Niahak's Place

So the last half of last week, I took a plane trip home, ran around a bunch of places, had about 30 minutes of free time, slept some, and came back Sunday night.

I’m still feeling pretty exhausted.  Since I didn’t play any games (well, ~20 minutes of Smash Bros), here are a few observations.

• People in groups can be inconsiderate normally, but if you put them in an airport they will surprise you with their blatant disregard for both other people and for their own brain.
• Pianos are pretty damn cool.  Few other instruments can create such a variety of good music solo.
• Getting a “real” job really helps your confidence when talking to people.
• It feels good to compliment someone who deserves it in a public forum.
• Never realized how rare it is to meet someone who’s made it through high school and still has an interest in math and science.  I mean, it’s nice enough to “be” a rare commodity, but… if we keep this pace up, the economy’s going to hell in a handbasket.

I was actually hoping to start the campaign of Kohan, since I really enjoy doing that every so often, but no use complaining about that.  Now I can play Persona 3, there’s not much reason to go for that.   Plus, Wild Arms 5 comes out tomorrow, and I still have this really nifty new computer I can play games on.  Now, if I can only find the time…

I was skeptical at first.  I would sit back and watch reviews, I figured.

I’m glad I didn’t.

Oh, I was positive about Rogue Galaxy.  I enjoyed starting Final Fantasy XII.  But no game in the past year has hit me quite as hard as Persona 3 has.

Persona 3 continues the first game’s “high school cool” – high school students trying to figure out what’s going on in a world filled with the unknown – but also retains the school social element, which the first one lacked.

Social interactions in this game are entertaining.  They’re just detailed enough to be fun without getting overly involved, and none have really felt contrived so far.

The battle system is simple yet strategic.  It has many, many less things to worry about compared to the first game – in this one, you only control the main character, the status effects are less varied, and position doesn’t matter.  Somehow it retains a strong strategic element, particularly when it comes to a choice of persona.  Elemental weaknesses are king in this game, which keeps the simplicity of the system from making one bored.

And the atmosphere… is amazing, as it was with the first two games.  There is a keen sense of place throughout the game, which follows through from the localization (one thing, though – they kept all Japanese ‘titles’, for lack of a better word – -san, -kun,  and -tan have reared their faces… I don’t mind too much, but it may confuse some).  There isn’t quite the world-gone-horribly-wrong feeling of the first, nor the kinda-weird-stuff-but-still-okay of the second – it’s more of a “really weird stuff is going on, but nobody else can know!” feeling.  It’s cool, but it doesn’t really come through to the social interaction bits of the game so far, so it hasn’t “hit home”, so to speak.

And I’m only 5 hours in!  If only I could actually keep playing it over the next few days…

So at some point I decided it was a good idea to go to GenCon Indy.  Having little warning (I only found out it was coming two weeks before), I had to get a badge the old-fashioned way.  The night before it started (but alas, too late to register), I found out there was a Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament.  Seeing as I did decently well in the tournaments at Rose, I wanted to sign up but it was halfway full already.

So I did what any self-respecting Smash fan would; I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and drove down to GenCon on Thursday.   I waited in line for about 2 hours total to get my badge and register for the tournament.   I arrived at work 45 minutes late, when I had hoped to be a bit early.  When I got home from work, the final pieces of my new desktop had arrived.  I spent about 2 hours putting everything together, and then spent about 3 trying to figure out why it wasn’t booting up.  I gave up at 11 and went to bed.

This morning, I woke up, went to work for half a day, then went to GenCon.   Though I had huge troubles parking (every single lot I found was full, except I finally found a shady valet parking place), I made it to GenCon with about half an hour to spare before the Smash tournament qualifiers.

The qualifying round was a joke, honestly.  4 player free-for-all, random *all* stages, no items (thank god),  only the victor proceeds.  Nearly everyone there wasn’t a serious player; there were 3 who were serious enough to “know” wavedashing, and one that used it to great effect.  None were in my round.

So, for the qualifying round, I played Peach.  I’m most used to her playstyle, she’s easy to play cautious, and I hadn’t played in more than 2 weeks (not seriously in probably 3 months).   I won with 2 lives to spare (in a 3-stock game).

Honestly, I was the best person at dodge-work there.  In a 2v2 played for fun afterwards , I finished the first 3 rounds without dying.  It helped that I had the best player there as my teammate, but I attribute my dodging skills to the wonder-works of my roommates.  One played Sheik and was deadly accurate; the other played Jigglypuff, and if you didn’t dodge you were dead.  My strategy was and still is mostly defensive.  Harass with turnips, block attacks, throw if possible, pursue opponent if necessary.  Tomorrow’s tournament is 1-on-1, and I’ll be happy if I make 3rd place.  One of the guys there is really good, and I think another would beat me in a 1-on-1 if I’m not lucky.

GenCon itself is somewhat lackluster to me; I have little more than a passing interest in RPGs, though I played a couple in middle school.  Magic, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh have no appeal to me anymore (though a friend is currently in the Magic Legacy pre-Championship)… the only major thing there that appeals to me is the electronic gaming, and the Smash tourney was 40 people – we had ones twice that size at Rose, and they were better organized.  There’s a Starcraft 2 section there, with playable demos – may get in on that later – but beyond that, a few companies are showing off MMOGs… that’s about it, really.

There is a really cool manga shop booth there; it’s all Japanese.  I wasn’t able to find either Three Kingdoms or “Wolf Dragon Legend” (Kouryuuden), which were the two manga I’d enjoyed the most, but they did have the Wild Arms ACF Artbook (quite nice, but I already have it) and the Valkyrie Profile artbook (may consider it), as well as the “Legend of Langrisser” artbook (nice, but no thanks – I know Urushihara’s other job).  They did have the Tales of Symphonia manga… but sadly, everything’s new – which means high prices.  I really loved the manga stores in Japan – I got great manga for $3, and most for $1 or less (I think I got a Lunar 2 one for 50 cents).  Here, it’s more like $6 or $7 for one volume.  I may look into that place more tomorrow after the tournament.

After GenCon today, I stopped by the nicer GameStop.  That is to say, the one that was an EBGames until two weeks ago.  Believe it or not, they had Persona 3, so I’ve played an hour of it so far.  I love the atmosphere; that’s one thing the Persona games pull off really, really well.  The artbook is good, but not really great; its main appeal stems from the fact that it’s both free and hardbound.  Haven’t listened to the soundtrack included yet, but I’m guessing it’s the better part of the bonus package.

After GameStop, I went home and gave the desktop another try.  After a small but vital piece of advice from a friend, I got it up and running.  And thus it stands; the best day in weeks after one of the worst.  Life has its downs, but maybe without them we wouldn’t recognize the ups.

Now that I have free time, and am no longer stressed out by various things, I can go back to enjoying video games.  Yay.

I am continuing Wild Arms, though I have not gotten a whole lot further (just to the Outer Ocean now).  I didn’t recall how hard the game can be – Boomerang and Luceid nearly killed my party off.  Nonetheless, it continues to be fun.

I have also obtained a Wii.  As there’s nothing for Wii I want to get at the moment (Brawl coming out in 4 months), I am content to browse their Virtual Console selection.  I obtained the first star in Paper Mario a couple days ago.   Their VC selection is actually quite good – I plan to get a few more games, including Shining Force, Dynamite Headdy (never tried, but it’s a Treasure game), and Actraiser.

Yesterday, I got my hands on Etrian Odyssey (sorry, Jay!), a game that manages to be rare despite having been released only a couple months ago.  It looks to be a happy mix of dungeon-crawling (a la Azure Dreams, there is only a single humongous “dungeon” to explore), Turn-based RPG, and Diablo (you get a skill point each level).  You create your own party from scratch, sort of like the first two Final Fantasy Legends or Dragon Warrior/Quest 3.  My party is entirely unique due to three of its members:

• My Landsnknecht (Fighter-esque), Corwin, is from Zelazny’s Amber series.  Corwin is one of my favorite characters from any book – despite the fact that he is powerful, skilled, and intelligent, he is also painfully reminded several times he is mortal.  Throughout the series, he grows from having a blind ambition to overthrow his brother Eric to setting aside the throne to pursue more important things.
• My Alchemist (Mage), Zhongda, is Sima Yi from Three Kingdoms.  Though I would’ve preferred Kongming, Alchemists are inherently darker figures in EO, so Sima Yi is much more fitting.
• My Medic, Cecilia, is from Wild Arms.  Her personality lends itself more to healing than to fighting to my mind.

If you managed to understand all three references, congratulations, you’re as weird as me 🙂

I’ve been trying to keep myself from getting too involved in EO.  The reason I got it is that I’ve played through all of my DS games already, so I needed something to play during my occasional plane trips.  It’s rather tempting to dive straight in, though.  One thing I do know is – it’s tough.  In the first quest, where you have to map the first floor of the dungeon (mapping is done using the stylus and isn’t as annoying as you’d think), my Protector (tank, essentially) and Corwin each died once and I had to return to town each time.  One time, my Protector was killed in one hit (!).

Finally, I’m still playing Diablo 2.  I now have 3 necromancers (bone, poison, and summoner) and 2 other party members.  D2 is mostly what’s keeping me from making progress in the above games, because it’s easy to get into and easy to “let go” of.