This and updating the website are all I do lately. _o_
→ Omg, Liar Game sequel! It's like Japan is trying to make up for the previous two lackluster seasons by giving us another super awesome one!
→ So, I've been playing Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings still and I'm getting to the point where I'm really enjoying it a lot! Way more than I first thought I would! It takes about four to six hours to get good, but it steadily improves from there. I probably do more grinding than most people would, but I've found that that really helps me a lot more than getting killed over and over would. It's getting easier to handle the mobs of espers you have to try to manage and the melee/ranged/flying triangle is getting to be second nature now.
I'm at about 54% of the way through the game, I've got about 22 hours logged into it, and Vaan/Penelo/Llyud have their Quickenings so far. I'm just starting chapter six after finishing up all the available side missions and doing a bunch of forging (okay, this one I kind of have a beef with, how the hell are you supposed to parse those questions if you don't have a guide sitting open right beside you? I bought the Brady Games guide to go with the game so I can just look things up and, okay, it's usually only a few points' difference, but STILL!), which means I'm a decent ways into the plot, I think.
Certain characters have started showing up and OH MAN is this game ever awesome with the OTP material. Like, yes, there's a solid plot going on here and the mechanics are interesting, but this game said, "You know all that vagueness we kept in the original game about what may or may not have been canon? Yeah, we're throwing that out the window and making Becky super happy with the OTP leanings. :D"
Because they love me.
Anyway, spoilers up through the beginning of chapter six, which means [spoiler] is the first to show up as a guest for me.
One of the greatest things I did was go onto the bridge and talk to people during chapter six, which is just after Fran shows up to be part of your group for awhile, which means Tomaj is all over her and I died of glee at the conversations.
Vaan: [to Fran] "I heard Kytes and Tomaj have been up to something."
Fran: "So they have. I've received a letter, flowers... all manner of things I don't know what to make of."
Vaan: "Sorry about that. Try not to lt it bother you, okay?"
Fran: "Why would it bother me? It is not the first time such a thing has happened."
Vaan: "Wait, you don't mean... Balthier?"
Fran: "Yes, though his methods were somewhat... different."
SNORT.
Then you go talk to Filo, who says, "All Kytes and Tomaj ever talk about now is Fran. Can't you do something, Vaan?"
Vaan: "Look on the bright side. At least Llyud hasn't taken much notice."
[referring to Filo's crush on Llyud, that is.]
Filo: "Yeah, but... but..."
Then you go talk to Kytes, who says, "I'm trying to help Tomaj think of a way to get Fran's attention."
Vaan: "You shouldn't encourage him."
Kytes: "I told him I didn't want to, but he wouldn't take 'no' for an answer."
Vaan: "Well, you're both wasting your time if you ask me. I don't even wanna know what Balthier would think of all this."
Kytes: "Oh, right, Balthier. Hmm...."
You talk to him again briefly and he says, "Any idea what Fran likes, Vaan? I know I should just ask her, but I'm too shy." which most definitely puts his feelings for her into the romantic catagory.
Then, finally, you go talk to Tomaj, who says, "We thought up the perfect plan to get Fran's attention. The wheels are already in motion. You have to put a lot of thought into wooing a mature woman such as her." (HA, vindication! I totally called it "wooing" even before I read that bit! XD)
Vaan: "Mature is right."
Tomaj: "If you think I care about hwo old she is, you've got it all wrong, Vaan!"
Vaan: "Well, good luck. You're gonna need it."
One more talk to Tomaj and he says, "What kind of man is Fran attracted to, I wonder."
Also in this set of conversations, Penelo is thinking over what Fran said earlier, about how understanding and being understood is the most important thing, putting it in context of her own feelings/relationship with Vaan. When you talk to her here, she brings that up again, saying that Vaan would never leave her, right? She obviously cares deeply and is in love with him... then she compares themselves to Balthier and Fran, saying they have a really strong bond, too. "That's how I want us to be."
So. The thing that makes me gleeful about all of this? It's deliberately put into a context of romantic relationships, it's not just hilarity or misunderstandings or whatever. It's not just friendship--all of these conversations were put into a certain slant and while I'm usually more about the plot than the dating stuff, in this case I am totally for it. You really sort of have to seek this stuff out in the game (like deliberately choosing to talk to people between missions, etc.) and it's not overshadowing the plot.
Oh, plus! There's yet another reference to a Hume/Viera relationship with Velis and Mydia. I'm not sure I buy that Mydia (the Viera that Velis was in love with) is actually the Judge of Wings, but it's interesting that yet again there's a Hume/Viera relationship mentioned in the game and contrasted against the characters and their relationships.
Speaking of which. Vaan's jealousy over Penelo dancing for Velis? ACES. Because you can tell that she's completely gone on Vaan and she knows that about herself, but that's one of the first times you really strongly see Vaan reacting to Penelo paying attention to someone else. You get little hints along the way, like how Vaan is the only one who can stand Penelo's cooking, but this is a really big moment.
Anyway, I'm a bit further into the gameplay now and I have a bit more comfort in experimenting with different combinations. I spent the first 15 hours or so pretty much only ever using Ifrit as my Rank III Summon, since it was the first one I unlocked and I liked giving Vaan a good fire-based melee fighter. But eventually I got more maps that didn't need fire-based espers/yarhi so I put Shiva in a few times. Omfg, her Stop is awesome, I love her a whole lot.
I wish you could have more than just the one Rank III esper summoned at any given time, but I suppose I understand why you can't. Actually, my biggest gripe is that I can choose my espers ahead of time, but I don't think I can assign them as I want? If there aren't any summoning gates, choosing a Rank III esper is useless because one is never summoned at the beginning of the map! And being able to choose only two Rank II espers and forced to have two Rank I espers is frustrating. I always take Carbuncles with me, which pretty much leaves me stuck with just the one Rank II esper.
I'm not sure if I'm doing this wrong, if I should choose a Rank II esper in that Rank III spot or if it wouldn't make a difference because that one wouldn't be summoned anyway? It's not something I've played around with that much.
The game makes up for it in other ways, though. Being able to access the sidequests from anywhere? Instead of being forced to go find the notice board (though, you can do that, too), you can just click the little Tomaj icon when you're out on the world map and you just automatically fly there? No dealing with petition holders or anything? You just choose your mission, get automatically taken there, play the map, and get your treasure? Aces.
I do wish that you could choose when to end a particular map, because it's hard to get the treasure sometimes, I've lost a lot of them that way, which is frustrating. It doesn't really matter THAT much because I've been replaying areas that give me loads of treasure, so just about anything I need, I can get that way.
I've done a fair amount of forging (enough to get the everburn mission), but mostly I just sell off anything that's low or medium quality because I ran out of inventory room. as;dlfkjalskj I thought you'd just be able to store up to 99 of whatever, but I never had more than 17 or 18 of any given thing, just... a lot of things! So I guess maybe I had 200 or 300 or so items total and then had to go sell them because I ran out of room. orz On the other hand, I AM SO LOADED NOW. :D :D :D
Also. MOAR COMICS. Spoilers for anything listed.
Wednesday Comics #01-04: I'm sort of torn on this book, I just don't quite know what to make of it. I want to like it, but it's just... it doesn't quite feel like it's coming together. Some of the pages are really hard to read, the Wonder Woman one is just... it looks really pretty and I'd love to read it, but I just can't. Between the fancy font and the WALL OF TEXT feeling it gives me, my head starts to hurt just looking at it. Seriously, there should be a dozen panels at max, but it feels like there's three times that many little tiny boxes to follow. What's the point of that? Sure, you're cramming more story in, but it's one I'm skipping in every issue because there might as well not even be any art at that size.
I'm trying to read the Superman one and it's... ugh, Clark, I'm trying to like you, but seriously. I've read the first four issues and it just FOUR ISSUES OF SUPERMAN WHINING THAT HE DOESN'T FIT IN. No real reason for it, just some alien said he was an outsider, that he'd never belong on this planet and... that's enough to send Clark into a tailspin about it? Ugh, whatever. Not helping was the truly atrocious Batman characterization. Did the writer seriously think Bruce telling Clark to "take a Super-Prozac or something" was a good idea? I'm also not that fond of the art. Occasional panels look really fantastic with all that detail... and then other ones just look weird, like the artist is trying to make up for lack of skill with just too much bumbly detail.
I skip a lot of the ones I don't care about. The Flash one looks like it has promise, but I can't be assed to care about it. I skip, skip, skip the Metamorpho one and the Green Lantern one. There's a couple in there that I've never heard of, so I skip those, too.
I'm reading the Batman one and it actually does have really nice art (though, Bruce looks weird sometimes) but... *snore* wake me when Batman actually DOES SOMETHING. It's not really terrible or anything, it's actually pretty easy to read. But it's been FOUR WEEKS of Batman just listening to other people talk or having dinner with a recently widowed woman who may have killed her husband. Snore.
Supergirl I'm sort of on the fence about. It's deliberately light-hearted, so, okay, Supergirl chasing after her pet dog and cat as they cause mischief is a decent enough story. The art is very pretty and contributes to the whole light & cheerful feeling, so I'm rolling with it. It's actually pretty cute, the more I think about it.
The only one I'm actively enjoying is the Titans story, because, hey, look, an actual fight! I like the super stylized art as well, it's a really interesting style to look at each week. It's almost sort of cartoony, but that's not quite it. It's... stylized. The villain is some guy named Trident and the POV seems to rotate between him and Tim!Robin, which I actually like. Robin's had some great lines as they're fighting and not doing well against Triden, so the original Titans have to come in. And Tim's like, great, what a way to soothe your ego, having to get saved by your 'older brother'. "Thanks, Nightwing. Dick." he thinks. I may have lolled a lot at that. It's not spectacular, but I've been enjoying it.
I guess I'll keep reading, but... eh. It feels like a lot of missteps here to me.
Flash: Rebirth #01-03: You know what actually, ultimately, got me to sit down with this book to read it? I was looking up Nightwing appearances in various books and it listed him as being in all three issues and I was, like, "....well, okay then. >_>" He's actually really only in the background, but I guess it was as good a kick in the pants to read these issues as anything was going to be.
I... I kind of have to agree with the criticisms of this mini on two things. One, the pacing/scope of this thing is all off. Barry already came back in Final Crisis, so you can't use that as the plot, this all aftermath. And there's just... not much really happening here in that sense. Even with Barry turning into the Black Flash at the end of issue two (a third of the way through it! and that's when you bring up your first major plot point?), it feels like... not much is really happening.
The second is the reason for bringing Barry back. With Hal Jordan, you sort of got the point, that there was unfinished business there with Parallax and having died a sinner, etc. But, in Johns' own words in Final Crisis, Barry died a saint. There was nothing unresolved. Barry says as much in this mini as well, that he doesn't know why he's back, why him, especially because there was only the case of his mother's murder that was ever left unsolved.
This is reflected in the readers' thoughts as well, then amplified when Barry says it. Yeah, what is the point of bringing him back, other than nostalgia value and to further erode the "death means anything" line in DC? I'm still not sure we're going to get an answer for that one.
I have nothing against Barry Allen. I'm reading this and not hating it (but, then, I don't know anything about him or much about the Flash Family, so it's not like I'd really know if Johns was doing a shit poor job with them), but I'm not sure I get why bringing him back was necessary. The total lack of anything really happening, hardly any major villains are present, it's just... Barry's back. It's kinda weird for him. And that's what takes up pretty much the entire first issue.
It's doubly frustrating because you can't help comparing it to Final Crisis Legion of Three Worlds, where... okay, it might not have been the greatest thing ever, but SHIT HAPPENED. And it was some pretty good build-up and the people brought back there had some great moments and you felt like there was a point to it all.
Flash - Rebirth is just sort of... ehhh. I want to like it, I like most of the players involved well enough, the art is pretty, it's had a couple of moments of real potential (the race between Barry and Clark, where Clark's like, "We've raced before, Barry, I've even won some of those." and Barry just looks grimly at him and says, "Those were for charity." and ZOOMS off. THAT is the kind of moment I want more of!), but overall... eh.
I've got momentum with this, so I'll finish it, I think, but... eh.
→ So, I've been playing Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings still and I'm getting to the point where I'm really enjoying it a lot! Way more than I first thought I would! It takes about four to six hours to get good, but it steadily improves from there. I probably do more grinding than most people would, but I've found that that really helps me a lot more than getting killed over and over would. It's getting easier to handle the mobs of espers you have to try to manage and the melee/ranged/flying triangle is getting to be second nature now.
I'm at about 54% of the way through the game, I've got about 22 hours logged into it, and Vaan/Penelo/Llyud have their Quickenings so far. I'm just starting chapter six after finishing up all the available side missions and doing a bunch of forging (okay, this one I kind of have a beef with, how the hell are you supposed to parse those questions if you don't have a guide sitting open right beside you? I bought the Brady Games guide to go with the game so I can just look things up and, okay, it's usually only a few points' difference, but STILL!), which means I'm a decent ways into the plot, I think.
Certain characters have started showing up and OH MAN is this game ever awesome with the OTP material. Like, yes, there's a solid plot going on here and the mechanics are interesting, but this game said, "You know all that vagueness we kept in the original game about what may or may not have been canon? Yeah, we're throwing that out the window and making Becky super happy with the OTP leanings. :D"
Because they love me.
Anyway, spoilers up through the beginning of chapter six, which means [spoiler] is the first to show up as a guest for me.
One of the greatest things I did was go onto the bridge and talk to people during chapter six, which is just after Fran shows up to be part of your group for awhile, which means Tomaj is all over her and I died of glee at the conversations.
Vaan: [to Fran] "I heard Kytes and Tomaj have been up to something."
Fran: "So they have. I've received a letter, flowers... all manner of things I don't know what to make of."
Vaan: "Sorry about that. Try not to lt it bother you, okay?"
Fran: "Why would it bother me? It is not the first time such a thing has happened."
Vaan: "Wait, you don't mean... Balthier?"
Fran: "Yes, though his methods were somewhat... different."
SNORT.
Then you go talk to Filo, who says, "All Kytes and Tomaj ever talk about now is Fran. Can't you do something, Vaan?"
Vaan: "Look on the bright side. At least Llyud hasn't taken much notice."
[referring to Filo's crush on Llyud, that is.]
Filo: "Yeah, but... but..."
Then you go talk to Kytes, who says, "I'm trying to help Tomaj think of a way to get Fran's attention."
Vaan: "You shouldn't encourage him."
Kytes: "I told him I didn't want to, but he wouldn't take 'no' for an answer."
Vaan: "Well, you're both wasting your time if you ask me. I don't even wanna know what Balthier would think of all this."
Kytes: "Oh, right, Balthier. Hmm...."
You talk to him again briefly and he says, "Any idea what Fran likes, Vaan? I know I should just ask her, but I'm too shy." which most definitely puts his feelings for her into the romantic catagory.
Then, finally, you go talk to Tomaj, who says, "We thought up the perfect plan to get Fran's attention. The wheels are already in motion. You have to put a lot of thought into wooing a mature woman such as her." (HA, vindication! I totally called it "wooing" even before I read that bit! XD)
Vaan: "Mature is right."
Tomaj: "If you think I care about hwo old she is, you've got it all wrong, Vaan!"
Vaan: "Well, good luck. You're gonna need it."
One more talk to Tomaj and he says, "What kind of man is Fran attracted to, I wonder."
Also in this set of conversations, Penelo is thinking over what Fran said earlier, about how understanding and being understood is the most important thing, putting it in context of her own feelings/relationship with Vaan. When you talk to her here, she brings that up again, saying that Vaan would never leave her, right? She obviously cares deeply and is in love with him... then she compares themselves to Balthier and Fran, saying they have a really strong bond, too. "That's how I want us to be."
So. The thing that makes me gleeful about all of this? It's deliberately put into a context of romantic relationships, it's not just hilarity or misunderstandings or whatever. It's not just friendship--all of these conversations were put into a certain slant and while I'm usually more about the plot than the dating stuff, in this case I am totally for it. You really sort of have to seek this stuff out in the game (like deliberately choosing to talk to people between missions, etc.) and it's not overshadowing the plot.
Oh, plus! There's yet another reference to a Hume/Viera relationship with Velis and Mydia. I'm not sure I buy that Mydia (the Viera that Velis was in love with) is actually the Judge of Wings, but it's interesting that yet again there's a Hume/Viera relationship mentioned in the game and contrasted against the characters and their relationships.
Speaking of which. Vaan's jealousy over Penelo dancing for Velis? ACES. Because you can tell that she's completely gone on Vaan and she knows that about herself, but that's one of the first times you really strongly see Vaan reacting to Penelo paying attention to someone else. You get little hints along the way, like how Vaan is the only one who can stand Penelo's cooking, but this is a really big moment.
Anyway, I'm a bit further into the gameplay now and I have a bit more comfort in experimenting with different combinations. I spent the first 15 hours or so pretty much only ever using Ifrit as my Rank III Summon, since it was the first one I unlocked and I liked giving Vaan a good fire-based melee fighter. But eventually I got more maps that didn't need fire-based espers/yarhi so I put Shiva in a few times. Omfg, her Stop is awesome, I love her a whole lot.
I wish you could have more than just the one Rank III esper summoned at any given time, but I suppose I understand why you can't. Actually, my biggest gripe is that I can choose my espers ahead of time, but I don't think I can assign them as I want? If there aren't any summoning gates, choosing a Rank III esper is useless because one is never summoned at the beginning of the map! And being able to choose only two Rank II espers and forced to have two Rank I espers is frustrating. I always take Carbuncles with me, which pretty much leaves me stuck with just the one Rank II esper.
I'm not sure if I'm doing this wrong, if I should choose a Rank II esper in that Rank III spot or if it wouldn't make a difference because that one wouldn't be summoned anyway? It's not something I've played around with that much.
The game makes up for it in other ways, though. Being able to access the sidequests from anywhere? Instead of being forced to go find the notice board (though, you can do that, too), you can just click the little Tomaj icon when you're out on the world map and you just automatically fly there? No dealing with petition holders or anything? You just choose your mission, get automatically taken there, play the map, and get your treasure? Aces.
I do wish that you could choose when to end a particular map, because it's hard to get the treasure sometimes, I've lost a lot of them that way, which is frustrating. It doesn't really matter THAT much because I've been replaying areas that give me loads of treasure, so just about anything I need, I can get that way.
I've done a fair amount of forging (enough to get the everburn mission), but mostly I just sell off anything that's low or medium quality because I ran out of inventory room. as;dlfkjalskj I thought you'd just be able to store up to 99 of whatever, but I never had more than 17 or 18 of any given thing, just... a lot of things! So I guess maybe I had 200 or 300 or so items total and then had to go sell them because I ran out of room. orz On the other hand, I AM SO LOADED NOW. :D :D :D
Also. MOAR COMICS. Spoilers for anything listed.
Wednesday Comics #01-04: I'm sort of torn on this book, I just don't quite know what to make of it. I want to like it, but it's just... it doesn't quite feel like it's coming together. Some of the pages are really hard to read, the Wonder Woman one is just... it looks really pretty and I'd love to read it, but I just can't. Between the fancy font and the WALL OF TEXT feeling it gives me, my head starts to hurt just looking at it. Seriously, there should be a dozen panels at max, but it feels like there's three times that many little tiny boxes to follow. What's the point of that? Sure, you're cramming more story in, but it's one I'm skipping in every issue because there might as well not even be any art at that size.
I'm trying to read the Superman one and it's... ugh, Clark, I'm trying to like you, but seriously. I've read the first four issues and it just FOUR ISSUES OF SUPERMAN WHINING THAT HE DOESN'T FIT IN. No real reason for it, just some alien said he was an outsider, that he'd never belong on this planet and... that's enough to send Clark into a tailspin about it? Ugh, whatever. Not helping was the truly atrocious Batman characterization. Did the writer seriously think Bruce telling Clark to "take a Super-Prozac or something" was a good idea? I'm also not that fond of the art. Occasional panels look really fantastic with all that detail... and then other ones just look weird, like the artist is trying to make up for lack of skill with just too much bumbly detail.
I skip a lot of the ones I don't care about. The Flash one looks like it has promise, but I can't be assed to care about it. I skip, skip, skip the Metamorpho one and the Green Lantern one. There's a couple in there that I've never heard of, so I skip those, too.
I'm reading the Batman one and it actually does have really nice art (though, Bruce looks weird sometimes) but... *snore* wake me when Batman actually DOES SOMETHING. It's not really terrible or anything, it's actually pretty easy to read. But it's been FOUR WEEKS of Batman just listening to other people talk or having dinner with a recently widowed woman who may have killed her husband. Snore.
Supergirl I'm sort of on the fence about. It's deliberately light-hearted, so, okay, Supergirl chasing after her pet dog and cat as they cause mischief is a decent enough story. The art is very pretty and contributes to the whole light & cheerful feeling, so I'm rolling with it. It's actually pretty cute, the more I think about it.
The only one I'm actively enjoying is the Titans story, because, hey, look, an actual fight! I like the super stylized art as well, it's a really interesting style to look at each week. It's almost sort of cartoony, but that's not quite it. It's... stylized. The villain is some guy named Trident and the POV seems to rotate between him and Tim!Robin, which I actually like. Robin's had some great lines as they're fighting and not doing well against Triden, so the original Titans have to come in. And Tim's like, great, what a way to soothe your ego, having to get saved by your 'older brother'. "Thanks, Nightwing. Dick." he thinks. I may have lolled a lot at that. It's not spectacular, but I've been enjoying it.
I guess I'll keep reading, but... eh. It feels like a lot of missteps here to me.
Flash: Rebirth #01-03: You know what actually, ultimately, got me to sit down with this book to read it? I was looking up Nightwing appearances in various books and it listed him as being in all three issues and I was, like, "....well, okay then. >_>" He's actually really only in the background, but I guess it was as good a kick in the pants to read these issues as anything was going to be.
I... I kind of have to agree with the criticisms of this mini on two things. One, the pacing/scope of this thing is all off. Barry already came back in Final Crisis, so you can't use that as the plot, this all aftermath. And there's just... not much really happening here in that sense. Even with Barry turning into the Black Flash at the end of issue two (a third of the way through it! and that's when you bring up your first major plot point?), it feels like... not much is really happening.
The second is the reason for bringing Barry back. With Hal Jordan, you sort of got the point, that there was unfinished business there with Parallax and having died a sinner, etc. But, in Johns' own words in Final Crisis, Barry died a saint. There was nothing unresolved. Barry says as much in this mini as well, that he doesn't know why he's back, why him, especially because there was only the case of his mother's murder that was ever left unsolved.
This is reflected in the readers' thoughts as well, then amplified when Barry says it. Yeah, what is the point of bringing him back, other than nostalgia value and to further erode the "death means anything" line in DC? I'm still not sure we're going to get an answer for that one.
I have nothing against Barry Allen. I'm reading this and not hating it (but, then, I don't know anything about him or much about the Flash Family, so it's not like I'd really know if Johns was doing a shit poor job with them), but I'm not sure I get why bringing him back was necessary. The total lack of anything really happening, hardly any major villains are present, it's just... Barry's back. It's kinda weird for him. And that's what takes up pretty much the entire first issue.
It's doubly frustrating because you can't help comparing it to Final Crisis Legion of Three Worlds, where... okay, it might not have been the greatest thing ever, but SHIT HAPPENED. And it was some pretty good build-up and the people brought back there had some great moments and you felt like there was a point to it all.
Flash - Rebirth is just sort of... ehhh. I want to like it, I like most of the players involved well enough, the art is pretty, it's had a couple of moments of real potential (the race between Barry and Clark, where Clark's like, "We've raced before, Barry, I've even won some of those." and Barry just looks grimly at him and says, "Those were for charity." and ZOOMS off. THAT is the kind of moment I want more of!), but overall... eh.
I've got momentum with this, so I'll finish it, I think, but... eh.