Speaking of the job system, I still have Bravely Second to play…I really liked Bravely Default; it reminded me favorably of FFV. And that soundtrack!
…and since I now have an NES Classic, I feel like I really should play the original Final Fantasy again…I don’t think I ever beat it ‘back in the day’, one of my brothers erased my game or something.
Oh man. FF1 NES is hard mode, too. Like, so much of the programming was broken. Spells that do nothing. Weird effects.
Good luck!
And yeaaaah, I loved Bravely Default. Mrgrgrgr!
Oh, and Nintendo Switch – I want to believe. Even after the Wii U, I want to believe, if only because its the last chance for one of the true icons of the golden age of gaming to fend off its slow slouch towards becoming a mobile shovelware company.
Yeah, I’m hoping it works. It could be cool!
I wanna be sure it has games for it. But. Could be cool!
…it’s funny, I’ve definitely been so far behind on certain gaming, that I’m starting to think of them almost in terms of travel destinations. (“On my deathbed, I will regret it if I never played Witcher 3!”)
I am getting excited for the new Fire Emblem though. I loved Awakening, but Fates seemed like an over-bloated sequel. Echoes seems like a back-to-basics enterprise.
I am bummed that RTS appears to be a genre in decline, though. It probably doesn’t help that sometimes my lag can be pretty bad.
I got Echoes preordered. I am stoked. Beyond stoked.
And yeah… I can’t remember the last big RTS. Starcraft II?
Well, Dawn of War 3 came out, and I played it some, and I enjoyed it a bit as a fan of the 40k franchise. It wasn’t as good as DoW2, though, which is the game that convinced me to pick up tabletop wargaming. I feel like with multiplayer I go through phases of playing, where at first its cool and fun, and then I settle into a habitual grind where I’m not enjoying it but feel compelled to continue even if I’d rather be doing something else/playing another game.
I was doing some reading about Fire Emblem Echoes, and it seems like a great, back-to-basics Fire Emblem. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Awakening (it singlehandedly justified the purchase of my 3DS), but not everything from it had to be copied over. Like, in Awakening, the children units (your kids FROM THE FUTURE) made sense, because time travel was an important part of the plot, but in Fates, it was just sorta there because “ah, you loved this shit last game!”
…but I just started a new Stellaris game because its had some DLC and patches. My plan is to enslave a bunch of other races and build a Dyson Sphere. So that’s probably my gaming for the next month.
I never did DoW. I did play Warmachine (not 40k) back in the day, though.
Echoes is my next one (Friday!). I think it’ll be good; I’d like a little more of an old school FE, and I like some of the new changes it has. (Or old changes the original did.)
Otherwise, I’ve been doing a lot of D&D 5E lately.
I played Typoman: Revised recently. I like the creativity shown in character design and how the gameplay works, assembling words from provided letters and using the effects they create to beat obstacles or solve puzzles.
Outside the story mode, there’s a couple of mini-games, one of which is basically Boggle-- make as many words from a bank of letters as you can in the time limit.
The other, called “Antonymizer” is built around a mechanic in the game. There is a creature in the game called a LIE, and if it touches another word, it will absorb it and spit out the word’s “opposite.” The mini-game gives you a bank of letters, an endless supply of LIE creatures, and then prompts you to spell a specific word. Since the goal word requires at least one letter that isn’t in the provided bank, you have to create other words, and then use the LIE creatures to swap from word to word to get the letter you need. I have just as much fun spelling as many words as I can from the letter bank, just to see if the game will recognize them, and then to see if a LIE will work on it.
Some of the results from LIE swapping aren’t what you would expect. For instance, I spelled the word “ORAL” from provided letters and used a LIE on it, expecting "WRITTEN."
Instead, I got "ANAL."
I literally got “surprise buttsex.”
The switch and Zelda BotW has engulfed my life lately. Almost done with it now though, so hopefully life will get back to normal. Really enjoying that game.
…I think New Metroid will tilt me into buying a Nintendo Switch.
I’ve kind of resisted buying the current gen of consoles, because I move around a lot and do most of my gaming on PC (with a dash of 3DS). But NEW METROID.
And the Switch is so… midway between a console and a handheld?
Pretty much. Sometimes I play at home and sometimes I take it outdoors. I took mine camping this weekend. I love it more then my ds.
So.
SQUEENIX is doing a 3d remake of Secret of Mana…
Thoughts?
All for it. It’s a classic. Even if it’s not the version I played, I want more people to experience it.
I hope the SoM remake is good. It is an all-time classic. I still remember playing it with my brothers. There was quite a bit of negotiation over who got what weapon (I volunteered to play the Girl, which no one wanted to play, in return for the choice weapon of the Spear.) I also discovered that the girl’s Luna magic, which had neglected on our various solo playthroughs, is really, really strong – turns out stacking a damage boost with 100 percent crit rate is pretty damned amazing. Also, you heal yourself. That’s actually what inspired my to stick a Luna mage in Kupopolis. (The Amazing Rando!)
…has anyone sometimes wondered how totally random it is that they ended up with “X” dimension? I mean, Matt all but introduced Gate so he obviously picked Chrono Trigger. I’m not sure why I picked Secret of Mana, given that I had already totally rejiggered the map and a bunch of other things from it. I think I mostly liked the name “Tasnica.” It’s also kinda funny I ended up with Eblan, which I dibsed well before the “Eblan=Japan” thing was established, which always felt kinda strange, given that there were several larger Japanophiles in our writer base. (…of course, we had plenty of other Japanese/Asian elements show up elsewhere, which is not surprising, given how our writing is largely built in Japanese video games.)
I know when I joined I REAAAAAAALLY wanted FF6…
…which is funny because these days, FF4 is my favorite?
But I never really wondered why Esper Dimension was called Esper. I mean.
Yeah, it’s clear to anyone familiar with that era’s JRPGs why certain dimensions were called what they were.
But based on that naming scheme, the world of FF7 would be “Materia Dimension,” and that just seemed very ‘meh.’
People are talking about their Switch and all…
Meanwhile, my friends got me a SNES Classic for Raineremas, so I’ll be able to play classics like Secret of Mana, Link to the Past, and Final Fantasy III (VI).
I’m glad you have the version of VI (III) preserved in its original glory…it’s available in other formats, but for some reason they changed the art style. I don’t know why, 16-bit pixel art is enjoying a moment of popularity.