Odds and ends
Still not M.Phil. Oh well.
Today I finally finished editing the latest issue of our student paper - one of those things that for some reason fell on me when the person who was supposed to do it disappeared off the face of the Earth (hopefully in fear of my undying wrath). On the plus side, these things make for wonderful excuses as to why my master's thesis isn't finished yet. Hooray!
I was in Lisbon earlier this month for a while on one of my family's traditional European city vacations, though I sometimes wonder if it's an activity other people would really call a 'vacation': we don't really visit cities so much as exhaust them. Nonetheless, Lisbon is a nice enough city, though aside of what is, as far as I know, the most exciting tram ride in Europe, there is very little there that you couldn't see in any number of other fine European cities. Well, perhaps I'm starting to get hard to please, so that a city without an authentic medieval centre or at least a well preserved art nouveau district doesn't make a blip on my rader anymore!
I still do like cities like that. The thing is, much as I travel, I sometimes forget what a large difference there is between a place that is "nice enough" and one that is "oh god so freaking awesome I can't even". On this trip, the latter was provided by the mountain town (and Unesco site) of Sintra, which Lord Byron called "the most beautiful in the world". For a very good reason. To mention just one place there, the Castle of the Moors, situated on the mountaintop in a way that suggests its architects (not to mention builders!) were kind of crazy, is one of the most awesome castle ruins I've ever visited, to the point that the one in Lisbon's main hill appeared hilariously sad and weak in comparison.
The difference between "good enough" and "awesome" is in some sense intangible, but when you see it, it's such a vast gulf in excellence. Perhaps that's why my thesis is taking its time!
Aside of procrastrinating on that subject, I've been playing the PSP version Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. I'm still only halfway through, or thereabouts, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the game appears to be the distillation of everything I liked about Final Fantasy Tactics, ousting most of the things that I didn't like about Final Fantasy Tactics.
That means it's very good.
I enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles a great deal earlier this year, but while the game more than validated my love for tactical RPGs, it's nice to play a game that has a good story on top of having good gameplay, something that's lately been in short supply. In that, Tactics Ogre delivers. It's about intertwining politics, war and human tragedy; very much like FFTactics was before magic rocks become inexplicably prominent. I really appreciate how down-to-earth it is; for instance, in Tactics Ogre, swords are not, in fact, ranged area-of-effect weapons, but are used for good, honest, old-fashioned chest-stabbing! Imagine that.
It's startling how concise and economical this game is with is narrative. Characters and events are introduced briskly, events develop with great pace, new twists and complications emerge quickly; it's like all the fat has been trimmed of the game. That's not to say that it's not made with care and polish; the constantily updating chronicle is full of backstory and interesting tidbits, and the branching elements of the plot are actually pretty exciting, which gives all the backstabbing, chest-stabbing and wholesale slaughter a whole new tinge.
What keeps surprising me, though, is this: a character that appears only in one or two cutscenes, if that, ought to make for a one-dimensional cast member, and yet the game keeps making a lot out of its cast. Valkyria Chronicles does something similar with how personable every member of the squad was. Just what is it about these strategy RPGs that makes you care about characters that have a fraction of the screentime a character gets in a regular RPG?
I think the key thing is FFTactics' signature trick, namely, the combat dialogue. There's more of it in Tactics Ogre, more even than in FFTactics; in fact, I think probably a good half of all dialogue in this game takes place in combat, with party members (even ones that have joined the roster for good!) often joining in. There's really few things that can enhance a debate of morality more than throwing it into an epic battle; it makes even a few scant lines of dialogue dramatic and compelling. On the whole, the game has this persistent sense that you're meeting - and killing - interesting people every step you take. It's pretty riveting.
Oh, and the fights are pretty great in general. I have yet to resort to grinding, and the game has remained steadily tough, but survivable. The victory condition in most battles is to take out the enemy commander. Since the AI is not wholly suicidal (imagine that), this doesn't make the game too easy - it just means that the fights last only about as long as it's an actual contest, saving you the trouble of mopping up every last enemy. This allows for fights that are actually a lot larger than in FFT, since you're regularily fielding ten soldiers with several guests. It also means that your characters are a great deal more specialized than they are in FFT, where you tend to build a team of all-around supersoldiers. I think I prefer it like this.
A fuller analysis might be in order once I'm finished with the game. Perhaps once the thesis is done...
Today I finally finished editing the latest issue of our student paper - one of those things that for some reason fell on me when the person who was supposed to do it disappeared off the face of the Earth (hopefully in fear of my undying wrath). On the plus side, these things make for wonderful excuses as to why my master's thesis isn't finished yet. Hooray!
I was in Lisbon earlier this month for a while on one of my family's traditional European city vacations, though I sometimes wonder if it's an activity other people would really call a 'vacation': we don't really visit cities so much as exhaust them. Nonetheless, Lisbon is a nice enough city, though aside of what is, as far as I know, the most exciting tram ride in Europe, there is very little there that you couldn't see in any number of other fine European cities. Well, perhaps I'm starting to get hard to please, so that a city without an authentic medieval centre or at least a well preserved art nouveau district doesn't make a blip on my rader anymore!
I still do like cities like that. The thing is, much as I travel, I sometimes forget what a large difference there is between a place that is "nice enough" and one that is "oh god so freaking awesome I can't even". On this trip, the latter was provided by the mountain town (and Unesco site) of Sintra, which Lord Byron called "the most beautiful in the world". For a very good reason. To mention just one place there, the Castle of the Moors, situated on the mountaintop in a way that suggests its architects (not to mention builders!) were kind of crazy, is one of the most awesome castle ruins I've ever visited, to the point that the one in Lisbon's main hill appeared hilariously sad and weak in comparison.
The difference between "good enough" and "awesome" is in some sense intangible, but when you see it, it's such a vast gulf in excellence. Perhaps that's why my thesis is taking its time!
Aside of procrastrinating on that subject, I've been playing the PSP version Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. I'm still only halfway through, or thereabouts, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the game appears to be the distillation of everything I liked about Final Fantasy Tactics, ousting most of the things that I didn't like about Final Fantasy Tactics.
That means it's very good.
I enjoyed Valkyria Chronicles a great deal earlier this year, but while the game more than validated my love for tactical RPGs, it's nice to play a game that has a good story on top of having good gameplay, something that's lately been in short supply. In that, Tactics Ogre delivers. It's about intertwining politics, war and human tragedy; very much like FFTactics was before magic rocks become inexplicably prominent. I really appreciate how down-to-earth it is; for instance, in Tactics Ogre, swords are not, in fact, ranged area-of-effect weapons, but are used for good, honest, old-fashioned chest-stabbing! Imagine that.
It's startling how concise and economical this game is with is narrative. Characters and events are introduced briskly, events develop with great pace, new twists and complications emerge quickly; it's like all the fat has been trimmed of the game. That's not to say that it's not made with care and polish; the constantily updating chronicle is full of backstory and interesting tidbits, and the branching elements of the plot are actually pretty exciting, which gives all the backstabbing, chest-stabbing and wholesale slaughter a whole new tinge.
What keeps surprising me, though, is this: a character that appears only in one or two cutscenes, if that, ought to make for a one-dimensional cast member, and yet the game keeps making a lot out of its cast. Valkyria Chronicles does something similar with how personable every member of the squad was. Just what is it about these strategy RPGs that makes you care about characters that have a fraction of the screentime a character gets in a regular RPG?
I think the key thing is FFTactics' signature trick, namely, the combat dialogue. There's more of it in Tactics Ogre, more even than in FFTactics; in fact, I think probably a good half of all dialogue in this game takes place in combat, with party members (even ones that have joined the roster for good!) often joining in. There's really few things that can enhance a debate of morality more than throwing it into an epic battle; it makes even a few scant lines of dialogue dramatic and compelling. On the whole, the game has this persistent sense that you're meeting - and killing - interesting people every step you take. It's pretty riveting.
Oh, and the fights are pretty great in general. I have yet to resort to grinding, and the game has remained steadily tough, but survivable. The victory condition in most battles is to take out the enemy commander. Since the AI is not wholly suicidal (imagine that), this doesn't make the game too easy - it just means that the fights last only about as long as it's an actual contest, saving you the trouble of mopping up every last enemy. This allows for fights that are actually a lot larger than in FFT, since you're regularily fielding ten soldiers with several guests. It also means that your characters are a great deal more specialized than they are in FFT, where you tend to build a team of all-around supersoldiers. I think I prefer it like this.
A fuller analysis might be in order once I'm finished with the game. Perhaps once the thesis is done...