Niahak's Place

I don’t write as much about books as I should, but then I don’t read as many books as I used to.

I often find myself reading the same series over again – Eddings’ Belgariad, Mallorean, Elenium and Tamuli, Zelazny’s Amber and occasionally Tolkien’s various works are among my most re-read.  It’s not often that I try to branch out and give a new series a shot, but Weis and Hickman’s Death Gate Cycle came at a co-workers recommendation.

I’ve beaten Growlanser: Heritage of War. Review will likely follow on videolamer, but for a short summary: It’s good, but not amazing. In fact, I’d say it’s the best Growlanser I’ve played – I’m in the minority that didn’t like the second, and while the third is good, HoW makes several engine improvements and keeps a fairly solid plot. The good: Suikoden III-style multiple viewpoints, enjoyable characters and quick random battles. The bad: Cheesy dialogue, slow pacing early on, and a somewhat weak-feeling finale.

Since GL: HoW, I have started Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. It’s the first core SMT game I’ve been able to get into, although I’ve been a fan of the Persona spinoffs. So far it’s been a bit rough in places – one of the early bosses, the Matador, was particularly difficult to fully prepare for. Speaking of which, the flow of the game is pretty much explore, find a boss, die, and figure out what you should’ve done. It’s a bit rough, but the game gives a few hints as to where you should save.

The other frustration is that random battles are almost everywhere. Towns are no safe haven, which is different (although Final Fantasy Legend 2 had this in a single town in Ashura’s World). I’m used to towns being a 10-15 minute break from combat – go around, talk to random people who usually say nothing useful, rest at the inn, get new equipment (one explanation as to why Lunar 2: Eternal Blue is one of my favorite games). Getting into a battle I could die in – an instant game over – between the healer’s room and the save point is a little bit too intense for me most of the time. I’m willing to tolerate it as long as it doesn’t happen, which it hasn’t yet. Pictures beyond, to save load time and frustration.

I said I might be getting a video capture device soon, and it happened. Who would’ve thought?

As I’m sure you may have guessed, I finished Skies of Arcadia and have moved on to other pastures.

My adventures have taken me into Tactical RPG land, more specifically.   I can’t really decide how I feel about the genre, but that’s a whole separate topic.

In December, I played and beat Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (the GC one, I believe it’s the 9th).  I found it was a lot of fun, and far better than a few TRPGs I’ve played.  My only complaint about the game is that you have 10-20 units to manage in the later scenarios which becomes a bit tedious.   The one particularly good thing about FE: PoR is the storytelling; though in retrospect, the story is not really complex, the way it’s presented and the smaller side stories of certain characters keep it entertaining.

For Christmas, I got the PS2 RPG Stella Deus (thanks!).  I actually started it right after Fire Emblem; I’d heard nothing about the game and I wanted a fresh experience.

I’m split about the game, really.  If I had the patience to stick to it, I think I would really enjoy it.  The art style is sort of halfway between post-apocalyptic and medieval (I’m planning to get a screen capture device soon; I’ll probably grab a few samples then).  Characters are often covered in various pieces of incongruous heavy metal armor, for example.  The character designer apparently went on to work on Persona 3, which explains why main character Spero looks like a taller version of P3’s Ken.

The world is pretty neat, too.  It’s near-apocalyptic; a miasma of doom/death/etc is making its way toward the scattered settlements.  Too bad I got 10 hours in and still had no idea where exactly this miasma was, how quickly it was spreading, or why the hell Grey wore these really weird bracers.  A few characters were good, but some others seemed to have no apparent personality beyond their stereotype.

Even the battle system is decently innovative.  It’s sort of halfway between the (early) X-Coms and Final Fantasy Tactics.  Once a character reaches 100 AP, they can spend those points on actions until they end their turn.  These actions could be 3 attacks, could be a spell and movement, etc.  However, they may end their turn early.  Which means you can set up a situation where you move twice in between two enemy moves, darting in and out of combat.  Or you can set your healers to go immediately after the enemy to decrease risk.

So, if it’s this neat, why would I give it up, right?  Unfortunately, for about an hour of story battles, you have to spend an hour leveling in the Catacombs of Trial, which are (supposedly) an optional set of maps.  Despite leveling in said Catacombs and being only slightly below the enemies’ level, Spero was killed by a boss in a single hit.  I figured it would take multiple hours to get to a reasonable enough level to beat the boss, so I figured my time was better spent elsewhere.   I may pick up Stella Deus again later, but I don’t see the point at the moment.

I’ve moved on to Growlanser 5: Heritage of War.  So far it’s pretty good.