Returning To Normalcy

Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays.

Happy New Year.

I'm now making this post from Conklederp's iMacpadairintoshBook, although it says MacBook right in front of me.  Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Apple.  I grew up on an Apple //e and every other computer I used until college was some form of Mac, but I digress from my lack of there being a point.

I got my computer back from [Name Omitted] after having spilt a small amount of beer on the keyboard.  I figured the keyboard was shot, due to the H, G, "Up Arrow" and 7 (on the 10 key) not working (and H is part of my password to log on to my computer; at least it was), I just wanted to make sure that nothing else was damaged, even after I performed a fairly thorough cleaning job right after the spill happened.  Turns out that it's just my keyboard that needs to be replaced, which the guy at [N.O.] sounded a little surprised at.  He then quoted me a price that seemed a little high, but maybe that was because I knew what had to be done, knew to do it, and how much a replacement keyboard would cost.  For a moment, it sounded like he was trying to hoodwink me when saying that it would be difficult/costly because of the metal shell that makes up the casing of my laptop, suggested that the keyboard was backlit, which I said it wasn't, then said something about the possible difficulty in removing the keyboard.  I thanked him for his time, paid for the diagnostics and check up that he ran and said I would perform the necessary repairs myself.  I was polite, but knew that I could replace the keyboard, minus the $60 labor fee.

Moving on to gaming now.  I fully admit that I have a weakness for games in a series.  They don't even have to be related to each other, just add a 3 or an VIII and I'm interested.  Bare in mind though, that this doesn't happen with all genres, just mainly RPG's but there are always exceptions.  I feel it'd be pretty obvious that I'm a fan of the Final Fantasy games with the only games that I haven't played are VIII, X, X-2, XI, XIII, XIII-2 and XIV.  I currently have Dragon Warrior/Quest I - VI, VIII and IX.  After playing through Doom 3, I immediately wanted to know about the story from Doom  and Doom 2: Hell on Earth, so I bought those shortly after acquiring a Steam account.  The Baldur's Gate and Diablo series I also love, although I've been resistant to buying Diablo III for reasons that I've gone into before.  I have also yet to play Warcraft III even though I loved the first two games, which is possibly because I've heard about the Orcs not really being evil, I call bullshit on that.  After seeing a lot of Fallout 3 (but not having played it), I really wanted to know what the Fallout series was like, so Vorlynx got me the first three games a couple years back.  Recently with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I fell in love with the world and backstory of events that may have happened in previous games or were never covered.  There was talk among people (as well as books) referring to "the Oblivion Crisis," so after some hunting, I was able to locate and download the first two Elder Scrolls games and only yesterday, purchased Morrowind and Oblivion (The Elder Scrolls III & IV respectively).  There's also the Professor Layton series, of which I need to play Diabolical Box (yes, I know I'm two and-a-half years late) and then get the rest of the series.  And dear god!, The Legend of Zelda series, although with the exception of The Adventure of Link, have avoided using numerals but instead have used subtitles, which is a nice change of pace for any genre.

I have missed this, our little moments together in our little corner of the internet.  I've since ordered a replacement keyboard which will hopefully arrive by the end of the week and will be installed within 10 minutes (as opposed the hour the guy at [N.O.] said it would take) and then I'll be able to get back to my regular routine.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Absence Makes The Heart Wonder Why There's No Beer In The Fridge.

Starting Over: Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light (DS)

The following is a post that I put up a short while back over on facebook, but I feel that it's perfect for our discussions here as well.  I've made a couple of small alterations/additions/subtractions, so it's not word-for-word, but pretty damn close.

I had been playing Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light for some time and treating it like a traditional RPG.  That is in fact, was one of the main reasons why I bought the game.  

Before the game was released, it was touted as going back to early RPG roots.  That there would be no highlighted text "clueing" you where to go next; no near infinite inventories; you would need to talk to pretty much everybody in town to find out where to go and what to do next.  Your inventory was limited to 15 items, which included your gear (Weapon, Armor, Shield, Accessory), usable magic spells and consumable items.  You know, a lot like Final Fantasy I or Dragon Warrior/Quest I.

Once I started the game, I found out that everything that I'd heard was true.  Enemies weren't always easy.  You could only save with a guy who would record your save data and who could only be found in towns or usually at the end of a dungeon right before a boss and that was it. I didn't always know where I was supposed to go and sometimes was really confused where to go once I was able to "fly" around the world map.

The strangest thing, for me, was that when in a battle, you told one of your characters what action to perform, but not on "whom" to perform that action on.  For example:  You told your Thief to attack, your Black Mage to cast "Firaga," your Fighter to attack and your White Mage to cast "Esuna."  The game then decided who your Thief and Fighter attacked, who your Black Mage cast "Firaga" on and who the White Mage cast "Esuna" on.  Now the computer isn't a complete idiot as it'll cast "Esuna" on anyone who has a status ailment and the attacks would usually land on the same person if they lived after the first assault.  This sounds kind of like a bad idea, until you get past the fact that you'll have to deal with it if you want to continue playing the game.  And I got over it pretty quickly, unless my White Mage was casting "Cure" to give 50 hp to my Black Mage when my Fighter was down 250 hp while fighting a boss that was strong against magical attacks.  Whatever.

Another aspect of the game that I liked, but didn't know about off hand, was that the enemies would level along with you.  So basically, you couldn't overpower enemies.  As it turned out, the bosses leveled along with you too so that you could never be at level 47 fighting a level 25 boss.  They were hovering somewhere right along with you.  I didn't find this out about the bosses leveling until I reached the final form the final boss in the game takes.  Not going too much into the details of the three failed attempts (disasterous attempts mind you), but I looked up how to sucessfully defeat this boss.  Turns out, level 50 is the "just about right" level to be at to defeat the boss.  My characters are at 80 and above.  Which means that even with some of the best equipment in the game, I'm fighting a boss that's 30 levels higher than it should be with gear that's close to 30 levels too low.  Even with upgraded equipment.  (Hypothetically then, I should just try and beat the game at the lowest level possible!)

In short, I'm pretty sure I fucked myself over.  My three options at this point are:

1) Continue trying to fight the boss as is and hope that he doesn't kill my White Mage on it's first of two attacks (which it has done all three times; bastard likes to kill White Mages the first thing in a battle apparently).  Then, if my White Mage doesn't die, hope that whomever the boss attacks isn't either of my tank-type characters.  This all sounds very plausible as I'm typing it out, but when the boss does physical damage between 250 - 600 hp with multiple attacks per turn and my characters (again, at level 80) have between 330 - 550 hp, the outlook is not so good.

2)  Spend hours upon hours gem/gold mining so that I can use a special defense and attack  combination that uses up gold coins rather than hit points.  This doesn't sound too bad either, until you realize that after 30 minutes of gem/gold mining, I only earn about 25,000 gold and I would need close to 2,000,000 in order to take out the final boss.  Roughly, that would be an additional 80 hours, which I would rather not have to do.

3)  Start the game all over again, being careful not to level my characters up as I was previously doing.  And I'm about 98.47% sure that I'm going to take this method.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

It's Like Failure In Reverse.