Here I is~
I was told LJ entries are neat, so I shant disappoint! I'll bold the subject of the paragraphs.
So, holy eff, concert of joy. Dark Tranquillity and Into Eternity coming to Jaxx end of March =D Alex will probably come up for that one too. They're even with The Haunted, who I'm interested to see, and it says one more national act TBD too... Dayum. Excited for that. A couple concerts that might be interesting in coming months but that's the first must-see I've noted since I saw All Shall Perish.
Music is awesome =) Mentioned in an entry before what a great year 2006 was for metal stuff, and for my continuing exposure to awesome stuff. Finding metalinjection and metalreview were huge in being able to find kickass bands that range from obscure to extremely obscure. My tastes didn't really develop further since by 2005 I liked most of the heaviest stuff out there, but at least I found some bands to enjoy in subgenres I don't normally (Eluveitie, Spawn of Possession, Kamelot etc.)
UFC had a free live Fight Night on Thursday, and that was a great friggin' show.. plenty more exciting than the last. The main event had probably the most impressive one-hit knock out I'd ever seen. My enjoyment and loyalty in watching UFC is entirely a 2006 development. Frankly, they've done a ton to make it an exciting sport (the old no-holds-barred/no weight class stuff wasn't that interesting), and with the inclusion of free fight nights, the reality show, and UFC Unleashed episodes, they've really brought it to where it needed to be. I'd definitely be getting the PPV stuff if I had a group to chip in and watch with X)
I finally had a slow few days of work after almost 3 months of constant extreme busy. It's just as well too, because we're about to start the year-end review process, and frankly, morale at our job has just plummeted overe the last 6 months or so. Between a new boss who cares very little for the well-being of his employees, our old boss leaving and stiffing us on the option of mid-year raises, more work than ever, without the more fun perks we'd been having... and oh yeah, probably no bonus this period... it's just been quite sub-good. Being around the cool co-workers is great though, and a big reason why it's overall quite tolerable and I'm nowhere close to dreading it. But if I get stiffed on the raise after all that, that'd be really bad for them considering how much I've done in the past year.
Video game fun continues along after now having beaten Radiata Stories and Chibi-Robo, leaving my back-log of FF3, which I'm a bit into, Pokemon Ranger which I just started, and Star Ocean: 'til end of time which I have not begun. Radiata was enjoyable, but unfantastic. I already did a big write-up of my Pros and Cons of the game on RPGamer, so I'll just put that behind an LJ cut at the end. Chibi-Robo was effing awesome though. Absurdly cute and fun lil' game =D Wanted to play it for a while, and yeah, I loved every moment of it. Great sense of humor on top of its being cute and fun~
Went out looking for a house about two weeks ago. Our family realtor guy was really helpful, but he was all set to have me talk about breaking my lease pretty quick X) However, since they'll help in the setup (as I did for them), will have to have my parents zoom up here and take a look at the two really nice townhouses I found in my price range. One of which is about a mile from here or two at most, which would be nice to have such an easy move!
Annnd that's plenty for now =)
Pros:
- Basically never being forced to take mandatory characters along is very nice.. I enjoyed the flexibility of making the party -I- always wanted.
- Excellent voice acting, some very cute dialog and scenes. Found myself smiling and occasionally chuckling at numerous points. The in-battle dialog even if repetitive was neat in that it helped give characters more personality. Very cool.
- Holy crap, the castle was the most real RPG town I've ever seen. Every NPC having his/her own house that you can't enter, everyone having their own daily schedules and stuff.. insane.
- Some very cool people to recruit. When I saw those big beefy armor dudes and was like I can get THEM?! That makes Pes happy.
- Battle customizing was nice.. beyond just the weapon choice (AXES =D ), being able to pick from various attack combos was nice, even if I ended up just repeating one really good attack most of the game.
- Lots of variety in the characters, with a low amount being "useless", and being able to battle -anyone- in town with no Game Over if you get over your head? Very neat.
- Decent New Game+ option, which compliments the fact that..
- Though the game gives a very major storyline split to choose that seemingly boils down to a random choice (as is true with many split-story RPGs), the game very blatantly warns you to which "side" you're choosing, and the consequences of it. That's a very cool thing for them to do, since you could accidentally invalidate a LOT of time spent if you didn't know what you were doing.
-Lively graphics/music
whiiile on the other hand...
Cons:
- Character recruiting is, I daresay, fucking ridiculous without a guide. Given that many characters have no indication of what needs to happen in the game before they join, many won't give you the quest/requirements except for very precise points in the game, and sometimes even then the requirements/quests are ridiculously ambiguous. You'd need to spend and waste upwards of 100 hours probably to track down and recruit all characters without a guide. That's absurd.
- On the same note, despite how amazingly dynamic and huge the castletown was, it's also too much of both. The former I mentioned, but the size, with no teleporter points just means you'll spend a shitload of time running back and forth places.
- The customizable battling didn't really change the fact that I basically got through the entire game using a total of two axes, and almost always just using the earthquake attack. Pretty easy, aside from a few duels to recruit characters when I was much lower level.
- When not being quirky/fun, the story was often too shmaltzy for my liking. It too blatantly tries to make you sympathize and choose the non-human side, the boy-meets-girl element is unrealistic given how young the two are and how brief their interactions are, and on the same note..
- The ending sucked.
- Saving is a nightmare. The vast majority of the time in the game, you have one save point... total. Ever. And sometimes just going to it, you can accidentally trigger the storyline forward! What the hell.
- Not a huge gripe, but more weapons, or at least more progressive availability would've been nice.. kinda silly that I got through the entire game using two axes once the first was available.
- Did I mention how ridiculous the character recruitment is?
So yeah, very torn. Some really neat parts, as well as some inexcusable parts. I can't get over how absurd the character recruitment is, especially if you're choosing the side that keeps you in the castle town... huge friggin town, tons of characters all doing real-time duties, and most have insanely precise requirements and little direction. Thank goodness for FAQs...
So, holy eff, concert of joy. Dark Tranquillity and Into Eternity coming to Jaxx end of March =D Alex will probably come up for that one too. They're even with The Haunted, who I'm interested to see, and it says one more national act TBD too... Dayum. Excited for that. A couple concerts that might be interesting in coming months but that's the first must-see I've noted since I saw All Shall Perish.
Music is awesome =) Mentioned in an entry before what a great year 2006 was for metal stuff, and for my continuing exposure to awesome stuff. Finding metalinjection and metalreview were huge in being able to find kickass bands that range from obscure to extremely obscure. My tastes didn't really develop further since by 2005 I liked most of the heaviest stuff out there, but at least I found some bands to enjoy in subgenres I don't normally (Eluveitie, Spawn of Possession, Kamelot etc.)
UFC had a free live Fight Night on Thursday, and that was a great friggin' show.. plenty more exciting than the last. The main event had probably the most impressive one-hit knock out I'd ever seen. My enjoyment and loyalty in watching UFC is entirely a 2006 development. Frankly, they've done a ton to make it an exciting sport (the old no-holds-barred/no weight class stuff wasn't that interesting), and with the inclusion of free fight nights, the reality show, and UFC Unleashed episodes, they've really brought it to where it needed to be. I'd definitely be getting the PPV stuff if I had a group to chip in and watch with X)
I finally had a slow few days of work after almost 3 months of constant extreme busy. It's just as well too, because we're about to start the year-end review process, and frankly, morale at our job has just plummeted overe the last 6 months or so. Between a new boss who cares very little for the well-being of his employees, our old boss leaving and stiffing us on the option of mid-year raises, more work than ever, without the more fun perks we'd been having... and oh yeah, probably no bonus this period... it's just been quite sub-good. Being around the cool co-workers is great though, and a big reason why it's overall quite tolerable and I'm nowhere close to dreading it. But if I get stiffed on the raise after all that, that'd be really bad for them considering how much I've done in the past year.
Video game fun continues along after now having beaten Radiata Stories and Chibi-Robo, leaving my back-log of FF3, which I'm a bit into, Pokemon Ranger which I just started, and Star Ocean: 'til end of time which I have not begun. Radiata was enjoyable, but unfantastic. I already did a big write-up of my Pros and Cons of the game on RPGamer, so I'll just put that behind an LJ cut at the end. Chibi-Robo was effing awesome though. Absurdly cute and fun lil' game =D Wanted to play it for a while, and yeah, I loved every moment of it. Great sense of humor on top of its being cute and fun~
Went out looking for a house about two weeks ago. Our family realtor guy was really helpful, but he was all set to have me talk about breaking my lease pretty quick X) However, since they'll help in the setup (as I did for them), will have to have my parents zoom up here and take a look at the two really nice townhouses I found in my price range. One of which is about a mile from here or two at most, which would be nice to have such an easy move!
Annnd that's plenty for now =)
Pros:
- Basically never being forced to take mandatory characters along is very nice.. I enjoyed the flexibility of making the party -I- always wanted.
- Excellent voice acting, some very cute dialog and scenes. Found myself smiling and occasionally chuckling at numerous points. The in-battle dialog even if repetitive was neat in that it helped give characters more personality. Very cool.
- Holy crap, the castle was the most real RPG town I've ever seen. Every NPC having his/her own house that you can't enter, everyone having their own daily schedules and stuff.. insane.
- Some very cool people to recruit. When I saw those big beefy armor dudes and was like I can get THEM?! That makes Pes happy.
- Battle customizing was nice.. beyond just the weapon choice (AXES =D ), being able to pick from various attack combos was nice, even if I ended up just repeating one really good attack most of the game.
- Lots of variety in the characters, with a low amount being "useless", and being able to battle -anyone- in town with no Game Over if you get over your head? Very neat.
- Decent New Game+ option, which compliments the fact that..
- Though the game gives a very major storyline split to choose that seemingly boils down to a random choice (as is true with many split-story RPGs), the game very blatantly warns you to which "side" you're choosing, and the consequences of it. That's a very cool thing for them to do, since you could accidentally invalidate a LOT of time spent if you didn't know what you were doing.
-Lively graphics/music
whiiile on the other hand...
Cons:
- Character recruiting is, I daresay, fucking ridiculous without a guide. Given that many characters have no indication of what needs to happen in the game before they join, many won't give you the quest/requirements except for very precise points in the game, and sometimes even then the requirements/quests are ridiculously ambiguous. You'd need to spend and waste upwards of 100 hours probably to track down and recruit all characters without a guide. That's absurd.
- On the same note, despite how amazingly dynamic and huge the castletown was, it's also too much of both. The former I mentioned, but the size, with no teleporter points just means you'll spend a shitload of time running back and forth places.
- The customizable battling didn't really change the fact that I basically got through the entire game using a total of two axes, and almost always just using the earthquake attack. Pretty easy, aside from a few duels to recruit characters when I was much lower level.
- When not being quirky/fun, the story was often too shmaltzy for my liking. It too blatantly tries to make you sympathize and choose the non-human side, the boy-meets-girl element is unrealistic given how young the two are and how brief their interactions are, and on the same note..
- The ending sucked.
- Saving is a nightmare. The vast majority of the time in the game, you have one save point... total. Ever. And sometimes just going to it, you can accidentally trigger the storyline forward! What the hell.
- Not a huge gripe, but more weapons, or at least more progressive availability would've been nice.. kinda silly that I got through the entire game using two axes once the first was available.
- Did I mention how ridiculous the character recruitment is?
So yeah, very torn. Some really neat parts, as well as some inexcusable parts. I can't get over how absurd the character recruitment is, especially if you're choosing the side that keeps you in the castle town... huge friggin town, tons of characters all doing real-time duties, and most have insanely precise requirements and little direction. Thank goodness for FAQs...