minna ni naisho dayo

Late to the Party: Advance Wars

So, after my last entry, I had to figure out which game I'd be playing through next. A few of you suggested Ninja Five-O, and I thank you guys for the suggestion, but since I didn't yet have it, and I wanted to get on with something ASAP, I chose another game that's been sitting around half-finished for months (actually, years): Advance Wars.

I got Advance Wars back when it came out on September 11, 2001 (what timing), but I only ever played a few missions in before getting sidetracked by something else. Now, with the DS version due out soon, and both GBA iterations sitting on my shelf waiting to be played, I figured it was a good time to get back to it.

After a couple of weeks of playing for roughly an hour a day, I finally finished the Campaign Mode last night. My overall Campaign rank was "B," but to be honest, I really wasn't playing to get a high grade. As fun and addictive as the game is, I really didn't care for the Campaign Mode all that much. I prefer the War Room maps, which basically start you and your opponent off on equal ground, making for a much more satisfying strategic experience. I'm still playing through the WR maps now, and I'm enjoying them immensely (my GBA SP's low battery light came on for the first time ever earlier today), but I think I may consider moving on to something else soon, since it seems like it'll take forever to finish all of them, and I've got lots of other games sitting here waiting to be played.

AV offered to lend me his Ninja Five-O, so I think I may take him up on that when I get back to Japan (I'm in America right now on vacation), but for the time being, I need to choose my next conquest. The potential candidates include: Final Fantasy II (from Dawn of Souls), Riviera: The Promised Land (just picked this up this morning), Advance Wars 2 (hmm, maybe I'll wait a bit before I take on more AW), Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, and Castlevania (from the NES Classics series). I think I'll hit up Castlevania first, just for a nice, easy change of pace, but what should I play after that? Help me decide!

One Game at a Time

Recently, I realized that I buy way too many games. Why spend all that money on new games when a good majority of them are just going to end up on my shelf for weeks, if not months before I ever get around to playing them?

It's tough to resist the allure of a hot new game here in Japan, and I often wind up buying stuff that I might have otherwise waited on just because I can get my hands on it early. I'd never be foolish enough to try and ditch that habit completely, as I know it's impossible (heart of a gamer and all that), but at the very least, I'm going to attempt to tone it down a bit. How, you ask? Simple: for the first time since probably the NES days, I'm going to try to stick to playing one game at a time.

Perhaps this might sound silly and obvious to some of you, but for me, it's going to be a huge undertaking. I'm used to playing upwards of five or six different games at a time, but the problem with that is that I rarely end up finishing any of them because there's no time to focus on them. (It certainly doesn't help that I routinely work 12 hour days, including weekends, which severely limits my play time as it is.)

I decided to kick off this bold new adventure by finishing a game I started months ago in Japanese but never got around to completing: the GBA version of Final Fantasy (from Final Fantasy I&II: Dawn of Souls).

Somebody asked me why I was playing this, and I had a hard time coming up with a solid answer. It was mostly nostalgia-fueled, I decided, but I was also eager to check out the new Soul of Chaos dungeons.

It took me 30 hours to complete, which is quite high considering how short the game is. Why did it take so long? Because I'm a doofus, that's why. I spent several hours looking for Death Machine (WarMech to you old-schoolers) in the Flying Fortress, before realizing I was on the wrong floor. Whoops! I also finished all four bonus dungeons (120 floors in all, maybe 10 of which were actually interesting), which took some time. By the time I got to the last boss, my party was unstoppable.

So how was it? In a word, great. The graphics and especially the music were just outstanding, and the localization quality was light years beyond any previous incarnation of Final Fantasy I to hit the US (cheers, Joe!). I had a good time plowing through the admittedly dated quest, but I think I'm going to take a break from Final Fantasy before moving on to FFII. Without the nostalgia factor to cushion things, I'm afraid I may not be able to enjoy it nearly as much, and I've got other handheld games I want to play right now, like Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones and Pokemon Emerald. The bonus dungeons were pretty boring and unfulfilling (aside from the bosses and the few floors that had actual story bits, most of it was easy and repetitive), and the ending text was way too long and preachy, but otherwise my complaints are few.

BTW, one thing worth mentioning: the end credits to Final Fantasy I make NO mention of the Gooch whatsoever. Programmer Nasir? Check. Character Designer Yoshitaka Amano? Check. Scenario Writer Kenji Terada? Check. Creator and father of Final Fantasy Hironobu Sakaguchi? Nowhere to be found. What's up with that?

Anyway, there you go. One game down, one million to go. I'm thinking I might have to differentiate between console and handheld games, since I've always got a handheld of some sort on me (even if it's just my keitai), so let's say one handheld game at a time, one console/PC game at a time. The console/PC game I'm playing right now is Ys: The Oath in Felghana, but what handheld game should I tackle next?