Blue Dragon

A while ago I finished playing through Blue Dragon on the XBOX360. I've told myself that I should write something about each game I finish to improve on my writing skills.

Now Blue Dragon is a fun game that unfortunately suffers from some faults. It has a very typical story, typical main-character and of course the trademark look and feel from Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragonball.
Being from Akira Toriyama it is fun to walk around the world and see all the different species of creatures living together and co-operating with each other.

The battle system is old. It is unfortunately very repetitive and can get on your nerves from time to time. The thing that really bugged me is that none of the characters in the game have any real weapons or armor, so nothing changed on them through the entire game.
Monster fights are fun though, but they are (to me at least) too much of a hassle to get together all the time.
Balance is a little out of whack though, mostly Disc 1 is easy and you don't really have any trouble with anything or anyone, then Disc 2 becomes slightly annoying since there are a lot of fights and they take a few turns, and though the battles have ok animations they take a while to execute and you start falling asleep after a while, this is the point where I left my XBOX on for 2 weeks without playing.

Story is fun, but nothing spectacular. Boy and friends want to save village, they get lost, they get back, they leave for a big 'ol adventure.

I don't really have much else to say. I liked playing it, I loved getting through it (finally) and that's about it, it's not very remarkable in any respect (other then it's made by Akira Toriyama).

Star Ocean: First Departure

Star Ocean: First Departure is, of course, a remake of the first Star Ocean game which was released on the Super Nintendo. It is not unexpected that Square Enix once again did a good job at remaking an old game since they have been gathering as much experience as they possible can in it.

Talking of course about games such as Final Fantasy III & IV and even I and II.



This is not the best game they have ever made and it is highly reminiscent of the Tales of Phantasia game, which was also first released on the SNES, with it's main difference being that Star Ocean employed an eagle-eye (now isometric) view of battles.

Both these games seem to start out very similarly too, since you are just hanging out in your peaceful village when, out of nowhere, bandits (or other evil people) show up and start trashing the place. But that is where similarities end.



Compared to the old SNES system these graphics look like an impossible improvement, I'm a big fan of actually re-writing a game for a remake. It would have been fine for them to do the same as they did with Final Fantasy I & II, just update the pixelated low-res graphics a bit to be less pixelated high-res screens, but apparently this was not enough for them.

Even though they did this it still looks like it predates even the first 3D playstation games, which is kind of shameful after presenting a game like Crisis Core, which looked almost like it could have been one of the better looking PS2 games (FF XII), but then again you don't want to spend too much money on an easy money-maker, do you?



Gameplay is nice. The battles are never really hard as long as you train enough and the idea of specialties and skills (not to be confused with special abilities) has always been a nice addition in my opinion. These skills, when used properly, can very easily make your characters very strong in the usual way of nicely upgrading your stats, but also by giving you skills to get more exp and find more/less enemies and gain more skill points per level. These come in handy in almost any situation. Walking around an easy area where you only get 7 exp? Just avoid enemies. Need a copy of an accesory so that you won't be petrified all the time? Make one. Very nice.



Sounds are quirky. During battles there is a lot going on at the same time, which is not unusual of course, but the things they choose to play and keep out seem far too random to be intentional. When 2 people cast a spell only one can be heard, for example, but after every battle 2 people always have a little victory speech.

The music is nicely done though, in my opinion, it suits the game and during the somewhat more exciting parts of the game it will slightly elevate your adrenaline levels if you are susceptible to such things.



The FMVs they made are awesome. It has the perfect anime look and feel and it suits the game very well, my only regret and complaint about these clips is that there are not nearly enough of them. And they started out so very promising with the entire first scene having transformed from a gameplay scene to an FMV.

The characters really come to life in these in my opinion, kudos.



The game isn't tough. It is not even really annoying at any point. Though of course you can increase difficulty for yourself by not training as much as I did (I had train and look for enemies on almost all the time), or trying to solo it with your main character.



Private actions are another nice thing. They show funny/nice/intruiging/sad scenes between your party members, it is fun to watch them sometimes and they will affect certain scenes in your story.



All-in-all this is a very nice game and it is a nice distraction from your everyday dealings. If you are a star ocean fan then you can't allow yourself to leave this one and if you just like RPGs then your should most definitely give it a try. If you neither like Star Ocean or RPGs then you are probably better off not bothering.

These are some 30 hours that I have enjoyed very much.

My Games

Since I've been on my vacation I've had lots of time to play games. And surprisingly also the energy and motivation to finish them!
I've always been one of those many people that play a game untill 90% or so and then get bored or nervous or whatever and then quit playing all together.

First off Riviera: The Promised Land. A friend of mine was always talking about it, how cool and special it was and stuff. And it is, it's very unique from what I've played.
This is the first RPG that I know I've played that has a kind of railed system. You can't really walk around yourself, just choose which exit you want to use and which things you want to look at and stuff.
The battles are pretty unique too. Gathering items and using them correctly in battle. Gaining stats through mastering items/weapons (thank god for practise!).
At first it's pretty easy, you walk around a little stressing over you overal score and not knowing what the hell you're doing and stuff. Then near the end it suddenly turns tough. Beasts get a lot stronger, weapons become somewhat of a short-supply. Of course it could just have been my personal mal-organization of items that caused them to become somewhat rare and the fact that I often screwed up the action sequences (which are awesome btw, like mini-games whenever a trap or something similar appears). But in the end if you keep your weapons with you and use the right weaknesses it will all work out.
Didn't die much all throughout the game, maybe once or twice before the final bosses and then once or twice more at the final bosses.
It was fun in the beginning, but in the end I only kept playing it because I didn't want to give up and get stupid and forgetfull and try it again later.
There's a special Chapter 8, but I haven't felt like playing it at all. I don't think I'll ever touch it again.

Second, I started playing Brave Story: New Traveler right after I finished Riviera. I'd seen screenshots and it looked awesome and my friend had played it for like 5 minutes and tried to convince me to play it before finishing Riviera. But when I started playing it I was stunned...
The graphics looked awesome, the animations look beautiful, the idea of the main hero's weapon is perfect (even though it gets kinda bad at lvl4 imo, but then cool again at lvl5), the monsters look cool, the fact that in some circumstances they go crazy (or get 'crazed') is excellent although later in the game sometimes quite fatal.
The story is pretty weak in my opinion, but not so much so that it interfere's in the enjoyment of the game. The other characters are pretty cool, the kitkin girl's ears flap like a cat's from time to time, very good, the waterkin looks just damn awesome, the highlander's dual-wielding capabilities look just damn amazing, the pankin really annoys me but gets better over time and the knight joins pretty late so I don't know if I think he's cool.
Again just like Riviera it starts out very easy and keeps being pretty easy through most of the game but then near the end it becomes a lot tougher. Sure you get pretty good armor if you look around a little, but they have big downsides (half healing effect, half speed).
It is fun though, if you haven't tried it... you should, NOW!

Anyway, now I have to wait for Dragoneer's Aria to come out and Guild Wars: Eye of the North.
Untill then I'll probably play some Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology.

Guild Wars asses and assets

I hadn't played Guild Wars in a long time because I was pretty much stuck with not doing anything much.
But 2 days ago I suddenly had an urge to play again, so I did. It was fun, I tried a mission and died and then had to go to bed. Then yesterday I played again and first I tried this mission again, someone asked to join my team so I let him (he wasn't very talkative though). We go through the mission and I'm trying to figure out what he's trying to do, he keeps waiting for something, which I thought was for me to take charge which I refused. He wouldn't say a thing and when we were defeated he immediately left. I apologized to him for being a bad player because I hadn't played in months, but he didn't answer of course.
Now this is a very mellow example but a lot of people who play MMO's are asses. You have the people like him who don't talk to you, expect something from you and then when you don't do what they want you to (because you don't know what it is) they get all frustrated and blame you for collective mistakes.
There's of course also the people who are just oversexed 14-year-olds who go around pretending to rape the female characters. One of them once tried that with my girlfriend's character. We had just gotten through a mission and we were just sitting around and chatting about what to do next when this dude comes up to her (warrior) and starts doing his damn disco-dance to her head. We got into a fight in which I got totally confused who was or wasn't on my side (I think I might've had words with someone who agreed with me too) and eventually he just ran away and the rest of the area was just in unison over what an ass he was. It was kinda fun in the end.
Then there are of course the people who just want one thing from a quest or mission and as soon as they get it just leave.
And of course the rushers, the W/Mos who think they're invincible because they can heal themselves a little. Probably sometimes when I get over-excited I become a rusher too, but usually I try and take it easy.

There are however, also the good people in Guild Wars. Someone from your guild who asks you to help him find a green item, which turns into a fruitless midnight raid of just one character. But always thanking you for what you did.
Or the old newbie who you got playing who you used to treat really badly because his play style didn't conform to your idea of what it was supposed to be (I guess he reminded me too much of what I used to be like?), who you've apologized to and now it's a lot of fun playing together.
There's your blood brother of course, who's nice to pretty much everyone, happens to be the leader of your guild and is just awesome to play with and will never tell you you're bad at anything or even not as good as he is.
And there are just the random people who enjoy playing with others and have fun no matter what happens.

I wish though that in general there were more good people then bad, though most of them probably think they're good people and people like me are bad people...

Accordion Hero & Modern Life

Lol, I've never played Guitar Hero myself, but of course I've seen several videos of it on YouTube (my friends are big fans, of Rock Band too). And it does look fun, but when I was looking at del.icio.us' front page and noticed a flash game that was described as 'Like Guitar Hero, but Accordion' I had to take a look.

Being a Pop 'n Music veteran (well, not really, 5 buttons only) I did't really have a lot of trouble, but since it is more like what I think Guitar Hero is too, it was some adjustment. Seeing as how you have to press the right button + space. Funny...
Check it here...

On another note, right after I'd checked the accordion hero game out I came across an image that was funny because it's true...
Check it here...