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.