このポストで、辞書を使わないで、日本語だけで 書くつもりです。
だから、これはみじかいでしょ。 私は漢字を覚えないんですし、まだ日本語が下手なんです。
でも、 まだ書いてみてたいんだ。 どうしてですか？ 自分も分からない。
コンピュター科学がせんこうだったけど、まだほかのもの（語とか）が知りたいです。時々、練習をするために日本語だけで考えるけど、
このような考えを書くことは三年間でぜんぜんしなかったんです。
まだ下手なんですね。。。
I’ve still got some of it, but it’s like running molasses through a colander. I need to practice far more often. I could’ve done most of this better three years ago 🙁
Now that I have the time to enjoy them again, games are creeping back into my free time.
Tuesday, I went to a bunch of game stores, mostly to find the Diablo 2 expansion (more later). As I was browsing through one Gamestop (I think the closest non-Gamestop game store is ~10 miles away from me), I found a copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Raidou Kuzunoha vs the Soulless Army.
Despite its long name, you might recognize Shin Megami Tensei from, say, Shin Megami Tensei or its spinoffs (Revelations: Persona being the only one I’ve played much). It’s generally dark, gritty, but occasionally light-hearted modern stuff. Think pulp sci-fi mixed with mythology and a touch of horror and that’s about what it is. The Megami Tensei games were all inspired by a book, which a really cool guy translated and posted up here.
Anyway, one of the coolest aspects of the series is that it’s not afraid to be a bit cheesy even if it loses a bit of realism. The main character in SMT: RKvtSA uses both sword and gun in battle – much like the heroes in Persona. This yields a friendly, fuzzy feeling similar to that of the Final Fantasy Legend (aka Sa-Ga) games on Gameboy – anything’s a weapon, so long as it does damage to the enemy. This game, however, is set in early 1930’s Japan. Against demons, the pistol generally just serves to stun them or can be used as a low-intensity elemental attack – but it’s still pretty darn cool.
Kuzunoha may have a single demon summoned in battle at once, and each demon has elemental affinities – so there’s a nice little strategic element. Battles occur more frequently than I’d like, and tend to yield less rewards than most games. This is in keeping with the series’ reputation of being tough as nails (Persona 2, the aptly-named Eternal Punishment, is the hardest RPG I’ve played – Persona 1 was tough despite having its difficulty toned down a bunch in the US release). No obstacle so far (in 3 hours) has proved insurmountable – I haven’t died yet, I’ve just gotten really close.
I am also playing through Wild ARMs, and despite my new copy being pristine, I still got a freeze earlier. I now suspect it is more likely my PS2 that is dying than anything else… but I’ll probably pick it up again tomorrow and see how it goes.
Like I mentioned earlier – I was looking for the D2 expansion pack, and found it at the fourth store (I was bored). One of my friends back home tempted me into playing it again, and I’ve gotten my editor from vl started as well – anyone care to join in our little addiction? We’re on USEast, if it makes any difference.
Well, I tried. My copy of Wild ARMs died about an hour in, and I don’t have the patience to keep trying after a game freezes.
I ordered another copy. I mean, what’s the use of working so much overtime if you can’t spend the money (plus, the game is… what, maybe an hour of overtime pay?)?
I also started playing Alter Code: F. It’s a good game, don’t get me wrong – but it still lacks some of the charm of the original. The music in ACF is good, but too many tracks were polished unnecessarily. The extra plot and exposition is great – Jack’s background and some extra stuff with Rody’s plot in the end are particulary satisfying. Unfortunately, the translation is the worst part of the game. It’s not all bad, but it is unnecessarily literal and feels stilted – overly formal in places where it shouldn’t be, for example. Then there are plural/gender mix-ups…
I had to give up on ACF. No reason to play through it if I’m just going to play through the original. Thankfully, said ordered extra copy arrived today and is wonderfully spotless. Unthankfully, I worked from 9 to 8 today and will probably be working over the weekend too. Our project is wrapping up and (oh no) we stand a chance of making our unrealistic deadline.
Oh well, I should be able to afford a Wii soon.
In site-related news, apparently I am popular enough to merit spambots posting comments. 2 a day. And, for some reason, they all comment on Life is a Dream. I’m really curious as to why. Maybe bots like armchair philosophy. Now if only I had an easy chair, monocle, and pipe to smoke, I could attract more bots. Just what I’ve always wanted.
Oh well, I suppose I should consider myself lucky. vl gets about 200 a day now.
I took yesterday off.
After 6 days straight of working nearly 10 hours a day, it was quite nice and I feel very refreshed.
Part of this is game choice. See, Odin Sphere is at one end of the “RPG” spectrum (I feel calling it an RPG is a charity): It’s very engaging, but perhaps overly so. The game’s focus is more on action and less on thought. Decisions must be split second (or you will be split… in a second?).
After finishing Steambot Chronicles, which was very laid-back, I went for a game that’s even more so. One of my new favorites, Wild ARMs.
WA was never really on the top of my list until about two years ago. I found it for $13 and went for it, remembering vaguely it was kind of neat. As I went through the game, I was struck – by plot, (sprite) graphical style, and, most of all, music. The intro video enchanted me even more so than it had before, and the fact that the game starts off incredibly depressing (Rody, of course, has good reason to be depressed – as does Jack/Zack. Cecilia’s reason comes soon enough) only kept me engaged in the story. I mean, most games start off with a character’s hometown burning or them being expelled from said hometown (a la Rody, but it’s not his hometown), but never manage to drive the idea home. I mean, look at Secret of Mana – the main character just kind of wanders off on his mostly-merry travels. But the way that Wild ARMs truly begins – as the credits roll, during a funeral procession – truly touched me in a way that few games have.
And so WA made it onto my list. And now I see it as quite possibly the most relaxing game I have. Since battles are turn-based, I can take my time. Few puzzles are so fast-paced that I really have to try very hard, but they are tricky enough to keep me engaged. And, of course, almost all of the music is relaxing.
This is why it succeeds for me where Odin Sphere has largely failed – a good game should be a balance of activity and thought. Odin Sphere has a strong emphasis on activity – combat – and what little thought there is involves figuring out how in the blazes to fit that last Muggle Seed into my overstuffed inventory. In this respect, it makes the same mistake too many games – Riviera, Final Fantasy Legend, and Suikoden – have made: it forces the player to choose what to lose when they almost certainly don’t want to lose anything. I have a math background, so I know – Knapsack problems are tough, especially if you have to invent values for things on the spot.
To be fair, Wild ARMs has little activity, and much thought. Only a few puzzles must be done quickly. In even the toughest battles, you can take your time. This is, to my mind, what RPGs can do best: make battles tough, make the player think, but give them as much time as they want. And give them nice music while you’re at it, right?
I beat Steambot Chronicles yesterday. That game was impressive enough in some ways for me to write a review immediately.
To summarize: Despite being in almost all other ways a mediocre game, the amount of choice present makes it really fun to play up to a certain point. If you like Harvest Moon, you will like Steambot. It’s nearly everything Harvest Moon should have become five years ago. Dozens of ways to make money (though only a few are viable).
I went out and got a new TV yesterday. It’s a 26-inch flatscreen. I’m upgrading from a 19-inch CRT with only the coax input working to a 720px widescreen with composite input. So far I’m much more impressed by Odin Sphere, but I’ve only played that and Steambot on it so far. I’m looking forward to playing something like Wild ARMs on it, weird as it sounds. The biggest difference I’ve noticed is that the text is incredibly sharp, and colors are much better defined. Any sprite-based game should look much better. Now I just need a composite input for my SNES…
In terms of other games, I’m still playing Genso Sangokushi 2 (Fantasy Sango 2). Observe.
Yuan Shu: To think you all made it this far! Guards! Deal with these nuisances right away!
If you noticed Lady Wu’s thread, he ends up getting burned for being a bit too close to his advisor. In any case, the game is certainly continuing and I’m still enjoying it. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I didn’t even notice some of the core features of GS2 until a dozen or so hours into the game. I would love to see it translated (I could possibly do it but I don’t have the hacking know-how and I’d need to shore up a LOT on my kanji), because some of the bits are really nice – the item creation in particular is useful and well-done, if not as deliciously random as in Star Ocean: The Second Story. You upgrade skills by allocating points to them (the higher the skill, the more to level up) and the game has great strategic depth as there are 4 paths you can take for each of the 7 (!) sub-characters Miel (as Lady Wu eloquently named her) can become. Not to mention the fact that some skills are really formations that affect your stats… My only complaint is I don’t have a good heal-all ability, just a couple positive status effects (Armor up is really useful) and Miel’s weak heal-one-person skill. I went down the wrong branch for the lettuce kid (whatever you call him), so I just now got the heal-all skill for him and I bet it’s weak.
Since I just recently figured out how to take screenshots easily, I will likely post many more, as GS2 is a beautiful game.
Also, I’m working on a translation of the NES adventure game Akira, based on the anime movie of the same name. In the past week, I had the chance to read the manga and see the movie. The manga is so much better that I can’t imagine anyone liking the movie – the manga just has so much more depth, while in the movie, everything is horribly compressed and much of the original vision is sadly lost. I really hope no one ever tries to condense Three Kingdoms into anything less than 20 hours.
And, sadly, my work-lots time is not what ends now. I will try to keep updating the site once every few days, but no guarantees.