Niahak's Place

I finished Opoona over the weekend.  I’d say overall it’s not the best game ever, but definitely a game worth playing.  There is a raw charm to it that is appealing to me.  It may not be anything amazingly groundbreaking, but it is a good experience.

After Opoona, I briefly tried the old PS2 open RPG Metal Saga.  It was $15 new, and I figured I couldn’t lose.  I wouldn’t say I lost, but I just about broke even.

It sounds great.  Post-apocalyptic, tanks, exploring, anime-styled, open-ended.  It builds up a great atmosphere… then thoroughly disembowels it.

Imagine you’re walking through an abandoned office building… it’s a dark area, complete with overturned desks, some junk in the corner a few chairs, all covered in dust.  You’re scrounging through closets for anything useful to sell.  These pre-disaster places sometimes still have untouched stuff… then you get into an encounter.  Is it bat-wielding ruffians?  Perhaps some sort of mutated critter?  Not exactly.  You’re fighting a rifle standing atop two bare human legs.  It is called “Pocket Rocket”.

Plus it has the worst loading times in towns of any game I’d ever seen.  If it takes 10 seconds of loading to enter and exit a shop, you had better have a damn good rest of the game – sadly, it does not.  I wanted to give this game a try, and I don’t feel good about giving it up, but it is damnably frustrating.

I have since started Star Ocean: The Second Story for the third time.  I’m not sure if I’ll play it all the way through, but it’ll do for now.