearly every black card available, and especially helpful not having to charge to reload.

As for specifics on Sora's side, I thought the last couple of battles were not very difficult; what trumps in this game is speed - if the boss isn't fast, it isn't that hard. At least that was the case for me anyway, so I typically had the most trouble with Riku and Larxene. Marluxia, on the other hand, only got tricky when he started throwing down stock techniques at a-mile-a-minute (...and when he scattered my cards around the battlefield T_T "An edge got bented!").

Although it did grow on me a bit, I still never felt great about the card-and-real-time fighting thing. As explained in an earlier post, the two forms just don't mesh all that well. Still, the fact that I kept on playing through to the end, means an A for effort for Re:CoM. For those of you hoping the game will be released in English... good luck with that (or if you start studying Japanese now, you'll might obtain effective comprehension in time for Kingdom Hearts IX!).

Just for fun, I wanted to add a video of a cut scene along with this post... but couldn't achieve an acceptable balance between file size and quality :/ And video editing (or the attempt to do so) on my computer makes it choke on its tongue. So, instead, you get a single frame from that video.

And I'll work on my video production skillz.

Filed under: Games  Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix +  Opinion  

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More Mix

04/03/07 4:59 am

Real time fighting and cards don't mix (unless perhaps you're Gambit). The thing about card games is that you have time to labor over strategy - to look at what you've got in your hand, to carefully pick out what you'll play first, what you'll save for later, what you'll use in a pinch, etc. That's what makes card games fun.

When you take that "thinking time" away by putting a card game in a real time fight, much of said fun is taken away. And what's left of the strategy aspect is not so much strategic as it is being able to tell which of two numbers is greater. Meanwhile, the fun of real time fighting has also been nerfed thanks to the absence of dodge and defense tactics - if you don't have the greater of those two numbers, you pretty much have to sit there and get pummeled. Well, you can still run around I suppose, but I've also found that the camera does not work as well as it did in KH. Particularly during the battles with Jafaar and Hades, I felt pretty disadvantaged by lousy angles and slow correction of them.

Overall I'm still enjoying it for what it is though. It's not a KH Playstation title of its own - it's an extra. No FMVs (so far anyway), voice acting and cut scenes pretty limited, gameplay is rather repetitive (in addition to the already noted drawbacks), but it moves at a good quick pace.

I also did play a bit more of disc one, and happened upon an extra scene starring the ever-popular Juusan Kikan. Unfortunately there was no voice acting to it, and my Japanese reading ability is not quite at the speed of subtitles yet. And... I neglected to pause it... (since said subtitles are still visible when you pause... hence I could've read it that way). Drat. But that's what back-up save files are for! ^^;

Hm? Skins? Oh, right. There's one of Sasuke, and one of Ravi/Lavi/Labi/Rabi [this is why romanization is just... troublesome, sometimes] among some others in the works. As you can probably tell, I've been ... distracted.

Filed under: Games  Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix +  

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Final Mix

03/31/07 4:32 am

So I try out Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix Plus, the first disc, and am surprised to be hearing "Sanctuary" rather than "Passion," and English dialogue once the game's started. "Hm, maybe this isn't the right game... No, the subtitles and all the other text is in Japanese..." I suppose most Japanese players would not have played the English version, and thus the English voice track would be considered an "extra" in that context. Incidentally, I haven't played the English version either, but I don't really want to. ^^; If that's all that's different about it (and different colored Heartless and Nobodies), I can't say I'm terribly interested.

Though, the main draw of the game, in my eyes, was Re: Chain of Memories. Off I went to disc two. After getting past the title screen, I was immediately struck by the appearance of reduced visual quality - compared to the first disc I'd just seen, this one looked notably fuzzy. No points for a snazzy opening - it was just scenes of the first KH with credits and "Hikari" overlaid. So my feeling so far is an ominous, "sloppily tacked on?" On we go to actual gameplay, where things seem alright, but... I never played CoM, but it seems like that card-based battling system never earned many fans... and it still won't, I think. Still, I will be playing this rather than the KHII disc.

We'll see how things pan out.

Filed under: Games  Opinion  Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix +  

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