My Final Fantasy game collection

So I've decided to show my entire Final Fantasy catalogue. I've laid them on the bed and wanted to take a single picture, but then I realised as I stood on the step ladder that I might have had to take the picture via satellite to fit into a single pic, so had to make do with 2 pictures.

Top pic
Row 1 = FF1 PSP, FF2 PSP, (below) FF2 Wonderswan Colour limited edition, FF3 DS + guide, FF4 GBA, (below) FF Chronicle, FF4 DS, FF4 Complete PSP limited edition, FF Anthology, (below) FF5 GBA, FF6 GBA

Row 2 = FF7 PS1, FF7 Advent Children DVD, FF7 Dirge of Cerberus PS2, FF7 Crisis Core PSP, FF8 guide, FF8 PS1, FF9 PS1

Row 3 = FF10 guide, FF10-2 guide, FF10 International PS2, FF10-2 International + Last Mission PS2, FF10-2 PS2, FFX/X-2 HD Remaster limited edition PS3, FFX/X-2 HD Remaster PS3, FF11 Ultimate edition PC

Bottom pic
Row 1 = FF12 guide limited edition, FF12 PS2, FF12 International Zodiac Job System PS2, (below) FF12 Revenant Wings DS, FF13 guide collectors edition, FF13 limited edition PS3, FF13-2 limited edition PS3, (below) FF13-2 steel cover, FF13-2 guide collectors edition

Row 2 = FF14 collectors edition (original release) PC, FFT PS1, FFT WotL PSP, (below) FFTA GBA, FFTA2 DS, FF 4 Warriors of Light DS, Theatrythm Curtain Call 3DS, Bravely Default 3DS, Dissidia Duocidem 012 limited edition PSP

Makai Toushi SaGa for Wonderswan Colour, impressions

Wonderswan box art.

So if I say to you I've recently played Makai Toushi SaGa, you've probably never heard of it. If I tell you it was released on the Wonderswan Colour, you'd probably be even more confused. And if I was to tell you it's a remake of the original Final Fantasy Legend for the Gameboy........ you'd probably still don't know what I'm talking about, but since there's "Final Fantasy" in the title, you may be compelled to respond with "ohh...... that one......"

Allow me to Elaborate.

SaGa is Square's other RPG series back in the 90s, before the likes of Front Mission, Chrono, Parasite Eve and Kingdom Hearts. It started with Final Fantasy 2, not the SNES version starring Cecil and Rosa, the real FF2. You know, the weird one. ("Ohhh.... that one...") Exactly. So anyway, there's a genius on Square's payroll named Akihiko Kawazu, whom worked on FF2, didn't know whether he was a director or one o' the big wigs at the time (and too lazy to do any proper research) but a lot of his progressive ideas were implemented into the game, mainly one of SaGa's key principals, "you improve what you do". Make sense right? If you keep doing a certain thing, you would get better and better at it, just like real life. This translated into the game via random stat improvement based on what you do in battle, eg, your strength improve when you attack physically, magic improve when you use magic, endurance improve when you get hit, etc. But it was too progressive and hipster for the by-the-numbers crowd of the 80s.

So I guess panic must've spread through the Square office when the customers may or may not have reacted to FF2 with "it's not FF1 with different characters", so somebody wanted Kawazu out of FF but I guess the union must've frowned upon sacking the driftwood, so some bright spark from HR must've came up with brilliant idea of letting Kawazu have his OWN RPG series. The entire world breathed a sigh of relief at the compromise, as Square is able to build the FF franchise into what it is today (that is, even more of a let down than FF2) while Kawazu gets to do his arts and crafts project with the B-team, you know, like that episode of The Simpsons where Marge baked a cake but wouldn't let Homer touch it, instead made a second cake for Homer to ruin.

So Kawazu created Makai Toushi SaGa (or just SaGa for short) for the Gameboy in 1989...... and to everyone's surprise, people actually liked it and the game sold and made a profit (conjecture only, seeing as the game went on to spawn 8 sequels and countless remakes, but if I'm wrong with the assumption SaGa 1 was profitable, Square's even dumber than I thought).

When the time came to possible localisation for the Western market, the marketing manager may or

The towns are simple like FF1.
NPCs also say vague things like FF1.

may not have reacted "what the **** is a saga? Slap Final Fantasy on it and call it a day" (a strategy they upheld even today, except even the Japanese division has adopted *looks over at Crystal Chronicles*) so the first 3 SaGa games were renamed Final Fantasy Legends 1-3. Talk about false advertising, you were innocently thinking you're supporting the Final Fantasy office when you've unassumingly bought into the rival

So what is the game about? If you've played any of the Disgaea games you'd know that Makai is something like "Demon's world", and Toushi roughly translates to something like "tower warrior". So the premise of the game is to climb a tower, which connects multiple words on different levels, with the end goal of killing god (and you Xenogears hipsters thought your game was "ahead of its time" or "controversial", but as you see, it's been done). The game is fairly short. There's only 4 worlds, and each has its own (basic) story, and at the end you fight one of the 4 Japanese/Chinese direction gods (Suzaku, Byakko etc) and unlock the next world.

I don't remember having played the original Gameboy version (I may have played like 5 minutes or something) so this is the first time I've played the game. You get to create a team of 4 (not unlike FF1) and you get to choose between Human, Esper (or Mutant as per GB version) and monster. Having played SaGa Frontier on the Playstation to death, I am quite familiar to the races as SF is the only modern SaGa game to adopt the race system of the GB games.

So at first I created 2 Humans, 1 Esper and 1 Monster...... and after a few battles none of my Humans have improved yet the Esper has. I soon learned, Humans in SaGa 1 do not improve via fights as per later games, they actually act more like mechs from later games. They can equip anything and have 8 slots, and you "buy" stats upgrades.

After learning this, I restarted the game and made 2 Espers, 1 Human and 1 Monster. The Espers are very strong. They're like a mix of the best of Humans and Mystics in SaGa Frontier. They randomly receive stat upgrades after each fight, and they randomly learn up to 4 abilities, although any learned abilities could randomly be switched with something else, so they're a little unpredictable that way. However some of the abilities they get are so overpowered. Deathgaze and Stonegaze basically murders everything in the first half of the game, including the 4 world bosses.

Boss looks menacing....
...except it's vulnerable to instant death.

As for Monsters, when you beat a enemy Monster, there is a chance they leave behind some meat, and if your Monster eats it, it'll morph into a different Monster, however neither Monsters nor Humans' damage output seem to come near to Espers.

So I breezed through the first 3 worlds. The 4th world gave me trouble, since rushing through the previously worlds with Espers made my team sorta weak, so lots of save and load abusing was required to get through world 4. And more and more enemies seem to have gaze immunities, which was what I counted on to win fights previously lol. Yes I'm lazy.

So I've clocked about 3 and half hours. The game is probably around 6 hours long, not bad. But I probably won't go back to finish it. It's becoming repetitive and the encounters are becoming a chore, especially since the Human seem to be dead weight, even after much investment into bumping up his stats. But at least I have a pretty good idea of how the game plays now.

Oh and in case you were wondering, I played this on a emulator from the fan translated rom. And I do own the original Wonderswan cart and a Wonderswan Colour.

Happy new year. Let's talk about Shadows of Mordor.

Like all games these days, she'll try to get in your pants.
Not a chance, sister!

So long time no post. Yes I've been lazy. So just a quick one.

Shadow of Mordor is a game I've played on the PS4 a couple of months ago (I know, laziness kept me from writing about this one). Its gameplay combined what looks like Assassins Creed and Batman, set in the Lord of the Rings universe. Having actually played non of the AC nor Batman games, and seen none of the LotR movies/read the books, it was a little odd for me, as I was not able to fully appreciate (or at all) the plot. The story is kinda throwaway unless you're a fan of the franchise I guess. The gameplay is where it's at for me.

The graphics are really beautiful and the main character's model (can't even remember his name now

The skill tree. So many goodies
to pick from!

lol) animates really nicely. The controls however are a bit sticky. The main character is stuck on permanent walk mode no matter how hard you tilt the stick, and you have to hold O to run, I mean, how 90s. I have not played any of the AC games so maybe this is just a feature of the genre, but it's really unintuitive. Another complain is that a button has many functions depending on the situation, so sometimes it's difficult to get the game to do exactly what you want to do simply because the same button controls 2 or 3 different things. For example, when I climb to the top of a tower that has parallel walls and the platform in-between the 2 outer walls, it's a bitch trying to drop onto the actual platform. My character keeps dropping off the outer wall surface, or jumps to the other wall, or leaps off, or drops off the tower. Everything except dropping into the inner wall surface. Or when I'm trying to pick something up while enemies are around, due to time limit I'm trying to just pick up the item, but the button for picking up item and grab is the same, so I kept grabbing the enemy instead. Very frustrating.

Controls aside, the gameplay is very fun. The nemesis system, where you're up against the hierarchy of enemy generals, is a lot of fun. It's always fun to hunt down the generals as they drop runes. Also loves some of the advanced combat power unlocks. The combat is a lot of fun and if you're good/lucky, you can potentially chain hundreds of hits against an unlimited amount of enemies while parrying everything thrown at you. I love the combat executions, where you can instantly decapitate an enemy in the most brutal way possible. There are a lot of options on combat too, from melee, stealth kills (always fun!), and head shots from a bow, plus some of the combat upgrades, such as shooting at a bonfire to ignite an explosion, teleporting arrow kills and turning them into your slave. Combat in this game is never dull.

Brutal executions are your bread and butter.
If you're squeamish you may wish to try Cooking Mama.

The game isn't particularly long. I think you could do it in 20 hours if you don't do everything, but 30 hours would be stretching it. It's not really an RPG, but one of these action hybrids that everything these days seem to be. One other complaint is that there's no replay value. At all. Once you've beaten the story you can keep playing to fight more nemeses and collect runes, but since there's no additional content there is no point.

It's definitely worth playing once. Anything beyond that won't hold too much interest. And I can't say for any DLCs. I think the formula is cute for a taste, not for a swallow, meaning I wouldn't really be interested in any DLCs if they're just more of the same. Like I said, the story doesn't appeal to me as a non fan.

Let's get physical, physical. I wanna get physical.

Olivia knows what's goin' on!

Olivia Newton-John sure is an extraordinary woman. Successful singer, actress, and as we've recently discovered, a pioneer and forward thinker of the video game industry. When she Xanadid her way to the top of the charts back in the 80s, she foresaw the evolution of the gaming industry and the advent of digital media, and she cried out on our behalf "I wanna get physical!"

And of course, she was right. Nowadays, more and more games are being released as "digital only", even more so if you're looking at the Sony Vita. Yes, the Vita is still a "thing" and if I may say so myself, saw/will be seeing several high profile releases this couple of months. Unfortunately, many Japanese localisations have been hit with the "Digital Stick". Oh Olivia, if you only knew.

I do understand the business decision with "digital only" localisation releases. The Vita isn't exactly selling particularly well, and Vita games with it. And I would rather a game be "digital only" than "Japanese only", so I'm not complaining, just wishing things were different.

Keep your Digital Stick away
from my games please!

See my mind set is still living in the 80s. I like having pretty game boxes (most of which still in their original factory sealed packaging) lined up on my display case. I like to be able to look at my collection and go "wow". Also having the physical cartridge means the game won't take up valuable space on the Vita memory card (while I do have a 64G card, I am thinking about the future). And then there's warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I own this game forever. And in the event of a cyber apocalypse where internet and cloud storage gets destroyed, I will be happily enjoying Tales of Hearts R (pre-ordered!) and Danganronpa, while everyone else is back to playing Tic-Tac-Toe.

I am not against digital media. They certainly are very convenient and sometimes affordable (hello Steam!) Not on the PSN however, and especially not in Austra-ripoff-lia, where physicals are generally cheaper than digital. Hang on a minute. You're not giving me anything tangible and you want to charge me more?

Fran's got the right idea
when it comes to shopping.

So when i comes to digital, I have one policy, and that is the Fran Fine policy. "If it ain't half price it ain't on sale!" And of course, I'll only buy when its on sale. It just doesn't feel right to pay full price for something that I can't see nor touch. But when that Flash Sale hit you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll be filling up my virtual shopping cart with everything I can get my hands on, especially with a PSN Plus additional discount.

So over the last 2 weeks I've been playing Toukiden, which is like Monster Hunter set in period Japan. And of course, Toukiden Kiwami, the more-is-more rerelease, has just been announced for localisation today. But I wanted to play this game and just didn't want to wait, and thankfully the game was on sale on PSN at the time. The game is a little repetitive, but much better than the actual Monster Hunter. (Played MH Freedom Unite on PSP. Couldn't cark it as the weapons we either slow or slower).

Bows are the only reliable way to hit
certain parts of bosses.

So with the sales over the last few weeks I've picked up: Atelier Roroa/Totori/Meruru Plus, Sorcery Saga, Toukiden, Soul Sacrifice Delta and Mind Zero. And in physicals I've picked up Danganronpa 1 and 2, Ys, Demon Gaze, Disgaea 4, and have Tales of Hearts R and Freedom Wars. To hell with the nay sayers, viva la Vita!

Gamer's lethargy. It strikes us all!

So I've been struck down by the gamer's lethargy. You know that feeling where you've been playing a particular game, and you're not not enjoying it, and then when you put it down but can't be arsed in picking it up.

It's not like it's not good. So why don't I feel like playing?

Well the game was Tales of Graces F. I found the courage to break the seal on my EU Day One Edition one weekend and started playing it. The battle system is quite deep and the game is quite fun too. The graphics are Wii bit on the average side (see what I did thar?) The story and characters are ok, and the skits are actually quite funny. I managed to get past the childhood arc and got towards the end of chapter 1. Just I just can't seem to want to pick it up and play.

Of course this is not the first time. Many games I've been enthusiastically playing and one day just can't be bothered. Of course, most of them time it's because the game is average or meh, but Tales of Graces F is a good game.

So in the mean time I've been playing a bit of "blast from the past" Front Mission 3, grabbed from a PSN sale. I've previously beaten this game back when it first came out on the PS1. Great game. So I am slowly making progress through Emma's story, currently about 1/3 of the way through. Slowly...... because the game allows you to save in battle! Uh oh, you know what that means. The OCD in me has decided to abuse it to the hills and back. I would save and reload so battle skills proc favourably (they're random you see!) It would sometimes take me 2 hours to beat a battle.

Few things are as scary as an enemy melee unit.
One hit and you'll be picking up scraps for the
rest of the fight. Yikes!

The challenge in this game seems so random. Sometimes I've looked at certain maps and went "how
the f am I supposed to beat this?" You can do large amount of damage to the enemy, the enemy can do large amount of damage to you, except you're always out numbers and healing is inefficient/wasteful in this game. Combined with random skill AND combo activation for you and the enemy, one turn can go very right, or very wrong. For example, your machine gun could trigger a combo of RoFI x4, and destroy both of the enemy's arms and leave it powerless, or your rifleman trigger 3 PilotDmgI and kill the pilot in one turn. But on the other hand, the enemy melee unit can destroy your weapon arm in one hit, and then it's all over Red Rover. You're a sitting duck!

It's because I want to guard against these unfortunate mishaps that I am religiously saving after each turn. Enemy melee units scare the crap out of me, because they can consistently take out at least half of the HP of any of your parts in one go. My strategy is to get in the first hit with my own melee unit, praying that EjectPunch triggers, or a combo takes out their weapon arm. Thankfully EjectPunch has high activation rate, so it's worked well fairly well. For other units, I've just been using my gunners so they would hit the body/weapon arm with skill activation, and disarm them before it's their turn. All the reloading and resetting is killing my enjoyment of the game as there's no pride in taking the cheap shots, but I am messed up in the head and need professional help.

Until next time, where I might be typing from a psychiatric ward through my straight jacket.

Tales of Legendia impressions. 27 hours in. Beat the game.

And yes. A Streetcar Named Desire parody
is included in the game.

So I've finally "beat" the game. Well the main game at least. For those of you who don't know,
Legendia is divided into 2 halves. The main story is the first half, and the second half is called "character quests", which further develops the party members unfinished back stories.

So how does the "black sheep" of the series stack up. Well, its reputation is somewhat correct. The game does kinda suck.... but it's also kinda really really good. The characters are all developed really well, have a distinct personality and (all bar 1) are very likeable. I would even compare the character interaction and their relationships to (I'll get shot for this) Persona 4. WHAT?! The legendary Persona 4? Yes. The characters are that good. Well maybe Persona 4 Lite. But the creators certainly did something right. The characters are unique and memorable. They feel like friends and they feel more than "dial a personality" pixels on the screen, and go beyond troupes like "the girl who is bad at cooking". Norma in particular is very enjoyable. She is all about comedy relief, except she doesn't annoying. I've had many laugh-out-loud moments with this game. Not to mention she is voiced by my favourite voice actress Tara Strong.

For the 200th time, just GTFO already!

So what about the other half of the game? It's a chore to play. It's how I feel about Persona 4. Love the story/characters/cut scenes, while the actual "gameplay" is just mediocre. The problems I hate with it:
1) World map travelling is so sloooooooooow and painful. Often you are given very vague clues on where to go so you are wondering around for a long time trying to get there. While the random encounter rate isn't horrible, because how long it takes to get from point A to B on the world map, it feels like the encounter rate is so high. It can sometimes take half an hour just to travel to the next point on the world map.
2) Dull and repetitive dungeon designs. 95% of the dungeons consists of forks, leading to more forks, leading to more forks. The forks will lead to A) treasure B) dead end C) more forks, which leads back to ABC ad nauseum. There are rarely any landmarks or anything interesting in most dungeons. This essentially pads the game to make it seem longer, again, the random encounters feel extremely frequent due to the dull and repetitive dungeons. I beat the game in 27 hours. Could have easily been 20 hours if the world map and dungeons are more streamlined. I think it would actually improve the overall experience by making battles seem less like a chore, cutting out the boring and tedious bits and get to the interest bits (cut scenes) sooner.
3) The magic system. Magic is called crystal eres in this game. When a mage get to a certain level, the obtain the eres (spell) but to actually be able to use it, they have to obtain a certain number of Eres Stones of various types, which are randomly dropped by certain types of enemies. This facilitates even more grinding, because to actually use the spell you have to grind on enemies, which may or may not drop the stones, which facilitates even more boring grinding. Even worse, some types of enemies you need to stones from may not appear in your immediate vicinity, and maybe 2-3 dungeons ahead of behind you, so there's no guarantee you'll actually be able to get them in a timely manner either. For example, I never got to use Norma's Resurrect, which as you maybe able to guess, is a very important spell, because I didn't get enough stones from the spider type enemies. I spent about half an hour trying to grind them in one dungeon about 2/3 of the way into the game, didn't find a single one (they were rare) so I gave up and thought "I'll get it eventually". Those spider enemies never appeared again.

Backstabbing wench! She's even
worse than Heidi Range of the Sugababes!

4) Shirley. Almost everyone hates her on the forums. She is the protagonists' wimpy little sister, with a grating voice actress, she spends half of the game being kidnapped by everybody and having to be rescued. Then she turns into a backstabbing wench in the second half. The game tries to make you feel sorry for her, but I just wanted her dead

As for battles, yes this game is a little light on features but I didn't actually mind it. The fights were reasonably fun, although having to repeatedly fight the same fights over and over due to longer dungeons is a bit of a pain. And when I don't feel like fighting? Running away takes about 10-12 seconds of actual time, so by the time the timer counts down I would have won the fight anyway, so that was useless. I feel like people wouldn't complain as much about the battle system is there were less fights overall, with shorter dungeons and smaller over world, one wouldn't have to fight as much and everyone would be just a little bit more patient.

Where do I stand with the game now? I would like to continue with the story as the characters are so much fun (minus Shirley) but I just don't think I have the fortitude of trudging through another 30 hours worth of "game" for 20 hours worth of content. That's at least another 2 weeks for me. Well.... we'll see.

It's getting to the tail end of the year. I can see telltale signs, I tell ya...

As we've arrived at the second half of the year, it's getting close to the golden season of game releases. This year there are no less than 10 games on "must have" list getting releases between September and November, as gaming publishers are no doubt pointing guns at peoples heads to reach those deadlines. Since I've been a good boy this year Santa, I've been leaving accidental notes around the house containing games that I might like, hint hint.... What? Budget cuts? Paper machè ornaments again? (Who needs Santa anyway. The street corner is all I need....)

A "skit" is supposed to be funny.
These ones are just lame.

This time next month Tales of Xillia 2 will be released. I guess some fan boys will be happy.

I've always found Tales to be really middle of the road, not terrible yet not great either. It screams "me too". A typical Tales conversation goes something like

Male char: ...

Female char: Something wrong, Male char?

Male char: It's... it's nothing..... C'mon, let's go.

Female char: Male char........

*gif of me hurling into a bucket*

Of course, despite owning several of the games in the series, I actually have only played a few of

The infamous scene.

them, so all of this could just be some made up crap in my mind. So without further ado, I will tell the tale of me and the Tales series.

Picture it. Sicily. 1929. Picture it. Late 90s. At home. During the era where I, like many others, discovered the power of emulator and the rom. Tales of Destiny for the PS1 was released (I've never owned) but everybody was talking about the Japan-only first game of the series, Tales of Phantasia for the Super Famicom. I fan translated patch for Tales of Phantasia was released which took the rom-playing community by storm and everyone and their kid brother jumped on the ToP bandwagon. I did too. The battle system was still considered "fresh". While the translation team took some liberties (the infamous Arche's dream orgasm scene comes to mind) it was serviceable. At the time I liked the game, but I didn't get too far into it before moving onto bigger releases on the PS1.

My next exposure to Tales was Tales of Symphonia for the Nintendo Gamecube, which was the first Tales game I've purchased, around its release mid 2000s. I wasn't wowed. As a matter of fact I couldn't figure out how to change the character to control in battle so when Lloyd died I'd have to rely on the AI to finish the fight (or more often than not, rage quit). I had even consulted the game manual and didn't find how to change charters in battle. I thought maybe it was a game design decision to not allow character switching. Because I couldn't get over this, I had only played about 5 hours of ToS. I later found out how to switch characters from the forum, which just felt really unintuitive and backward, especially considering its rival Star Ocean 3 on the PS2 (released around the same time) was easy and obvious. But never the less, I've not made any further progress on ToS.

Its lines like this that made the
fan patch popular.

Since then I had purchased just about every Tales game, even though I did not exactly have the best experience with the series. Why? As I've said before I am a shopaholic and I need professional help.

My next venture into the series was circa 2007-ish. I had purchased Tales of Phantasy Complete Voice Edition for the PSP on same for cheap, so I decided to go back to its roots and play the games in order. I didn't dislike ToP so I thought this is gonna be good. Game was in Japanese but there was enough translation guides online I was able to get through it ok.

It started ok.... but they more I played the more annoyed I was. While the graphics look like a fresh coat of new paint, the battle system still feels antiquated and prototype-ish. There was no manual mode, and that whole "running forward to strike and running back" thing got on my nerves. WTF. It was inefficient and productive, not to mention it gives bosses time to recover and kick your arse! I skipped most of the end game optional content and went straight to the last boss, trying to get this over and done with. The last boss was where the crappy arse battle system rears its ugly head. The boss would cast nasty spells that would kill most of my team (possibly partially my fault, since I didn't do any optional content to level up) and the only way for me to stop him from doing that was using Cless to disrupt his casting, but because he kept insisting on running back to his starting position it was hard to keep on the pressure. You can sorta interrupt Cless' run but it still costs precious seconds. I also used the default mages team (Mint, Klaus, Arche) and their spells wouldn't interrupt the bosses' casting. Maybe I should have used Chester and Suzu. I never did manage to beat the last boss but I was so over this game. I've never gone back to it. Funny thing is, so many people moan about how this game was never released in English. I think they would change their mind if they did play it. Or maybe not, since I can't seem to tolerate as much crap as I used to.

A couple of years later I played Tales of Eternia on the PSP. It was ok... not particularly interesting

Meh. Indifference is worse than hate.

but still felt like it dragged on a lot. This one I did beat but I don't remember much of it. I wouldn't play it again.

So why am I posting about this? Well, a couple of days ago I just started playing Tale of Legendia on the PS2. I was um-ing and ah-ing about it for a while. I've checked out Youtube videos on Graces and Xillia and hey both look fun, but I didn't want to break my "play them in order" schedule, ESPECIALLY since the next one in line was Legendia. I had heard that Legendia was "bare bones" and the black sheep, and really should be played before any of the newer Tales games (hence I am slotting it before Symphonia even though Symphonia technically came out before). So far, it's actually a lot better than I expected. I am actually enjoying the game. Fighting can be a little repetitive at times but the character interactions are a lot of fun and I am finding myself laughing out loud at times. Only at chapter 3.

Will I be able to complete this game or will it send me into a murderous rampage? We will see.