Monday, November 30, 2009

Now Playing - "Guns and women"


I've mostly been playing Final Fantasy VIII this week, I got to a point on disc 2 where my disc didn't let me progress-its quite badly scratched and some cutscenes jump and stop completely. So that put my game on hold for a few days until the weekend when I borrowed my friend's copy of the game so I could progress.

So I've just left Fisherman's Horizon now, I quite like that place, nice scrap-industrial style to it. I forgot about a lot of the stuff here in the story because I haven't played it as much as the earlier parts of the game and it was ages since I last played this part onwards. 

Anyway, what the hell is with Quistis assigning herself and Xu some posts in the garden? I'm in charge now, and I if I had a choice, she would be demoted even further. I don't like Quistis, she is annoying and fucked things up when we had to assassinate the sorceress by being a whiney bitch. "Omg, I was too hard on Rinoa, I should go apologise right now when we just so happen to have something incredibly important to do at a certain time" Fuck that...

Also, I kinda wish that the Mayor of FH got killed in the end, he acted like a close-minded pacifist, but something about him annoyed me ever so slightly, maybe the way he didn't even consider other ways of going about doing things. I mean, yeah, it really worked trying to talk to the invading Galbadian forces and reason with them.... /facepalm

Anyway, tangent aside, I now am at that point in an rpg when you get a whole load of freedom and world map to explore (usually resulting from the party's acquisition of some kind of vehicle ie. airship, boat, garden!?) So I'm considering going and trying to get some of the optional GFs I can get now, like Tonberry, Phoenix, (Odin), Chocobo (according to the guide). The only one I can remember how to get is Tonberry, but I'll have a think and see if I wanna try get a few of them or just fire on with the story. 

One thing I have liked so far about the story is the way they are not giving much away, it is frustrating because I know basically nothing about what is going on and I am on disc 2. It does however keep me interested, because I want to know what happens as the story progresses. What is the deal with Laguna, the "dream world" and Ellone, what is the real story behind the SEEDs, Cid and Edea? Those are some of the questions that are bugging me right now. I can't remember much of the time I played it last, and how much I actually got through of the story. All I can remember is that I got quite far (disc 3 I think) and got stuck, but a lot of the details I can't seem to remember. The characters...hmmm quite a few of them I don't particularly like, some are kind of boring, others just irritating. Rinoa for example, at first she really got on my nerves, but she has grown on me slightly as this playthrough has gone on. Irvine is just a pathetic, whiny womaniser. Maybe they will try to capitalise on his dual outer confidence and inner weakness that came through at the end of disc 1 and build it up through the story, but I dunno, he just kinda annoys me.

What else? I played a little bit of Dragon Age: Origins on the 360, decided to go speak to the Dalish Elves for help and quickly got recruited into doing a few quests for them. So I'm in the forest near their camp, apart from that I've not yet made a huge amount of progress since my focus has been on the FF games I've been playing.


Not sure if I talked about this last week, but in case not, I started up Final Fantasy VI Advance not too long ago, and so far I've been impressed, it has good audio and in the couple hours I've played so far, interesting characters. Kefka is pretty much Final Fantasy's answer to the Joker...actually, which came first? 

Ok, wow the Joker (1940) came way before Kefka (1994). I didn't know the character of the Joker was created so long ago (then again, I know hardly anything about western comics.)

Its been pretty cool so far, I am slightly stuck early on though. I have the choice of the first 3 scenarios, something which surprised me actually, as I haven't seen this that often, especially in FF games, anyway Locke is escaping from the town of Narshe, or whatever it is called. I can make quite a bit of progress by stealing merchants or guard's uniforms and sneaking through the town, but I can't quite figure out exactly where to go now. So I got frustrated and turned it off, I'll have to do it again from the scenario screen, or choose another one. I might do that actually, or check a guide to find out where to go next in the town. 

Anyway, enough of the minutiae of the story. So far I've really liked the steampunk setting, it feels quite fresh and unique since it hasn't been seen much in the other Final Fantasy games. Also, some of the soundtrack is really impressive. I love Terra's theme (the world map music) and the battle music. Here's a vid:

 

Anyway, that should be enough for now. I will post more another time. Coming soon - a long overdue Game of the Month post, for December


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