So, when I start playing games, I apparently do not do it halfway. orz
► - There's apparently a push to get Torchlight onto consoles and I am totally for this! I saw it making several 2009 Best Of lists and it looks like something I'm interested in, but I am not a PC gamer. On a console would be awesome, though!
► - I... appear to have the new DS remake of Pokemon HeartGold in my hot little hands already? WTF, I didn't think it came out for a couple more days! OH WELL POKEMON NERDERY HERE I COME.
► - So, I'm a genius. I have this game I snagged, called Knights in the Nightmare and I wanted to try playing it yesterday, okay?
Except, I couldn't get it to work! No matter what button I pressed on the DS, NOTHING HAPPENED, it just kept playing the opening credits! Even when I waited all the way through them, nothing!
Frustrated, I finally just shut it off and went to play a Dragonball game instead.
But this morning I grabbed a new copy. OKAY I WILL TRY THIS AGAIN!
Except, same thing happened. NO MATTER WHAT COMBINATION OF BUTTONS I PRESSED!
So, I went to gamefaqs to see if there was anything that addressed this and clicked on the first walkthrough. The intro of the game said, "This is a game that makes really good use of the touch screen on the ds and is really kind of innovative!"
"............................," I went.
I got out the stylus and gently tapped the screen.
UP POPS THE START MENU.
".......motherfucker."
NOT ENOUGH "orz" IN THE WORLD.
(In my defense, the last three games or so I played on the DS didn't really use the touch screen at all.)
► - I am now about three and half hours into Final Fantasy XIII, which means there probably aren't too many spoilers, but if you don't want to know absolutely anything (or be surprised even in the early scenes of the game) then avoid, I guess? Mostly it's just vague impressions of characters and the battle system.
I still say, though, watching the scenes of the Pulse Vestige? HOMG GORGEOUS. Same for the scenery in chapter 3 (which is where I'm at), which is gorgeous no matter where you're looking.
FFXIII CHARACTERS:
» Have I mentioned that Lightning is my forever heroine? Seriously, when she was so infuriated with Snow for yelling at her (because they needed to leave before PSICOM found them, despite that Serah's crystalized form was right in front of them and Snow demanded to know how she could just leave) that she PUNCHED HIM IN THE FACE REPEATEDLY? I knew she would be my favorite forever and ever. This game is worth it for Lightning alone.
» Sazh continues to grow on me. While I kind of want to smack him a little for being selfish/jaded at times, his "I AM THE ONLY SANE ONE HERE" atmosphere? Totally kind of awesome. Because he is the only sane one there.
» Hope is mildly less annoying than he was in the beginning. I'm sorry, I know that it's a reasonable reaction, that's it's a normal and human reaction to the circumstances they were thrust into, but whining and crying and blaming everyone around you for your problems does not make you an endearing character. The more he grows up, the more I expect I'll like him.
» I can see why people wouldn't care for Vanille. I do kind of dislike the way her voice actress gets all breathy and sounds really fake cutesy with so many of her lines, but all you haters can exit to the left, for serious. She's adorable and she's trying her best to be cheerful in a bad situation and she's actually kind of an awesome ravager. Seriously, she was just tearing through Pulse Vestige enemies that even Lightning was taking awhile to kill! And she's my favorite healer! I love her!
» I am fond of Snow. I can't help it. He's totally the lovechild of Seifer and Zell, my FFVIII secondary OTP. And I know a lot of people have hated how young Serah looks (I can't entirely disagree), but I can buy her as in her late teens and their interaction in the fireworks was ADORABLE. Their kiss with all the gorgeous colors bursting around them? AMAZING. The graphics and the way he's a total goober for her? Yeah, I'm weak. (Seriously, you make a guy be totally, stupidly, ridiculously in love with a girl who loves him back? I AM SO THERE.)
» Have only briefly seen Fang, have not actually met her yet. AM EAGERLY AWAITING.
FFXIII MECHANICS/GAMEPLAY:
Chapter three is where you start to get into the mechanics of the game and I can see where the more complicated play starts happening. Yeah, it's very different from previous games and I'm not sure I like this game or am comfortable with it yet, but... well, I felt the same way when I first started playing FFXII and look how that turned out.
With the introduction of the Paradigm Shifts, I'm finding the game a lot more fun! I really kind of like the idea of being able to switch party tactics on the fly, instead of being forced to rely on just Potions or manually healing everyone or hoping that the AI will pick up on my party getting dangerously low on health.
I'm not sure how I feel about the Crystarium, mostly because it's kind of hard to tell exactly what I'm doing here, but I THINK I've got the basic idea? Your Paradigm Shifts put everyone into a various role (can you make up your own paradigm shifts? that's the one thing I'm not really sure about), so you need to figure out what roles you want to level your characters in, because those roles will be assigned to them when you switch your paradigm shift in battle? I THINK the way it works is that you get level caps that are raised every so often? Which means, SOME grinding (for CP points) is helpful, but you can't over level yourself?
Also, wow, there are a whole lot of save points around here! That is very helpful of you, Square! But it's probably not going to last long, is it? I remember the save points being sooooo far away from each other in FFXII after awhile. I do, however, like that you heal after every battle, so I don't have to worry about running out of MP (is there even any such thing as MP in this game? or could I have Vanille casting CURE CURE CURE until her fingers fall off?), rather than scrambling for an inn or a healing save point.
I am less enthused about the lack of shops to do your shopping in, because that was FUN, but... I guess I can live without them for this game.
FFXIII PLOT/DIALOGUE:
That moment where you fall down into the crystalized lake and Snow looks up, saying that NOBODY survives a fall from that height, so it must be Serah? Kind of hilarious and THANK YOU FOR ACKNOWLEDGING THAT NOBODY COULD SURVIVE THAT FALL, SQUARE.
Also, Lightning punching Snow in the face was still really, really awesome. ♥ Seriously, I love how Lightning almost burns to look at sometimes, she's so intense and tightly wound and furious.
► - Okay, I've also picked up Sands of Destruction (or, if you prefer, World Destruction) again--well, okay, finished it because, once I got started--!!--because oh thank christ I finally found the fucking undubbed version. If your only option is to play the English language version, I probably would have to say that it should be given a pass. I got through approximately two hours (not even) of the dubbed version and literally started complaining at the game out loud: "OH COME ONNNNNN ALREADY" because the pauses in conversations were driving me up the wall.
Admittedly, there were, like, a gazillion cut scenes early on, but the timing of the voices is incredibly annoying and the voices are atrocious. I've read other reviews of the game that basically say the same thing--they loathed the game because the voices were so terrible. Then, they played the undubbed version and, oh, hey, suddenly this game wasn't half bad!
Is it a stellar game? No, not really. The battle system is interesting, but it's also complicated and confusing (I found a post on gamefaqs that helped, but seriously my head kind of hurt after reading all that) and it's kind of important that you set it up right or you can hinder yourself a lot. I mean, not completely, I was making my way through the first third of the game without realizing what I was doing AT ALL and still managed to make it through--I just had to do a lot more grinding than I should have. Once you get the feel for it, though, it's actually really kind of cool.
Where the game sort of appeals and goes wrong at the same time is the storyline. It's only a 20-25 hour game (if you do all the quests for the characters' ultimate weapons/armor, which I recommend because they're AWESOME and also you get the best characterization there) and the story doesn't really make a whole lot of sense and the characters are somewhat half-hearted. Half of them are AWESOME. Unfortunately, the half that are kind of lame are your front and center characters.
I played this game at the same time tammaiya did, so we could feed each other on the mechanics and the character dynamics, taking the potential that's in the game and having fun with it. It wouldn't have been half as fun without her to share ideas with, laugh over little moments of dialogue with, or to spur me on so she wouldn't get too far ahead of where I was in the game.
Was it ultimately worth playing? Once I found the undubbed version and roped a friend into playing with me: HELL YES. ♥
Okay, there will be spoilers from this point on! I'm going to try to do a proper game blogging, since I haven't done one in so long. It's a short game, I should be able to manage that, right? .... orz
[Note: I'm going to use this walkthrough's headers, since it's easier for me. I switched back and forth between it and the other guide, both are as good as each other, but I just happened to click on that one first. They're slightly rearranged since I didn't do everything in order listed.]
» Prologue + Barni + Mirrorsand Grotto + Zetska Manor + Upper Cellblock: The first few hours of the game all kind of blend together for me, despite that I played them twice. I got about to where Agan first joined the party when I accidentally shut my DS off in the middle of a long stretch of not having saved and got so disgusted with myself and the game that I vowed I wasn't going to play unless I could find an undubbed version.
It didn't help that I didn't really know what I was doing at this point. I had no idea about CP or boosting my skills or even that I could save anywhere and not only on the heal points. Every time I crossed over one, I saw it flash (because I'd taken damage, of course) and I assumed that it was a Heal AND Save Point, not just a Heal Point. So, I went through Zetska Manor, like, three times, always running in goddamned diagonal lines (that was a serious problem with the game and very few areas would let me rotate them--this was one of my biggest gripes with the mechanics of the game) to get the treasure and get alllll the way into the corner to talk to Ursa Rex, then get alllll the way back to the "Save" Point, which had at least three fights along the way that you couldn't skip.
It was really hard for me to do! I kept running out of MP! But I couldn't kill the soldiers without it! I kept dying! At least I figured out how to skip the cut scenes eventually, so it was slightly less frustrating but I still had a hell of a time because I just sort of threw myself into the game and thought I'd figure it out as I went along. Which I did, but. I could have probably saved myself a lot of grief.
The second time playing (with the undubbed version) was a lot easier since I had a better knowledge of what exactly I was supposed to be doing, where I was going (rather than wandering around and getting lost in the Mirrorsand Grotto and the Upper Cellblock like before), also because I could skip those insanely long cut scenes. Seriously, some of them must have been 10-15 minutes long!
The Mirrorsand Grotto isn't so bad, it's actually kind of good for grinding early on, because you can park yourself near the heal point and feel free to use as many of your spells as you want, which make an enemy go down a hell of a lot faster. However, you don't really NEED to, since the game never really gives you enemies that you can't handle--at least not if you're paying attention to boosting your skills and stuff.
Up to this point, it was an all right game. Kyrie was kind of a bland main character (and the whiny, wimpy kind that can grow on you, but can also make you want to smack him a lot) and Morte was interesting, but not really there yet. She needed more characterization--even if it was hilarious to see this lovely girl jumping in and scaring the shit out of everyone in her path and cackling about blowing up the world. At first.
There's not a lot of hard boss battles here--you battle both Rajiv and Naja, but they're kind of ridiculously easy? I kind of wondered why the beast people ruled the world if they were this easy to beat. :|
But, then, the World Annihilation Front seemed pretty ridiculous, too. They want to destroy the world? They do realize that they'll die, too, if they do that, right? So why not just, idk, kill yourselves, since it's all the same to you then? If other people were that unhappy with the choice of the world they live in or death, then they can kill themselves, too. No need to go making that choice for them, you guys. Also, the whole raining papers down out of the sky to announce certain things (like new missions or that Kyrie is going to destroy the world, despite that he's like, "........wut." about it) is totally ridiculous.
» Zifnir: Once you get onto the Zifnir, that's where things start to pick up. I did a little more grinding near the heal point (it was around this time that I realized, oh, hey, not a save point! I can save anywhere! it just heals me! awesome!) and got my character up to a decent level and got enough cash to feel comfortable. I was doing good! Let's go up on deck now!
And it's around here that you first see Rhi'a, who is kind of weird and you can totally tell that she's going to join the party at some point, but even better than her is Felis Rex, the cat beastlord! WHO IS ADORABLE! And has the most adorable little speaking voice and is totally ridiculous! This is where I realize, oh, this game is going to be kind of hilarious. Excellent.
Seriously, even the background music was totally over the top and hilarious.
There's no boss battle here, so it's really only good for leveling a bit, and then getting your third party member! WHO IS A LITTLE STUFFED BEAR. WITH A DEEP VOICE AND HE'S TOTALLY BADASS. As soon as Taupy came out, this little teddy bear with an eyepatch who totally bitchsmacked my party around and got them under control, complete with ridiculous background music, I knew I was kind of a little bit in love with this game. Seriously, it's so hilarious that your best party member is a little stuffed-bear looking badass bounty hunter.
Taupy quickly became my favorite character to have in my party because he had the strongest attacks and he would eventually gain the best spells as well and awesome accuracy and he would just mow through anything I put in front of him. Of course, I always kept him in my party until literally my last few hours of the game, before that he was *ALWAYS* in my party, so he leveled super well.
Still, I love him. His attack boost and defense boost and his REVIVE AND HEAL OMG spell and his awesome as shit flurry attacks and his ability to avoid literally 60% of attacks that were aimed at him (if not more) were aces.
Anyway, Felix Rex says he'll let us go if we run around doing some odd jobs for him, collect some gaudy treasures that he wants, and we really have no choice but to agree. Taupy goes along to supervise. I'm still a dumbass at this point and haven't boosted any of my skills, but grinding makes up for it and the characters/world are now hilarious to me, so I'm sticking with it.
» Agi Wharfs + Meonne: There's not much to do here, it's pretty much just a stopover before we get to Meonne and then Fallenmire, but you can do stuff here! Get some new equipment and CHECK YOUR BOUNTY POSTERS.
Those things were seriously kind of lolful. Not super hilarious because I'm used to One Piece's bounties being full of the biggest lolz ever, but. Checking out the pictures that go with your wanted posters? Hilarious.
Meonne heals you free of charge, so that's nice. But when the inns are less than 100g, it's really not that big of a deal.
» Fallenmire + Undercroft: Siobhan tells me that the name for this place in the original game was "Dead Man's Swamp" which, you know, is actually a lot creepier than "Fallenmire", which SOUNDS KIND OF PRETTY. Learning that put the characters' "Well, THAT sounds cheerful. orz" reactions in a lot more perspective. Sigh, for everything that I think the localization team did that was clever (like naming the beastlords in Latin, that really worked for me), they also did something like this, which was kind of silly.
This place is actually pretty easy--it's not hard to figure out where the special stones went and how to get the colored gateways/mists to unlock so you could proceed forward. (I think maybe even one of the characters outright says it?)
The Undercroft is kind of annoying, because it has a fairly high encounter rate and you have to go back and forth several times (and I was a genius about remembering which went where, so I had to back track even MORE) but, to be honest, I don't even remember the boss fight of this area, so it couldn't have been too terribly bad.
Afterwards, we go back to Felix Rex and he says, oh, you guys did a great job! Now, I have something else for you to get for me! UGH, says Morte, WHAT ARE WE, YOUR ERRAND RUNNERS? I'm amused by her reactions.
This is because I didn't have any idea where we were going. orz
► - I... appear to have the new DS remake of Pokemon HeartGold in my hot little hands already? WTF, I didn't think it came out for a couple more days! OH WELL POKEMON NERDERY HERE I COME.
► - So, I'm a genius. I have this game I snagged, called Knights in the Nightmare and I wanted to try playing it yesterday, okay?
Except, I couldn't get it to work! No matter what button I pressed on the DS, NOTHING HAPPENED, it just kept playing the opening credits! Even when I waited all the way through them, nothing!
Frustrated, I finally just shut it off and went to play a Dragonball game instead.
But this morning I grabbed a new copy. OKAY I WILL TRY THIS AGAIN!
Except, same thing happened. NO MATTER WHAT COMBINATION OF BUTTONS I PRESSED!
So, I went to gamefaqs to see if there was anything that addressed this and clicked on the first walkthrough. The intro of the game said, "This is a game that makes really good use of the touch screen on the ds and is really kind of innovative!"
"............................," I went.
I got out the stylus and gently tapped the screen.
UP POPS THE START MENU.
".......motherfucker."
NOT ENOUGH "orz" IN THE WORLD.
(In my defense, the last three games or so I played on the DS didn't really use the touch screen at all.)
► - I am now about three and half hours into Final Fantasy XIII, which means there probably aren't too many spoilers, but if you don't want to know absolutely anything (or be surprised even in the early scenes of the game) then avoid, I guess? Mostly it's just vague impressions of characters and the battle system.
I still say, though, watching the scenes of the Pulse Vestige? HOMG GORGEOUS. Same for the scenery in chapter 3 (which is where I'm at), which is gorgeous no matter where you're looking.
FFXIII CHARACTERS:
» Have I mentioned that Lightning is my forever heroine? Seriously, when she was so infuriated with Snow for yelling at her (because they needed to leave before PSICOM found them, despite that Serah's crystalized form was right in front of them and Snow demanded to know how she could just leave) that she PUNCHED HIM IN THE FACE REPEATEDLY? I knew she would be my favorite forever and ever. This game is worth it for Lightning alone.
» Sazh continues to grow on me. While I kind of want to smack him a little for being selfish/jaded at times, his "I AM THE ONLY SANE ONE HERE" atmosphere? Totally kind of awesome. Because he is the only sane one there.
» Hope is mildly less annoying than he was in the beginning. I'm sorry, I know that it's a reasonable reaction, that's it's a normal and human reaction to the circumstances they were thrust into, but whining and crying and blaming everyone around you for your problems does not make you an endearing character. The more he grows up, the more I expect I'll like him.
» I can see why people wouldn't care for Vanille. I do kind of dislike the way her voice actress gets all breathy and sounds really fake cutesy with so many of her lines, but all you haters can exit to the left, for serious. She's adorable and she's trying her best to be cheerful in a bad situation and she's actually kind of an awesome ravager. Seriously, she was just tearing through Pulse Vestige enemies that even Lightning was taking awhile to kill! And she's my favorite healer! I love her!
» I am fond of Snow. I can't help it. He's totally the lovechild of Seifer and Zell, my FFVIII secondary OTP. And I know a lot of people have hated how young Serah looks (I can't entirely disagree), but I can buy her as in her late teens and their interaction in the fireworks was ADORABLE. Their kiss with all the gorgeous colors bursting around them? AMAZING. The graphics and the way he's a total goober for her? Yeah, I'm weak. (Seriously, you make a guy be totally, stupidly, ridiculously in love with a girl who loves him back? I AM SO THERE.)
» Have only briefly seen Fang, have not actually met her yet. AM EAGERLY AWAITING.
FFXIII MECHANICS/GAMEPLAY:
Chapter three is where you start to get into the mechanics of the game and I can see where the more complicated play starts happening. Yeah, it's very different from previous games and I'm not sure I like this game or am comfortable with it yet, but... well, I felt the same way when I first started playing FFXII and look how that turned out.
With the introduction of the Paradigm Shifts, I'm finding the game a lot more fun! I really kind of like the idea of being able to switch party tactics on the fly, instead of being forced to rely on just Potions or manually healing everyone or hoping that the AI will pick up on my party getting dangerously low on health.
I'm not sure how I feel about the Crystarium, mostly because it's kind of hard to tell exactly what I'm doing here, but I THINK I've got the basic idea? Your Paradigm Shifts put everyone into a various role (can you make up your own paradigm shifts? that's the one thing I'm not really sure about), so you need to figure out what roles you want to level your characters in, because those roles will be assigned to them when you switch your paradigm shift in battle? I THINK the way it works is that you get level caps that are raised every so often? Which means, SOME grinding (for CP points) is helpful, but you can't over level yourself?
Also, wow, there are a whole lot of save points around here! That is very helpful of you, Square! But it's probably not going to last long, is it? I remember the save points being sooooo far away from each other in FFXII after awhile. I do, however, like that you heal after every battle, so I don't have to worry about running out of MP (is there even any such thing as MP in this game? or could I have Vanille casting CURE CURE CURE until her fingers fall off?), rather than scrambling for an inn or a healing save point.
I am less enthused about the lack of shops to do your shopping in, because that was FUN, but... I guess I can live without them for this game.
FFXIII PLOT/DIALOGUE:
That moment where you fall down into the crystalized lake and Snow looks up, saying that NOBODY survives a fall from that height, so it must be Serah? Kind of hilarious and THANK YOU FOR ACKNOWLEDGING THAT NOBODY COULD SURVIVE THAT FALL, SQUARE.
Also, Lightning punching Snow in the face was still really, really awesome. ♥ Seriously, I love how Lightning almost burns to look at sometimes, she's so intense and tightly wound and furious.
► - Okay, I've also picked up Sands of Destruction (or, if you prefer, World Destruction) again--well, okay, finished it because, once I got started--!!--because oh thank christ I finally found the fucking undubbed version. If your only option is to play the English language version, I probably would have to say that it should be given a pass. I got through approximately two hours (not even) of the dubbed version and literally started complaining at the game out loud: "OH COME ONNNNNN ALREADY" because the pauses in conversations were driving me up the wall.
Admittedly, there were, like, a gazillion cut scenes early on, but the timing of the voices is incredibly annoying and the voices are atrocious. I've read other reviews of the game that basically say the same thing--they loathed the game because the voices were so terrible. Then, they played the undubbed version and, oh, hey, suddenly this game wasn't half bad!
Is it a stellar game? No, not really. The battle system is interesting, but it's also complicated and confusing (I found a post on gamefaqs that helped, but seriously my head kind of hurt after reading all that) and it's kind of important that you set it up right or you can hinder yourself a lot. I mean, not completely, I was making my way through the first third of the game without realizing what I was doing AT ALL and still managed to make it through--I just had to do a lot more grinding than I should have. Once you get the feel for it, though, it's actually really kind of cool.
Where the game sort of appeals and goes wrong at the same time is the storyline. It's only a 20-25 hour game (if you do all the quests for the characters' ultimate weapons/armor, which I recommend because they're AWESOME and also you get the best characterization there) and the story doesn't really make a whole lot of sense and the characters are somewhat half-hearted. Half of them are AWESOME. Unfortunately, the half that are kind of lame are your front and center characters.
I played this game at the same time tammaiya did, so we could feed each other on the mechanics and the character dynamics, taking the potential that's in the game and having fun with it. It wouldn't have been half as fun without her to share ideas with, laugh over little moments of dialogue with, or to spur me on so she wouldn't get too far ahead of where I was in the game.
Was it ultimately worth playing? Once I found the undubbed version and roped a friend into playing with me: HELL YES. ♥
Okay, there will be spoilers from this point on! I'm going to try to do a proper game blogging, since I haven't done one in so long. It's a short game, I should be able to manage that, right? .... orz
[Note: I'm going to use this walkthrough's headers, since it's easier for me. I switched back and forth between it and the other guide, both are as good as each other, but I just happened to click on that one first. They're slightly rearranged since I didn't do everything in order listed.]
» Prologue + Barni + Mirrorsand Grotto + Zetska Manor + Upper Cellblock: The first few hours of the game all kind of blend together for me, despite that I played them twice. I got about to where Agan first joined the party when I accidentally shut my DS off in the middle of a long stretch of not having saved and got so disgusted with myself and the game that I vowed I wasn't going to play unless I could find an undubbed version.
It didn't help that I didn't really know what I was doing at this point. I had no idea about CP or boosting my skills or even that I could save anywhere and not only on the heal points. Every time I crossed over one, I saw it flash (because I'd taken damage, of course) and I assumed that it was a Heal AND Save Point, not just a Heal Point. So, I went through Zetska Manor, like, three times, always running in goddamned diagonal lines (that was a serious problem with the game and very few areas would let me rotate them--this was one of my biggest gripes with the mechanics of the game) to get the treasure and get alllll the way into the corner to talk to Ursa Rex, then get alllll the way back to the "Save" Point, which had at least three fights along the way that you couldn't skip.
It was really hard for me to do! I kept running out of MP! But I couldn't kill the soldiers without it! I kept dying! At least I figured out how to skip the cut scenes eventually, so it was slightly less frustrating but I still had a hell of a time because I just sort of threw myself into the game and thought I'd figure it out as I went along. Which I did, but. I could have probably saved myself a lot of grief.
The second time playing (with the undubbed version) was a lot easier since I had a better knowledge of what exactly I was supposed to be doing, where I was going (rather than wandering around and getting lost in the Mirrorsand Grotto and the Upper Cellblock like before), also because I could skip those insanely long cut scenes. Seriously, some of them must have been 10-15 minutes long!
The Mirrorsand Grotto isn't so bad, it's actually kind of good for grinding early on, because you can park yourself near the heal point and feel free to use as many of your spells as you want, which make an enemy go down a hell of a lot faster. However, you don't really NEED to, since the game never really gives you enemies that you can't handle--at least not if you're paying attention to boosting your skills and stuff.
Up to this point, it was an all right game. Kyrie was kind of a bland main character (and the whiny, wimpy kind that can grow on you, but can also make you want to smack him a lot) and Morte was interesting, but not really there yet. She needed more characterization--even if it was hilarious to see this lovely girl jumping in and scaring the shit out of everyone in her path and cackling about blowing up the world. At first.
There's not a lot of hard boss battles here--you battle both Rajiv and Naja, but they're kind of ridiculously easy? I kind of wondered why the beast people ruled the world if they were this easy to beat. :|
But, then, the World Annihilation Front seemed pretty ridiculous, too. They want to destroy the world? They do realize that they'll die, too, if they do that, right? So why not just, idk, kill yourselves, since it's all the same to you then? If other people were that unhappy with the choice of the world they live in or death, then they can kill themselves, too. No need to go making that choice for them, you guys. Also, the whole raining papers down out of the sky to announce certain things (like new missions or that Kyrie is going to destroy the world, despite that he's like, "........wut." about it) is totally ridiculous.
» Zifnir: Once you get onto the Zifnir, that's where things start to pick up. I did a little more grinding near the heal point (it was around this time that I realized, oh, hey, not a save point! I can save anywhere! it just heals me! awesome!) and got my character up to a decent level and got enough cash to feel comfortable. I was doing good! Let's go up on deck now!
And it's around here that you first see Rhi'a, who is kind of weird and you can totally tell that she's going to join the party at some point, but even better than her is Felis Rex, the cat beastlord! WHO IS ADORABLE! And has the most adorable little speaking voice and is totally ridiculous! This is where I realize, oh, this game is going to be kind of hilarious. Excellent.
Seriously, even the background music was totally over the top and hilarious.
There's no boss battle here, so it's really only good for leveling a bit, and then getting your third party member! WHO IS A LITTLE STUFFED BEAR. WITH A DEEP VOICE AND HE'S TOTALLY BADASS. As soon as Taupy came out, this little teddy bear with an eyepatch who totally bitchsmacked my party around and got them under control, complete with ridiculous background music, I knew I was kind of a little bit in love with this game. Seriously, it's so hilarious that your best party member is a little stuffed-bear looking badass bounty hunter.
Taupy quickly became my favorite character to have in my party because he had the strongest attacks and he would eventually gain the best spells as well and awesome accuracy and he would just mow through anything I put in front of him. Of course, I always kept him in my party until literally my last few hours of the game, before that he was *ALWAYS* in my party, so he leveled super well.
Still, I love him. His attack boost and defense boost and his REVIVE AND HEAL OMG spell and his awesome as shit flurry attacks and his ability to avoid literally 60% of attacks that were aimed at him (if not more) were aces.
Anyway, Felix Rex says he'll let us go if we run around doing some odd jobs for him, collect some gaudy treasures that he wants, and we really have no choice but to agree. Taupy goes along to supervise. I'm still a dumbass at this point and haven't boosted any of my skills, but grinding makes up for it and the characters/world are now hilarious to me, so I'm sticking with it.
» Agi Wharfs + Meonne: There's not much to do here, it's pretty much just a stopover before we get to Meonne and then Fallenmire, but you can do stuff here! Get some new equipment and CHECK YOUR BOUNTY POSTERS.
Those things were seriously kind of lolful. Not super hilarious because I'm used to One Piece's bounties being full of the biggest lolz ever, but. Checking out the pictures that go with your wanted posters? Hilarious.
Meonne heals you free of charge, so that's nice. But when the inns are less than 100g, it's really not that big of a deal.
» Fallenmire + Undercroft: Siobhan tells me that the name for this place in the original game was "Dead Man's Swamp" which, you know, is actually a lot creepier than "Fallenmire", which SOUNDS KIND OF PRETTY. Learning that put the characters' "Well, THAT sounds cheerful. orz" reactions in a lot more perspective. Sigh, for everything that I think the localization team did that was clever (like naming the beastlords in Latin, that really worked for me), they also did something like this, which was kind of silly.
This place is actually pretty easy--it's not hard to figure out where the special stones went and how to get the colored gateways/mists to unlock so you could proceed forward. (I think maybe even one of the characters outright says it?)
The Undercroft is kind of annoying, because it has a fairly high encounter rate and you have to go back and forth several times (and I was a genius about remembering which went where, so I had to back track even MORE) but, to be honest, I don't even remember the boss fight of this area, so it couldn't have been too terribly bad.
Afterwards, we go back to Felix Rex and he says, oh, you guys did a great job! Now, I have something else for you to get for me! UGH, says Morte, WHAT ARE WE, YOUR ERRAND RUNNERS? I'm amused by her reactions.
This is because I didn't have any idea where we were going. orz