You are my Final Fantasy.

By popular demand a couple of my friends asked me to do JRPG characters for them too. So I did.

I didn't just want to post them boringly standing around, so I decided to make a battle scene for them. When I asked them who we should be battling, their responses were "France" and "A couple of jocks?"

I was planning on compromising, and drawing us battling "A couple of Jacques..." (presumably Cousteau and Villeneuve) but then I thought: "What the hell... why not draw something that actually happened?" So I illustrated that time the Eiffel Tower gained sentience and it was up to us to stop it... With our goddamn fists.

Regular readers may be able to spot James, who already has a game made about him (effectively making this either a sequel or a spin off) and Drew, who has also popped up on this blog a few times before. I believe this is the first appearance of Vic however, with his Leather Kilt of badassedness, but he doesn't read my blog so it doesn't really matter.

So if we were in a JRPG, what would our strength and weaknesses be?

Gareth:
-Strength: Can use "Remember" skill to remember what parameters he set the enemies to have, since he made the damn game (acts like Scan)
-Weakness: Susceptible to Drunkeness (Confusion and Poison combined!)

James:
-Strength: You win more money in battles (although most of it will only be able to be used to buy more equipment for James).
-Weakness: Susceptible to Blindness (i.e. Darkness)

Drew:
-Strength: Fanatical devotion to Apple Products (Drew gains a bonus for using Apple Products).
-Weakness: Fanatical devotion to Apple Products (Drew can only use Apple products... Of which there are about 4, and they aren't as powerful or useful as other weapons)

Vic:
-Strength: ANGER.
-Weakness: Low ceilings.

About the picture: As I said before, I drew the people just standing in white space, so I thought I'd draw an enemy and a background too. This took WAAAAY longer than I as expecting (stupid cross beams) so by the time I got to the background I could not care anymore. Also, since for some crazy reason I was working in MSPaint I didn't really think about placement too much since I didn't have layers. And now it looks like I'm hovering or something.

Stompy Fantasy 2: Robot Chronicles

So I was watching this TED talk about solving the worlds problems by playing game, which can be found here. Now I agree up to a point (and that point is most of  second part of the of the talk), and sure, she repeatedly uses the phrase "Epic Win" with all seriousness many many times, but it's still an interesting watch.

But what I take most from it is the unquenchable need to level up. "Epic wins" are great and all, but I want the feedback. I want to ding. I want the final fantasy victory music at frequent intervals.

Considering there's sadly no in-world infrastructure in place to handle that, I've made my own status sheet. It should be available over at my website sometime soonish. I've tried to be as accurate as possible there, but really... Assessing one's attributes  accurately is a tough thing to do.

Speaking of the website: I've actually gotten around to updating it for a change. I dont think there's anything new there that hasn't been here already, but still. Also, I'm not 100% happy with the layouts, but the way I've made it will make it easy to change around stuff later on. So don't panic.

Hopefully I can keep that momentum up.

Also, just back to the video again: The problem I see with her approach is that it's still a bit too edu-tainmenty, and unfortunately, you'll never reach any kind of large audience like that. You can learn things from games, even when you're not expecting it, but it works best when you don't know you're learning anything. Not that I've had any indepth looks at their stuff or anything though...

Also... does anyone know why it's not doing columns next to pictures anymore? :S

Don't believe Ondore's lies - First impressions of Final Fantasy XII a few months too late.

More like a few years too late. I had this saved as a draft from the very early days of the blog and in order to make the other post of today make sense I've decided to publish this one. It's kinda pointless, because it's been so long I can't even remember much about this game, but oh well. I want my 100 posts dammit. I'm not even going to rewrite or finish it, that's how little care. Mind you I should get around to finishing that game some day.

I always planned to write a little bit about what ever game I'm currently playing. Not so much from a review point of view, I'll leave that to the professionals, I mean sitting down and trying to analyze what it does right and wrong, and how I can rip it off in some future design. I have tried putting on the 'Games Reviewer' hat previously; It was ill fitting and felt dorky, but the problem is the games I play are always fit into an odd reviewing niche. They aren't new enough to be considered cutting edge, yet they aren't old enough to be considered retro. They are the kind of games people just finished playing, as I've managed to find them cheap secondhand somewhere, and so me telling them if it's good or not becomes kind of redundant.

So without further ado, here I am playing FF12 and it's not that bad. It's both Final Fantasy and Not Final Fantasy at the same time. And also part World of Warcraft. And also part Star Wars.

The obvious difference is the abandonment of the ATB (Active Time Battle) system and random encounters. In its place: Active Dimension Battle (ADB) and no world map travel. In scope, It's a lot more epic than previous games, if not taking place over a much smaller area.

The new ADB system is pretty interesting, it allows you to give AI commands to team mates. Not only does it change up the way battles are fought, but it also adds another element of collectability to the game, and thats always good for the obsessive-compulsive crowd. The downside of the new system is that it makes the game feel a lot more like an mmorpg, just where instead of friends you have a couple of robots to help you out. Unfortuntately, this only goes to highlight how shallow some of the side quests can be. Fetch quests are abundent. Item farming also feels somewhat unnecessary. Futhermore there are several points were I've felt too detached from the main plot, sometimes due to level requirements. Grinding becomes necessary just to progress with the story, and thats never fun.

Similarities to Star wars are striking...

Etc.