Only one of us shall escape this domain alive.

I'm really glad that I decided to finally start playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne for real recently, because it's a fantastic game. My co-op partner and I have been making steady progress on it for the past couple of weeks. A large percentage of our playtime is spent deliberating on which demons we should fuse and what movesets they should have. We disagree a lot on what abilities are most useful, but that's part of what makes playing through the game collaboratively interesting. Still, these discussions do tend to add a lot of artificial time to our playthrough. We're at something like 45 hours into the game and I'm not quite sure how much more we have to go. I think it's safe to say we're a little over half the way through, but I'm sure the last couple of dungeons are going to be daunting--and the optional content will be even more time consuming if we choose to attempt it.

Nocturne features demons, spirits, and beasts that I've already seen in the Persona series but this time in a much different context. Persona is about the human characters. The demons themselves are generally secondary and serve merely as sources of power for the game's characters. In Nocturne, the demons are integral to the plot and to the theme and atmosphere of the game. Demons like Matador, Daisoujou, and Mizuchi feel impactful and memorable not just because of the mythological beings they represent, but because they exist in the game as characters, as powerful entities which the demonic protagonist must defeat. When the demi-fiend (the aforementioned protagonist) encounters Matador by surprise in a darkened hallway, as he grasps him by the legs and drags him into some hellish dimension--it is chilling. It is memorable. And the twisted music that accompanies this encounter (and future fiend counters) is positively spine-tingling.

The demi-fiend wanders a post apocalyptic world populated only by the souls of the dead, demons, and bizarre sentient manikins that move and twitch unnaturally as they speak to you. The only remaining living humans are those that were fortunate enough to be inside Shinjuku Hospital at the very beginning of the game before the Conception occurred. The demi-fiend will encounter these humans--some of whom were friends before the world changed--and will discover that each has different ideas about how the world should be reborn. And it is up to the demi-fiend to decide, ultimately, how that will happen.

Although Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne doesn't contain some of the features I loved about the Persona series, it more than makes up for it with atmosphere, challenge, and variety. There are tons of demons to fuse and try in Nocturne, all of which can be placed into your active or reserve party. Reserve party members can contribute outside of battle with healing and utility spells like Estoma, which reduces the encounter rate--or Liftoma, which nullifies the effect of damaging floor tiles. The demi-fiend himself learns skills through Magatama, strange parasites that can be ingested. They also impart resistances (and frequently weaknesses) to various elements, as well as bonuses to certain stats. It is in this way that the player can customize the protagonist to their liking with up to 8 total skills. There isn't as much diversity in the protagonist's playstyle as in Persona 3 and 4, but considering the variety available in party members, I can't fault the game for this.

Suffice to say, it's a wonderful game and I can't wait to play other titles in the main series. I just might backtrack and start from the very first one.

Sunday Fitness Rant #3

Okay, well, I think, I've resigned myself to writing these fitness entries on Sundays instead of Saturdays. It's becoming routine for me to stay out pretty late on Saturday nights (for video game purposes, of course) and I find I'm frequently too tired to return home and write out an entry! That's okay though, because I don't feel the need to write an entry every day--just every day that I feel it's warranted. I can only hope that I can maintain a pace that results in 5-6 entries per week, but we'll have to see how that goes!

Anyhow, I am happy to report that I have reached the 220s on the weight scale, coming in narrowly at 229 for this week. Additionally, I made it to the gym this morning and had a legitimate workout. I hadn't been for about a week and a half because of things that kept getting in my way (and of course me making excuses) but I feel much better now that I've gone. Like I've mentioned previously, I'd love to be able to go at least three times a week, but more would be even better. I pushed myself pretty hard today and actually felt a little queasy after getting off the treadmill. I was worried for a bit that I'd maybe overdone it, but I feel fine now. I think that level of cardio is just going to take some getting used to. I'm confident I'll be be able to increase my pace and endurance considerably over the next few months.

I spoke with my uncle briefly today about my progress and he warned me that I shouldn't try to lose weight too quickly or I might run into issues with loose skin. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm terrified that might happen--but at this point I feel like there's little I can do to stop it. I'm so accustomed to this diet and so comfortable with it that the pounds are melting off without me doing any exercise at all. I want to actually get in shape while I'm losing all this weight, though, so these gym visits will hopefully help with that. I'd be really bummed if I lost a lot of weight and still had saggy skin, but I guess I'll have to deal with that when I come to it. At the very least, there's nothing stopping me from getting in shape and I know I'm going to feel better, even if my body shape doesn't end up exactly where I want it to be.

An old coworker of mine commented today on how much weight I've lost. That felt really good to hear, because it's not something I've heard much yet. I can see the progress I've made--a little bit, anyway. And of course I have the scale to prove it, but the validation from hearing it from others--it's tremendously gratifying. I know I still have a long way to go, but knowing that my efforts have not gone unnoticed is a huge boost to my motivation.

Insomniac Daze

I've been trying to focus a lot more on my health lately, particularly with my diet and activity levels--but one thing I haven't made much of an effort to change is my sleep schedule. I'm not getting very much sleep, and it's having a pronounced effect on my mood and willingness to accomplish tasks that need to be completed. It's hitting me harder lately because I've been getting scheduled more hours at work. Longer hours means two things for me: one, I need to be alert for a long period of time, and two, I have this overwhelming urge once I get off work to somehow make up for having less free time. I stay up later than I should.

At this point, it's not really an issue of insomnia. If I made a concerted effort to go to sleep, I probably would. I'm always so perfectly willing to invest in the short term over the long term. I've learned time and time again that although I can function on low sleep, it's not something that's sustainable over the long term and it gets worse and worse on subsequent days of work. It's just not a wise policy to adopt, no matter how much I want to finish the games I'm playing now before the month is over.

When it comes down to it, coffee is just not serving as quite as effective a substitute for sleep lately. It helps in the short term, of course, but I find myself flagging in the latter hours of the day and my attitude suffers. I find myself lacking tolerance for others and becoming quickly irritated by things that might otherwise not faze me. As someone in a sales position, it's not great to be in a position where you cannot communicate effectively with customers. Beyond that, though, it's laudable to be courteous to others regardless of the relationship. That's something I'd like to be able to do but when I'm running so low on sleep it's difficult. But that's not an excuse, either, particularly because I feel I could be getting more sleep if I could convince myself it's important.

I'm scheduled until close tomorrow night, but I'll probably have to help move some things into a trailer outside our building while it's being remodeled, so it's likely I'll be there until well after 7. Even so, I'd really like to get in a good Nocturne play session because the amount of time I've been able to play it lately is really not enough! I'm really enjoying my sessions with my co-op partner on that game, particularly when it comes to our unnecessarily detailed theorycrafting and planning for party compositions. I'm afraid if I don't buckle down we'll never finish it. Of course, I'd love to be able to finish it this month but that may not be realistic. I'm pained to say I've still only finished one game this month. I'm being productive, I swear.

Etrian Toolbox

Despite my mixed feelings on the Etrian Odyssey series, I went ahead and ordered the third and fourth games. Etrian Odyssey II is really fun once it gets going. You have to invest a lot of time into making your characters strong and into planning your strategy. There are many strategies that are effective in the early parts of the game and others that are only effective later on. Fortunately, Etrian Odyssey allows you to respec your skills at any point after reaching level 30--at the steep cost of losing 10 levels, of course. Once your party is at a certain point, farming the stratum bosses is really a simple matter, though, and as a result it's not incredibly tough to get those levels back.

I really like that EO allows you to field a huge number of adventurers and switch them out at will when returning to town. It gives me plenty of room to experiment and to explore different strategies. Some of my characters serve no more of a purpose than harvesting resource points in the dungeon. I trained my Dark Hunter initially so I'd be able to use the instant kill skill Climax to meet the requirement for the second stratum boss's conditional drop--but I ended up liking the class so much that I drafted him into my permanent lineup. I'd actually used a Dark Hunter briefly early in the game, but I'd had a really hard time making him useful. He was frail and did very little damage. It wasn't until I'd pumped quite a few levels into the guy and maxed out Climax and Bait that he really started to become useful. This requires a good 25-30 levels, mind you. Now he's a master of counterattacking and finishing off enemies at 55% health or less.

I think in order to greatly minimize my frustration in Etrian Odyssey III (and IV I suppose) I'll need to figure out the best strategy for the early game. This is by far the most frustrating aspect of these games so far, but once I'm at a point where I can easily acquire experience and money, I can experiment with team compositions as much as I want. If the early part of the game goes more smoothly, then I get to the juicy part faster and I get a much better impression of the game.

I've also considered going full out and ordering the remakes of Etrian Odyssey I and II when I'm done with some of the others. I've read that they're different enough from the original versions to be considered brand new games in their own rights. If they include many of the new classes from later games in the series then I don't see why I wouldn't want to try them out. Evidently they also contain new story-heavy modes with predetermined characters. I have mixed feelings about that, but it does sound like something I'd like to try at any rate. Also coming up is Etrian Mystery Dungeon, a fascinating hybrid of EO's gameplay and that of the Mystery Dungeon series, of which I've only played Chocobo's Dungeon. I like that game a lot but sadly I have not finished it. I'd like to set a tentative goal of completing Chocobo's Dungeon and at least the rest of the contiguous EO series before I tackle Etrian Mystery Dungeon, but I have to say I find the concept very intriguing.

Quashing the tedium in Etrian Odyssey II

I have a lot of mixed feelings about the Etrian Odyssey series so far. It is simultaneously punishing, tedious, difficult, broken, and when things work well, rewarding. When I started the first game of the series I had a very rough time in the beginning. Despite doing my fair share of research, I found myself getting trounced by the labyrinth's dangers over and over. I knew what was strong because I'd read about it but I wanted to try my best to try out my own strategies and play to my own tastes. In the end, I did decide to rely on the game-breakingly powerful Immunize skill wielded by the Medic class in an effort to make the game bearable! And after a fashion, it became a lot more fun. Each foray into the labyrinth was longer and there was less tension in exploring. Having to return to town over and over again, spending my hard earned funds on healing--and often running out of gold prematurely--it's disheartening! Etrian Odyssey punishes suboptimal strategies rather harshly.

When I started Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard, I thought I knew better, thought I knew enough about the game's mechanics to make it on my own with only a minimal amount of research. Of course, these games aren't very forthcoming with ability descriptions, as it turns out, and trying out different builds for characters is a time consuming (and expensive) process. My initial party composition was hilariously unsuccessful. Each new floor to which I ascended was like hitting a brick wall. I wanted to try a party very much unlike the heavy damage party I used in the first game. I wanted something with a lot of utility and control, primarily geared toward taking down the game's many bosses. This is an okay idea in theory, but it completely disregards the bulk of the game--dungeon crawling.

Etrian Odyssey II's bosses can be tough, but in my book it's frequently more challenging just to traverse the maze floors leading up to them. Even some of the most common enemies can be quite troublesome to defeat. In one of the early floors, an odd ostrich-like enemy called a Moa can decimate unprepared parties singlehandedly. Occasionally, the Moa will be accompanied by allies that compound this problem. Of course, there are strategies that make dealing with enemies like this much easier, but these strategies may not necessarily be appropriate for bosses or for other enemies in the dungeon. For this reason it is important to have a party that is well balanced for a variety of purposes. Alternatively, you can run a flexible party with members that be switched out at will. This is more difficult to maintain and requires more commitment from the player, of course, but it is a game that rewards those who put forth that commitment.

The very first boss of Etrian Odyssey II is a chimera. It's very weak to ice so logically a Gunner with Iceshot/Riskice or an Alchemist with Ice/Freeze would assist tremendously with defeating it. Poisoning it is also a highly effective strategy, but unfortunately it's very resistant to poison. The kicker here is that if the player poisons this particular boss and defeats it while it is afflicted by that ailment, it will drop a specific item worth 30,000 EN at the shop. Each boss has a conditional drop like this. If the player is willing to put forth the commitment to training characters tailored specifically to employing these strategies, he'll be rewarded with far more money than could be easily obtained otherwise.

Of course, there's really only two viable ways to poison in Etrian Odyssey II. There's the Dark Hunter's Viper skill, which deals damage and has a 45% (or so) chance to poison before resistances. This isn't very likely to work considering the Chimera's resistance to the ailment, so the better option is to employ a Hexer with maxed out Poison, points in Luck, and gear with bonuses to Luck if you can lay your hands on it. Even then, it might take four or five turns to successfully land the ailment. Meanwhile, the Chimera is hitting hard every turn and his allies are encroaching on the party. Let's not forget that leveling a Hexer can be a challenging process early in the game because Poison is very unlikely to successfully land before maxed, their physical attacks are pitiful, and they are ridiculously frail.

Once you meet the requirements for a highly accurate Poison skill, it is possible to repeatedly defeat the boss with this method and get access to its conditional drop. Not only does it sell for 30,000 EN, but it also unlocks a very powerful (possibly the most powerful?) bow. It was for this reason that I decided to train a Survivalist (bow user) and run that boss several more times. I was eager to make the game go more smoothly for me. It's not clear to me if this is a "cheap" strategy or akin to breaking the game and I honestly don't care. What it has done is make the game a lot more fun to play. I've since defeated the boss of the second stratum and made my way through about half of the third with fewer problems than I might have otherwise had--and I haven't trivialized the difficulty, either. There are still plenty of fearsome FOEs roaming around capable of annihilating my party. But I no longer feel hopeless and frustrated.

PS4 Woes

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD released in NA today and with it comes the one somewhat compelling reason I've discovered so far to purchase a PS4. Critical reception seems relatively positive so far, but if I'm being honest with myself I've been looking for some kind of excuse to buy the console lately. With titles like Final Fantasy XV, Disgaea V, and Persona V on the (distant?) horizon, it's a console I'll most definitely have to purchase at some point. Why not now when I have some extra cash lying around? Of course, I have somewhat of a poor history of effectively managing my funds--and that's the only reason I'm hesitant. The other reason is that I just purchased the Samsung Galaxy Tab S tablet. I'm immensely pleased with it, but it did set me back a few bucks. Returning it is not outside the realm of possibility, but I'm finding myself becoming more attached to it by the day.

Also weighing against me is the fact that I have so many games in my backlog to work through! My tentative goal for game completion was five per month for this year, and here I am over halfway through March and I've only completed Etrian Odyssey. I'm still playing the games I'm working on quite frequently, but they're all very long and in some cases quite difficult. Etrian Odyssey II has been quite the slog and only after a very recent grinding session have I begun to find the game tolerable to actually play. Fortunately, I'm beginning to make progress on it. Similarly, Tales of Graces f and Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne are quite long RPGs on which I'm struggling to make progress. I've been neglecting Graces for EOII not because I prefer the latter but because it strikes me as a puzzle that I must solve and overcome. Now that I've gotten over that crucial hump, it might behoove me to focus more on Graces since I must be approaching a spot that is 2/3rds of the way through the game, at least.

I am not without patience when it comes to these games I want to play, of course, but I'm afraid of what might happen to this sum of cash I've built up. What if the time comes when I find I need the PS4 and all of my funds have mysteriously disappeared? This is not outside the realm of possibility, sad as that may be to admit. Still, this doesn't strike me as a particularly compelling reason to march out and purchase the console before I miss my chance.

I continue to find ways to rationalize my potential purchase. Final Fantasy Type-0 HD is a game I'd very much like to play, but aside from several upcoming titles, it's the only one. A small argument could be made for Infamous: Second Son despite its lukewarm critical reception. It is a game I would probably purchase because I enjoyed the previous games in the series, but it shouldn't be considered as a legitimate console-seller--for me, anyway. And what else is there for me on that console? Not a thing that I can think of. There's still a whole world of PS3 games that I haven't played, actually--precisely because I've focused so much on retro games in the past couple of years. I have a small library of PS3 games that I like but there are tons of likely solid RPGs that I haven't had the chance to experience. It's tempting to move on to the biggest and newest titles, but let's be honest here--Final Fantasy Type 0 HD is not that game. It's an enhanced port of a Japan-only PSP game. I'm sure it looks prettier than the original, but from what I've heard the content is largely unchanged. Should I really purchase a PS4 just for that?

Everything All of the Time

As I sat down to write this entry, Blogger notified me of a number of domains that were available for purchase. Any of these could be applied to this blog if I so choose, and all of the sample domains on that list are variations of this blog's title--Everything All of the Time. I'd never put a lot of thought on the title, but I did happen to nab it from a song I was enjoying at the time by a group called Jakob. The song in question is, of course, "Everything All of the Time."

Jakob - "Everything All of the Time"

Of course, when those domain options popped up in front of me, I was momentarily taken aback. Buying one of those domains was an immediate consideration for me because "dalkaen.blogspot.com" is certainly a domain without a lot of personality. Is "Everything All of the Time" really the perfect name for my blog, though? It's ridiculously general and clearly doesn't have anything to do with video games and that's what I discuss most. Of course, it's not the only thing I write about. Maybe that's really what this all is, then. It's a place I come to write about whatever it is that's on my mind, whether it be my obsession with video games or any of my numerous soul-eroding neuroses. It fits quite well with my tireless need to categorize and to document the world around me. 

And hey, as it turns out, it's also a line from one of my favorite Radiohead songs, "Idioteque."

Radiohead - "Idioteque"

Really, it doesn't seem like such a bad name. Maybe I should buy that domain. I think www.everythingallofthetime.com is available, even. It really wouldn't affect much considering the laughably small reader base I have (if it can even be considered as such), but I think it would be nice. I haven't had my own domain name in years and I'm not completely sure why that is. I've always wanted to have some kind of internet presence and now that I've cordoned off my own meager corner of the web, I might as well make its moniker official.

I guess I could also consider sprucing up the place a bit. The layout is very vanilla, but I kind of like it that way. It's clear and easy to read with few distractions. Still, I could probably toss in a link here and there or whip up some kind of banner image with my meager Photoshop skills. It seems pretty clear at this point that this blog's here to stay for awhile, so I should at least consider making it more my own.

Satur--Sunday Fitness Rant

I missed writing an entry last night because I was out really late and was super tired by the time I got home. It makes me wonder if I should commit to some kind of 5-6 day a week schedule for this blog. It's inevitable at this point that I'm going to miss a few entries here and there since I've been making much more of an effort to get out of the house lately. Of course, I haven't been to the gym in some time now. My last experience there scared me off a bit.

The first few times I went to the gym, it was very early in the morning when traffic was very low. Most recently, however, it was positively choked with people. Every treadmill, every elliptical, and most stations in the place were in use. I found a machine for which I have no name and did some crunches with resistance from the weights attached to the machine. After I'd finished there, I was unsure what to do. My usual machine of choice is the treadmill, because walking and/or jogging has always been the exercise I'm most comfortable doing. All were taken and I felt very strongly that I was being watched and judged the entire time I was there. It didn't help that I was outfitted in very inappropriate clothes for working out--jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie. I don't really own any clothes appropriate for working out as far as I know. I committed to buying some workout clothes and returning once I'd purchased them, but it's Sunday now and I still haven't done anything about it.

I will return to the gym as soon as I possibly can. That's a promise I've made to myself and I intend to keep it. I'm determined to continue to lose weight and get in shape and I have to imagine there'll come a time when my diet is not enough to maintain my progress. I weighed in yesterday at 233, a full three pounds of progress since last week. I think I'm starting to see the effects of my weight loss in the mirror, but it's still pretty clear that I'm overweight, albeit not obese. I'm sure that regardless of the amount of weight I lose, I'll still appear pretty doughy until I get serious about working out. I've made tentative plans to go shopping with my cousin sometime this week. I need new shoes for work, clothes more appropriate for the warmer weather that's coming, and of course, workout clothes. I'm going to take care of that and put together a pretty firm schedule for going to the gym. I need to do more research on how to use the various machines there because although my uncle instructed me on the use of a number of them, I'm still pretty lost on how to proceed. The treadmill is good, I suppose, but I don't think it's going to be enough.

Realistically, I think I'd like to commit to going to the gym three days a week--with the understanding I should attempt to go more often if at all possible. I'm not comfortable with going in the afternoon when things are busiest, but maybe after I drop a few more pounds and start to feel more in shape, those insecurities will begin to evaporate. That's a big part of what this whole thing is about, after all. I want to feel better about myself and more secure in my own skin. Health is very important, too, but I have to admit it's secondary to that.

In Times

I've really been considering buying a PS4 lately, but, try as I might, I can't think of a good reason to do so just yet. There are games for the console I want, of course, but none of them are out yet and it's certainly possible they won't be out for awhile. I'm of course interested in Final Fantasy XV, but I'm convinced it won't be out until next year sometime. Disgaea 5 is set to release later this month, but no official North American release date has been confirmed. Then there's Persona 5, which is set to release. . .this year sometime. It's also available for PS3 and I've not heard any details on what differences there might be between those versions. The only PS4 game released so far that I kind of want to play is Infamous: Second Son, but most reviews I've read were pretty lukewarm--not the kind of reception that would provoke me into buying the console.

Still, I know I'll want to own the PS4 eventually. Would it not make sense to go ahead and get it now when I have some extra cash? I don't know. I just can't feel good about it unless there are two to three games on the console I'd really like to purchase. Let's not forget that I have plenty of games just lying there waiting to be played as it is.

The other thing I've been considering is actually purchasing a new PS2. Mine is in poor shape. It technically still works, but the disc tray is almost completely inoperable due to my attempts to mod it to play Japanese games. I was able to do so successfully, but getting the disc tray open now requires some pretty deft use of butter knives. If I got a new PS2, I could more conveniently play some of those games that have been in my backlog for some time. I'm playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne on PS3 as a PS2 Classic but I'd love to be able to pop in one of the many Nippon Ichi RPGs I haven't finished or even Digital Devil Saga. Now that I'm playing Nocturne, I'd definitely like to revisit those.

I do feel a little apprehensive about buying a replacement console, though. I almost want to wait until I've taken care of a lot of the other games I own, because I feel like I'm being spread pretty thin as it is, especially since I broke out Chocobo's Dungeon again last night. I need to be patient and work through these games one at a time, but games like  Etrian Odyssey are dangerously close to breaking that patience. Boy, are those games frustrating.

Now Playing Roundup #1

I'm thinking about focusing a little bit more on clearing out my backlog in the coming months. I've started playing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (for the first time in five years, mind you) in bursts over at a friend's house and we're really enjoying it. It's a prototype of a lot of features that showed up in future SMT titles but it really does stand on its own as a fun game with a really spooky/trippy atmosphere. Of course, because it's Atlus, it also has its fair share of humor that occasionally feels a little. . .out of place in a post-apocalyptic setting.

I'm also soldiering on with Tales of Graces, a game that I might be able to call my favorite of the Tales series--although let's back up for a minute and let it marinate before I go tossing that around. The combat system is excellent, though, and very liberating in comparison to other titles. There's no resource management between fights and the pace is positively frenetic. There are tons and tons of moves to unlock and you have a ton of freedom in how you link those moves together in combat. The Graces interpretation of the Tales combat system is really great and I can only hope that Xillia and Zestiria follow suit. I'm deliberately avoiding reading up on them too much so I don't disappoint myself.

I'm trudging miserably through the beginning sections of Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard, already regretting my choice in party composition. It's a team that might be effective later on, but is very low on damage at this stage of the game. It is my hope that there will come a point where my party composition afford me supreme control and extremely high burst damage, but it's difficult to say at this point just how realistic that is as I am continually pummeled into submission by the first stratum's boss.

After scouring my house, I was able to find the long forgetting power cable for my Wii and was therefore able to extricate my copy of Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon from my console--a game that I've been wanting to revisit for a long time. It's been a sore on my backlog for years now and I'm genuinely unsure why I've never managed to finish it. I can only assume I was playing through it when my old Wii console died. This catastrophe also halted my progress on games like Klonoa and Muramasa (which I did complete a couple years back), as well as, annoyingly, Super Mario Galaxy. I have few excuses for not having finished that game, especially considering just how much progress I've made on it in the past. It's been lying in wait just begging to be finished for some time now!

Once I finish this round of games (or rather, once I finish Graces), I'll renew my quest to clear out my backlog with fervor. Of course, it's not the first time I've said that, and I've not frequently stayed true to my goal. On the other hand, I did take out a pretty huge chunk of my backlog last year, including the remaining catalogs of two whole consoles. Unfortunately, I've since added one more PS1 game to my backlog (Legend of Mana) and I'm not sure when I'll finish that one.

Roar of the Beast

Persona Q was the first game I finished this year, although most of its playtime came from last year. It was a game on which I spent an enormous amount of time not only because I liked it a lot but because it had a lot of content to cover. It was essentially the casts of Persona 3 and 4 inserted into an Etrian Odyssey game although many traditional Persona/Shin Megami Tensei mechanics were retained such as Persona fusion, oddball spell names, and of course the characters themselves and their various backstories and histories. Pretty much everything else is yanked straight from Etrian Odyssey, which I why I felt it would be a great idea to backtrack and play through the series. I loved Persona Q so I figured it was a reasonable assumption that I'd like Etrian Odyssey too.

Well, I wasn't wrong, necessarily, but I still wasn't quite prepared for what I was getting into. Etrian Odyssey is difficult, time consuming, and often infuriating. The early levels of the Yggdrasil Labyrinth are punishing enough that I was almost ready to throw in the towel within hours. Still, I was intrigued by the options I had available to me in creating my own party from a pool of classes and the freedom I had in building those characters. Unfortunately, Etrian Odyssey punishes suboptimal party compositions pretty harshly. It seems close to impossible to compose a group that does not include a Medic, for instance. If not for the ridiculous power of their Immunize spell, I feel pretty confident that a Protector would have been an absolute requirement as well.

Much of the gameplay of Etrian Odyssey consists of traveling as deep into the labyrinth as possible and drawing accurate maps of your surroundings, hoping against hope that the enemies in the next fight don't end your journey prematurely. Thankfully, it is possible to retain map information after your party's untimely death, but you will lose any experience and items you might have gained on the way there. Early on, the only way to escape from the labyrinth without exiting from the first floor is to use a Warp Wire, an item purchasable from the shop for 100 EN. Of course, money is rather hard to come by early on, and 100 EN is absurdly steep. Frequent exits from the dungeon are brutal on your pocket. It is very difficult in these early stages to build up any sum of money to acquire better gear from the shop. It can be done, but it's very repetitive and time consuming. There may even be occasions where you can't afford to revive fallen party members if a particular journey goes awry rather earlier than expected.

Once you get far enough into the game, money becomes less of a problem. It is possible to farm FOEs (the powerful roving enemies that can generally be avoided) on earlier floors to gain items that can be sold for large sums of money. It's not easy to get to that point, though, and not particularly fun. I have no problem with difficulty in my games, but Etrian Odyssey is hard in the beginning mostly because you are being starved of resources. This isn't very fun to me. Once your funds are in order, everything gets a bit more manageable, but the difficulty remains pretty high throughout. There was never a time where I felt I was breezing through floors. It was always this sensation of chipping away at a mountain, slowly becoming stronger and more adept at making my way through.

Once you've built your characters up, you'll find that a number of strategies trivialize the difficulty of the game. The Medic's Immunize ability, as previously mentioned, is quite powerful. With ten points allocated to the skill, the buff bestows the entire party with a 60% resistance to all damage. This is a bug, mind you--it was only supposed to resist elemental damage. This causes it to greatly eclipse the Protector's Defender ability in usefulness as it only affects physical damage. However, the two abilities stack, meaning it is possible to render your party practically immune to physical damage while taking very little damage from elemental attacks. I tried not to take advantage of this, but I will admit that I used Immunize, if not a Protector. The game stayed hard enough even so, and I found I had to resort to some unusual strategies to defeat the final boss.

Etrian Odyssey is certainly rough around the edges--and if I'm being honest I probably should have tried to play the remake (The Millennium Girl) instead, but I wanted to play the original version of the game for contextual purposes. I intend to do the same with Etrian Odyssey II (and I'm doing that right now) but I'm already finding that it has a lot of the same issues as its predecessor. At least it has a lot more diversity in available classes and a few welcome interface tweaks.

Dark Enforcer

There was a reasonably lengthy period of time where I was dividing my time between playing Tales of Innocence and Tales of Vesperia depending on whether I was at home or at my co-op partner's house. I don't intend to repeat this mistake in the future and in fact I'm playing through Tales of Graces now and absolutely do not intend to play Xillia with my co-op partner. (We've found something else to play, but I'll go over that some other time.) Innocence and Vesperia have similar but subtly different control schemes, which was enough to cause a lot of frustration and incorrect button presses. Even so, I spent a significantly longer period of time playing Tales of Vesperia--and it's undoubtedly the superior game of the two.

I like Tales of Vesperia for the same reason that I enjoy most Tales titles. It's all about the combat system. I played Judith for the majority of the game's running time and I never felt like I fully grasped how to do her complex aerial combos correctly. The fact that the combat had that kind of depth is really refreshing, although I think I would have preferred if it had been a bit faster paced. The contrast between it and Tales of Innocence is like night and day. Whenever I played Vesperia after playing Innocence it felt like my character was weighted down by some unseen force. Characters take their time swinging their weapons and performing their combos, giving enemies ample time to interrupt these rather deliberate movements. This does sometimes add to the difficulty, but not in a particularly satisfying way. Even so, the variety of moves and combos that the characters can perform is quite impressive and satisfying to experiment with.

I also enjoyed the characters for the most part, although I'm not certain including a dog as a playable character was the best choice. I think I might have liked him better if he was more of a normal dog that was infused with magic somehow--but was fiercely loyal to his master. This particular dog holds a pipe and a knife in his teeth simultaneously and makes barking noises a real dog would most likely never make. Yuri himself (the protagonist) is interesting, but it's debatable that the game ever really deals with some of the actions he takes throughout. Suffice to say he make some questionable moral calls and just kind of shrugs it off. He's saving the world, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

Estelle is the archetypical female JRPG healer, cheerful and naive. She does have a few paladin tropes going on as well, what with her sword and shield, but she's generally relegated to hurling healing spells in the back line. Karol is the boisterous young boy with a desire for adventure. Interestingly, he serves as the group's tank, wielding giant hammers and swords in combat. Rita is the young mage, whose fiery temper often gets the better of her. Karol is the dirty old man who makes inappropriate comments about 15-year-old Rita and Judith, the scantily clad dragon knight with very little personality of her own except for her distinctive nasally voice--which may just as well have more to do with the personality of the voice actress delivering her lines.

Although the characters of Tales of Vesperia adhere to some pretty clear tropes, I couldn't bring myself to dislike them--except perhaps for Judith, whose personality never really resonated with me. The plot itself is nothing special, however, and in many cases is quite disjointed. It's never really explained well along the way what such things as "aer krene," "blastia cores," and "bodhi blastias" are, but I was able to infer through context over a long period of time. Of course, they're still not very well explained or all that interesting in the end, so I smiled and nodded and continued to defeat all of the foes in my way. That's really the reason I was playing. Of course, the banter between the characters was often a nice bonus.

Tales of Mediocrity

Once my co-op partner and I finished Tales of Eternia, I found I wanted to pick up on another Tales game right away. I ordered Tales of Vesperia but it wasn't going to arrive for a few days--so I decided I was going to try Tales of Legendia. I'd heard from a few sources that it wasn't the greatest entry in the series, but I was confident I would enjoy it for the combat system at the very least. Unfortunately, my PS2 is broken and my PS2 emulator had issues running the game. I was disappointed, but still wanted a Tales game to play while Vesperia was on its way. After doing a little research, I discovered that Tales of Innocence, an entry for DS released only in Japan, had been fan translated! I wasn't sure what to expect from a DS Tales title, but I thought it might be worth a try.

My first reaction to Tales of Innocence was mixed. I was uncomfortable with just how squished and small all of the details were. Of course, everything was constrained for the DS screen, but I feel I've played many many titles for the system that did not fill me with that sense of claustrophobia. I was also pretty ambivalent about only being able to field a party of three characters, but Tales of Innocence makes it work in its own way. Switching between characters seems more important than in other Tales titles, primarily because of the Infinite Jam mechanic.

The game's battle system is not unlike other 3D Tales games, but it's decidedly more fast paced than Vesperia. It's very easy to knock opponents into the air and combo them endlessly. Once the Tension Gauge is built up (ostensibly by dealing consistent damage), Infinite Jam can be initiated with a button press. This allows you to start your combo over regardless of what stage you were in your chain. If you perform your combo well, the Tension Gauge will drain slowly. The optimal move is to quickly switch to another character after completing your combo and then go through that character's combo string as well. If performed correctly, it's possible to chain together combos from all three characters and even get in a few hits with the character that initiated Infinite Jam once more. It's a very effective tactic against bosses, but I found myself using it in random encounters quite often.

And let me tell you, Tales of Innocence has a lot of random encounters. Enemies appear on screen as is typical in latter day Tales titles, but they're frequently impossible to avoid considering the fact that the lionshare of dungeons in Innocence are comprised of a series of narrow corridors. The dungeon design seems to alternate between ridiculously linear ala Final Fantasy XIII and positively impenetrable mazes not unlike Etrian Odyssey--except without the assistance of a minimap. Dungeon design is far from Tales of Innocence's strong point and in fact it very nearly forced me to stop playing the game entirely.

Compounding the annoyance of these poorly designed dungeons is the omnipresence of profoundly annoying and difficult to defeat enemies. Many enemies use highly evasive tactics in which they toss out a magic spell and then run away, only to once again hurl a lightning bolt--and for whatever reason, they seem more or less immune to being caught in a combo, so they take far longer than seems necessary to defeat. In many cases, when luck is against you, you'll find yourself in an encounter with multiples of these kind of enemies and find yourself positively outmatched. I found myself dying to random encounters quite often, which is not something that's common in a Tales game. I wouldn't mind it so much if the difficulty seemed balanced in a healthier or more fun way.

Despite all of these flaws, there are things to like about Tales of Innocence. The cast of characters is honestly not too bad. Despite Luca (the protagonist's) meekness, I can't say he ever annoyed me too much. The requisite mascot character Coda (who appears to be a hyper intelligent monkey) is actually pretty funny. The banter between the various party members in skits is also sometimes interesting. Each character has motivations and at least a skeletal backstory--and all are relevant to the plot in some way. I think I'd be more invested in the plot if so many other aspects of the game weren't so frustrating. The fact that each character is a descendant of a godlike race of mythological beings is quite interesting as well. I think this idea had a lot of potential that was wasted on a game with such poor level design and balance. The battle system is quite fun too, but it wears out its welcome after hundreds of random encounters with absurdly annoying enemies. The graphics and spell effects are certainly not too nice to look at either.

The Chosen

I've always been a big fan of games that give ample screen time to each of its characters. Too many RPGs introduce new characters and the plot quickly forgets them. They lose relevance and have very little impact on the game as a whole. As much as I love Fire Emblem, the games in that series are frequently guilty of doing just that. Chrono Cross springs to mind as another game with a large cast that neglects to flesh out many of its characters. I like the idea of an RPG having an "ensemble cast" wherein each of the characters are just as important and fleshed out as any other. This is the case for games like Live A Live and also for Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen, which I completed early last month.

Dragon Quest established a formula and a mythos in its first three titles, although II and III both expanded or evolves the format in their own ways. Dragon Quest II expanded the party size and made those characters more relevant to the plot. Dragon Quest III expanded the party size once again and left it up to the player to determine the party composition by implementing a class system. Dragon Quest IV changes it up again for what is probably my favorite system so far. The characters have predetermined classes and abilities, but all are relevant to the plot in some way. They are the Chosen Ones, destined to save the world.

Unlike your typical Dragon Quest title, you won't find yourself in control of the hero (which can be male or female) until about halfway through the game. First, you'll play through a series of side chapters that introduce the various playable characters of the game and the trials they overcome before coming in contact with the hero. Not only does this help the player decide which group of characters to field for the latter half of the game, but it allows each character to get a reasonable amount of screen time and character development.

I must reiterate that I absolutely love the format in which characters start out a game separated and then reunite later to form a unified force. One other example of this kind of gameplay I can think of is Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, where characters from Path of Radiance start out the game separated from Micaiah's Dawn Brigade. Of course, the quintessential example for me is the much more obscure Live A Live, in which the entire game is a series of separate chapters from different time periods, followed by a final chapter in which these characters come together. Of course, Dragon Quest IV is a little different in that once the characters unite, you've still got about half the game left to go.

Other than this unusual (and highly satisfying) format, Chapters of the Chosen is typical Dragon Quest fare with turn-based combat, magic keys, treasure hunting, and Akira Toriyama art. It's a formula I've grown to enjoy and I see no reason why I won't continue to play through the series--with little breaks here and there, of course. I'll be ordering Dragon Quest V and VI whenever I have some extra cash.

Saturday Fitness Rant

About a month and a half ago, I purchased a scale with which I intended to weigh myself for the first time in years. Although unhappy with my body shape and lack of fitness, I always privately imagined that if I couldn't put a number to my weight then I could live in some sort of comfortable denial--that I wasn't overweight, wasn't unhealthy, and maybe my body type was more the result of genetics than anything else. Well, I was (and am) overweight and I'm not healthy--but I'm getting there. I'm getting better, and I will continue to do so.

I wasn't really sure what to expect as I laid out the newly purchased scale on my bathroom floor. I've had a miserable history of being chronically overweight that dates back over ten years. There have been periods of time in my life where I've been more or less overweight, but I've never truly been "in shape" and despite the assurances of those around me, I've never been "not fat"--not since grade school, anyway. I have traditionally lived a very sedentary life and although I've denied it on multiple occasions, I ate a lot. I've gone through many phases where I lived primarily on Taco Bell and awful frozen microwaveable foods. I'm more than capable of cooking for myself, but I have so often fallen prey to my crippling laziness when it comes to my food choices.

For probably the past three or four months, I've been doing all I can to eat better. I became a vegetarian--and it feels weird to say that, honestly--and tried to eat as healthily as I could. Of course, I paid very little attention to portion size and frequently made assumptions that what I was eating was healthy. I cheated often even though I continued to strictly maintain the vegetarian lifestyle. As it turns out, enormous platters of eggplant parmesan are not strictly the healthiest choice even if they are jaw droppingly delicious. Similarly, the huge portions of rice I was having on a daily basis from the local Japanese restaurant were not doing me any favors on calorie content either. I felt I was eating healthier, but in reality I was probably getting my total recommended calories for the day in one meal! Rices are absurdly high in calories, as it turns out.

After a couple months of this, I started to realize that it might not be so difficult for me to change my lifestyle. I had been regularly eating vegetarian foods and although I suffered some minor gastrointestinal issues at first, those issues quickly passed--and I found I felt a lot better. However, I was still not choosing my meals carefully enough. I think it's possible I could have lost some weight during this time, but it's impossible for me to say. By the time I purchased that scale, I discovered that I weighed 252 pounds. My reaction to this was mixed. I knew that weight put me pretty firmly in the "overweight" camp--but at the same time it's far from the highest weight I've reached in my life. When I was in high school (over ten years ago), I distinctly remember weighing in at a staggering 280 pounds. By contrast, 252 didn't seem so bad for a 6'3" adult.

Still, I wasn't about to accept that and move on. I decided I was going to weigh myself every week while continuing to eat as healthy as possible. I stopped ordering the vegetable fried rice every day (even though it had not yet dawned on me just how poor a choice it was) and started eating things I imagined were healthy. I wasn't serious enough about it yet, though, because in retrospect I still wasn't making the best choices in the world. Even so, as I weighed myself every week, I came to realize that I was losing weight. My diet was so poor beforehand that even a moderately healthy diet was enough for pounds to start melting off.

After just one week, I lost four pounds. The next week, I lost two, then three, then four again! I'd lost 13 pounds in a single month and I was ecstatic. I was immensely pleased that I'd made that decision to purchase the scale despite my misgivings because it was now giving me an accurate barometer of my progress. So many times in the past I'd abandoned diets and lost motivation because I couldn't see my progress in the mirror--and refused to weigh myself. Of course, the next week, I gained a pound and was positively crestfallen. How could this have happened? I felt very discouraged--but I saw it as an opportunity to redouble my efforts and really get serious about losing weight. I was eating well (so I thought) but I wasn't paying very close attention to nutrition. 

There is a stigma attached to calorie counting for a variety of reasons. It encourages setting unrealistic goals, so some say. But, you know--it's something that has worked for me in the past. Any time I've ever lost weight, calorie counting has been immensely impactful on meeting my goals. I lost a lot of weight maybe four or five years ago. Exercising was part of that, but calorie counting really helped me to stay on track. That routine eventually fell by the wayside due to some things that were going on in my life at the time, but I always acknowledged how effective that strategy had been. In the end, I see no problem with sticking with what works--so that's what I started to do. I've only been doing that for a little over a week now, but I feel things have been going very well. I'm not great at determining the correct portion size for foods instinctively. Calorie counting helps me with that and at the same time satisfies my obsessive need to document things.

I decided that simply reducing my calorie intake was not enough. I had to exercise as well. This was something I've been doing sporadically over the past few months, but never consistently and never with much intensity. I called my uncle and asked him to show me around his gym and teach me which machines I should use. He took me down there and showed me around and I worked out pretty hard, all things told. (I've still got the aches and pains to prove it!) As soon as I was finished, I purchased myself a membership. I haven't been back yet, but I feel immensely confident that I'll continue to go. I'd really like to go in the morning, in fact!

As I said, it's Saturday, the day on which I weigh myself every week. Last week, I gained a pound. I was dismayed, but felt motivated. This week I've lost four more pounds! This puts me at 236 pounds. I have to imagine I haven't been at this weight for a long time, but I feel confident I can do better. My realistic goal is 200 and my ambitious goal is 180. My real goal, however, is simply to be fit and to be happier with my body. I'm already very happy that I've managed to convince myself to put forth the effort to make myself healthier, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to improve that image looking back at me in the mirror.

Tales of Swordians, Fonons, and Craymels

I'm a big fan of the Tales series even if the games are frequently uneven. I'm almost always happy to play a game in the series just for the combat, but my favorite titles are those that also feature interesting character and/or plot elements. Interesting mechanics certainly help, of course. The first Tales game I ever played (and finished, early in 2006) was Tales of Symphonia for the GameCube. Not coincidentally, Symphonia is by far the most popular entry in the series. It's a great game, but I think a lot of its sales success has to do with being in the right place at the right time. It was the first fully 3D Tales title and an RPG release on a console desperate for a good RPG. Symphonia was one of three or four good RPGs on the console. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance are also excellent--and I've heard good things about Skies of Arcadia as well (ported from the Dreamcast) but I have not personally played it even though I own it.

Tales of Symphonia introduced me to what the Tales series was about: action combat, grinding, cheesy (but charming) anime dialogue, and lots of dungeon crawling. Tales of the Abyss did not vary from this formula significantly but for whatever reason I found I enjoyed it much less. I frequently hear praise for this game but I found myself rather disliking it despite myself. The combat system was solid as always (although I didn't care for the random Fields of Fonons that altered character's skills) but it was difficult for me to find a single character I liked. The protagonist, Luke, was profoundly unlikable, and the amount of wordy technobabble in the dialogue was excessive even by Tales standards. The overly cutesy mascot Mieu was really just the icing on the cake. I almost wonder if I went into the game with the wrong mindset after hearing the reactions of other Tales fans to that game.

Sometime in between playing Symphonia and Abyss, I played a fair chunk of Tales of Phantasia for Super Famicom. A (somewhat flawed) fan translation had existed for the game for a number of years. Like all the series' early titles, Phantasia is completely 2D, with combat taking place in a sidescrolling fashion. The core gameplay is very similar to what the later 3D titles were doing, especially as far as skills and magic were concerned--except of course for the fact that combat frequently paused in order for more complex spell animations to play. I never did finish the SFC version of the game, but several years later (two years ago) I did decide to try the PS1 remake. It was never released in the US, but some industrious folks on the internet took it upon themselves to translate it. To my untrained eye, it was a far superior translation to the version I'd played quite some time before. I ended up enjoying it a lot and so moved on to Tales of Destiny right away.

Destiny was of course a total disappointment. It wasn't completely unplayable, but it was a step back technologically. It was less advanced because it was actually released before that particular version of Phantasia. It had more in common with the original SFC version than anything else. Basic attacks could not be strung together into combos, the cooking system was very simplistic and largely superfluous, and the characters were mostly pretty awful. The sound quality and music in general were also pretty bad--and don't get me started on the dungeons in the game's latter half. It is indisputably the worst Tales game I've played, but I can say the combat system was solid at the very least. It's certainly not a game I would ever play again, although I would be open to the idea of an enhanced remake!

Of course, when I originally started playing Tales of Destiny, I lost interest almost immediately. I attempted to enlist the help of my co-op partner to complete it, but technical difficulties barred the way. Much later, we discovered Mednafen and its far more stable PlayStation netplay--but by that point I'd already powered through the remainder of Destiny in an effort to clean out my backlog. That was way back in July. I'd originally briefly entertained the idea of starting Tales of Eternia after finishing Destiny, but I was determined to finish other games at that point--and I was also very soured on the Tales series. I wondered at the time if Symphonia (and Phantasia) were exceptions to a decidedly mediocre catalog of games.

Once my co-op partner and I finally did discover a more stable method for netplay, Tales of Eternia seemed like a no-brainer. I had finished Destiny and did not at all relish the thought of revisiting it. Fortuantely, Tales of Eternia improved on Destiny in just about every conceivable way. The characters were more interesting, the combat was more satisfying, and it had no talking swords. It was not without its fair share of annoyances (Tales technobabble, occasionally annoying dungeon design) but overall it was a game I really enjoyed. It also helped considerably that Reid and Farah were both pretty fun and varied characters to control in combat. Of course, the pointlessness of Max and Chat as party members really did decrease the variety of party compositions considerably--but the characters they shove at you by default made up pretty much the perfect party anyway.

We completed Eternia in January. Although it wasn't the best Tales game I'd played, it was enough to restore my faith in the series. I felt sure that there were other games in the series worth playing. I started to feel that completionist urge to play and finish them all. Since then, I've finished two more games from the series and I'm working on a third as we speak--or write, I guess. More on those later, though, because they both have their fair share of interesting things to discuss.

Boom!

I last wrote about Dragon Quest III almost a year ago, shortly after I'd finished the first two games in the series. I found I really enjoyed the format even though for years I'd be turned off by the idea that Dragon Quest was as generic a JRPG as there could possibly be. In some ways, this is true, but there is something to be said for the charm the series displays in its simplicity. There is a lot of fun to be had in Dragon Quest III traversing its many dungeons and uncovering its many hidden treasures, some of which may elude the player at first glance. As you progress through the game you'll uncover more and more items and equipment, including special keys that enable you to circumvent the locks that barred your progress before.

These features are not altogether different from those in the first two Dragon Quest titles. Where DQIII really distinguishes itself from its predecessors is the job class system. While the Hero has a static class, three (generic) party members can be recruited and assigned any of the game's seven classes. This is a slight variation on the previous year's Final Fantasy, in which a four person party could be created from any of its six classes. Of course, in that particular case, each class had its own unique upgrade--whereas Dragon Quest III handles things a little differently. Once characters reach level 20 and gain access to the Tower of Dharma, any of the generic character classes can freely change their profession to another of the available classes, although they must start at level 1. If in possession of the Book of Satori, one can change to a Sage, a strict upgrade to the Cleric and Wizard classes that can learn spells from both schools. It is possible to cycle through a number of classes to acquire skills and/or spells from the different classes to customize your characters to your preferences.

For instance, my final party featured a Thief that had gone through several levels as a Cleric. This resulted in a swift utility character with access to backup healing spells to support my Sage. Helpfully, Thieves have high MP growth, so casting these spells was never a problem for her. My monk stayed the same for the entire game mostly just because she was the primary damage dealer and had no reason to expand her repertoire. It is a job system that certainly lacks the complexity of a later RPGs, but it was an interesting twist on the established format at the time. I generally really enjoy job systems in RPGs and I feel Dragon Quest III's was done reasonably well, especially for the time.

I played a fan translation of the Super Famicom remake of the game, which added the Thief class and fleshed out a few of the existing classes. Merchants/Dealers gained a new set of skills exclusive to them as well. Aside from that, the graphics were updated to SNES standards and it's reasonable to assume several names were changed. I briefly considered playing the original NES version of the game, but I've generally made it a policy to play the "best" version of a game, whether or not that happens to be the most recent one. In this particular case, it seemed the SNES remake was very similar to the original version but with a more pleasing graphical style and extra content--so the choice was really rather easy.

All in all, Dragon Quest III is not the most remarkable or memorable game I've played, but I have to give it a little leeway considering the game's age. Even so, I had a fair amount of fun with it and will continue to play through the series. I've already finished the DS remake of Dragon Quest IV and liked it a lot (more on that soon). I'm not sure when I'll be continuing the series, but I think I'd like to finish up Etrian Odyssey (and possibly the second game as well) before I do so.

Crystal Blue

After my co-op partner and I finished Illusion of Gaia, the logical next step was Terranigma. I felt our method of switching out every so often and chatting about what we were experiencing was actually really fun. It made me consider things about the game that I might not have otherwise if I'd been playing alone--and again, I can't stress enough how much easier it is to play through these games when it becomes more of a social activity. That is not to say that Illusion of Gaia is a bad game--in fact, there were a lot of things I liked about it. Still, action RPGs typically don't resonate with me nearly as much as games of other genres and Illusion of Gaia is divorced from RPG elements rather more than many other games I've played.

Terranigma, third in Quintet's Soul Blazer trilogy, features several RPG elements that were notably absent from its immediate predecessor. A more traditional experience and leveling system is present and it is also possible to purchase equipment and items as one might expect in an RPG. The game is light on special skills, but the combat, while still simplistic, is much more fluid and satisfying. Dashing and jumping attacks exist, as well as simple combos. Ark, Terranigma's hero, wields a spear instead of a sword and unfortunately does not possess the ability to shapeshift. Still, boss fights and encounters in general feel much less button-mashy than in Illusion of Gaia even if the simplicity of combat and the clumsiness of the spell interface knock it down a few pegs.

Illusion of Gaia was a very linear game. In most cases, the primary objective was to get from Point A to Point B with very few sidepaths. Terranigma is much more free and open in this regard, with many optional objectives to complete that are entirely independent from the game's combat and dungeon-crawling gameplay. It is Ark's lofty goal to do no more than resurrect the world in bits and pieces. He'll find himself communicating with plants near the game's beginnings, soon followed by animals of all shapes and sizes. Once he resurrects humans, he finds that he can no longer communicate with animals--a fact that surely must leave him feeling a little hollow.

Terranigma's world map is in fact a rough replica of the real world. Ark visits such places as the Sahara, the North Pole, and obvious analogues to America and Great Britain. Quintet's hamfisted appropriation of American culture is actually pretty amusing. America's analogue is appropriately named Freedom and features a kitschy folk theme and an "ethnically diverse" populace. Freedom, like many other towns in Terranigma, will grow and expand over the course of the game if the player takes the correct actions. Ark will need to traverse the globe and assist great inventors, bolster international trade and tourism, all while vanquishing an ancient evil in his free time. It's a very interesting formula that I can't personally recall being repeated. I'm sure I'm forgetting other games that feature similar elements (and in fact there are likely quite a few I haven't played) but Terranigma's execution of these elements is quite good, especially for an SNES game.

Many RPGs feature a single town that grows and expands at the player's behest. Breath of Fire II, Dragon Quest IV, and Tales of Vesperia spring to mind just out of games I've played recently, but I can't recall any that focus on that aspect of the gameplay to such a degree. Terranigma is a game in which the player must rebuild the world. This is much more satisfying than in games like Legend of Mana and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance where you're simply plopping down landmasses on a grid. In Terranigma, you're resurrecting history, advancing civilization. It's a very interesting structure and I'd be very eager to play a more modern game with a similar format.

The Nazca Constellation

Had I continued my trend of daily updates for this blog, I feel it's inevitable I would have discussed every single game I was playing along the way. Because I did not continue that trend, many of these games have not so much as elicited a single mention in my entries. In fact, the only game I've played this year that has received significant coverage is Persona Q and even then the vast majority of my playtime for that game was from 2014. My review for Breath of Fire II was also published this year, but I finished it back in December. I haven't decided yet whether I'll continue writing those long form reviews, but I certainly have decided that I'm going to resume updating this blog in general.

Let's take a look back, then, at the games I completed in January and February. First on the list was Persona Q, which I've already discussed in some detail, but shortly after that I played through the SNES classic Illusion of Gaia with my co-op partner. Now, Illusion of Gaia is not a multiplayer game, but having mostly run out of co-op SNES games to play, my co-op partner and I decided it might be fun to play through something single player and take turns. It's something I've done a few times in the past, although mostly with games I've played to completion before. I remember fondly playing games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy V, and Final Fantasy VI online through ZSNES with old internet pals--but Illusion of Gaia was different because we were both experiencing it for the first time.

My original suggestion was to start with Soul Blazer, first in a trilogy that included Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma by developer Quintet. My co-op partner vetoed that idea because he'd watched much of a Let's Play of the game that made the gameplay seem very basic and uninteresting. Reluctantly, I agreed to start with Illusion of Gaia. It was, after all, a game I'd been meaning to sit down and play for many years. Without my co-op partner's assistance, I may not have had the motivation to do so.

Illusion of Gaia is an action RPG in the tradition of Zelda II. It frequently feels very much like a sidescrolling game of that era even though segments where free range of movement is available are common. The RPG elements are light, although there is a reasonable emphasis on plot and characters. Common traits like levels and experience are strangely absent, replaced by a system in which vanquishing all the foes in a particular area will reward you with a boost to a certain stat. The gameplay itself is simplistic and largely boils down to spamming the attack button while the protagonist, Will, smacks people with a flute of all things. Will does acquire a variety of special skills on his way, principal of which is the ability to shapeshift into one of two powerful alternate forms.

At the beginning of Will's journey, it's revealed just about right away that he has telekinetic powers. These powers are never used for combat, but instead for minor puzzles along the way--and also to snag distant treasures dropped by defeated enemies. These mysterious powers were apparently granted to Will after a visit to an ancient tower with his father Olman (Old Man?) some time ago--an event for which he retains no memories. Along his journey, Will and his crew of friends (called the Seaside Gang) will discover the nature of those events at the tower and come to terms with the evil threatening to engulf the world.

Of course, Will's friends serve only as moral support as they have no actual impact on the gameplay. Will finds himself alone for the entirety of his travels in dungeons that serve as analogues to real world historical locations. One dungeon takes place in an ancient pyramid, for instance, while another on the Great Wall of China. Terranigma features similar real world locations, but under the guise of resurrecting a dead world. In Illusion of Gaia it makes less sense, although I'll be the first to admit my memory of the game is fading a tad.

Illusion of Gaia features a lot of interesting characters and a plot that is strange and largely incomprehensible. It has simple gameplay albeit with an interesting shapeshifting component--and extremely challenging (often frustrating) bosses. It's a game I'd recommend to any SNES enthusiast, but I couldn't strongly recommend it for any other reason. It's sequel, Terranigma, is the superior game and it's pretty likely I'll talk about it soon.

Beginnings

I find myself consumed with a bone-deep weariness unlike anything I've experienced over the past year or so. It reminds me a lot of when I used to work at Walmart some time ago--a position that required me to be on my feet for the span of an eight hour shift. For almost a year now, I've had the good fortune of having a job that allows me to stay seated in front of a computer. However, the store's being remodeled soon. In this new store design, sales associates such as myself will be expected to stand in front of raised monitors, ostensibly to appear more inviting to potential customers. I might have dreaded this change a few months ago, but now that it's coming closer, I find myself welcoming it. I've lived far too sedentary a life over the past several months. Being put in a position where I'm required to stand up and walk around every day can only help me achieve my fitness goals. I've been declining to sit in my chair during the past few days of work in preparation for this change. It's been unexpectedly tiring.

I'm not in great shape. I'm losing weight, but I'm still getting very little exercise. This is something I'm working on changing. I'd originally planned to do some basic workouts tonight, but I'm so exhausted that I've abandoned the idea entirely. An impromptu trip to my cousin's place resulted in playing drums for a good hour or so. That level of strenuous activity combined with being on my feet all day has left me rather more tired than I'd expected to be. It's good though--I'm glad to be tired and I'm glad that my muscles ache, because it signifies a beginning for me. It lets me know that I'm burning calories. So long as I don't use this weariness as an excuse to stay inactive in the coming days, it's nothing but a good thing.

I didn't get as many calories today as I probably should have, but I ate more than enough to satisfy my hunger--and that's really all I can do. I've been eating two somewhat large meals a day lately because it's difficult to find the time in the mornings for breakfast. That would mean waking up early and I'm already uncomfortable with waking up at 7:45 as I have been. I love the idea of fruit smoothies for breakfast but it sort of clashes with my ritual morning coffee. I guess I could do both but it sounds awkward. Even if I prepare the smoothie the night beforehand, it's unlikely I'd have enough time in the morning to consume the smoothie before heading out the door. Even then, I typically end up taking lunch at 11. It seems pointless to eat before heading to work when I'm going to be eating so soon into my shift anyway.

I should make a bunch of smoothies and just have them ready at work. Yeah. Good idea.

I think I've decided I'm going to drop some kind of update on my weight every Saturday on this blog with thoughts on how my diet/exercise regimen is going. I can only hope my entries in the future will be less scatterbrained than this one. My weariness is due in no small part to my increased activity level lately--that's true. But beyond that, I also haven't been getting as much sleep and I think there's a variety of reasons why. I've had a lot on my mind--plans, aspirations, worries, the usual fare. Combine that with a sudden dramatic change in temperature and surroundings (I cleaned up a bit) and you have restless sleep. Hopefully that problem will clear itself up over time.

These entries weren't meant to be once a month

Yikes, it's been almost a month since I've written an entry. This was certainly not my original plan when I decided to stop updating daily. I can make excuse after excuse that I've abandoned quantity for quality, but that statement rings false to my ears. I'm proud of the reviews I wrote in January, but February only saw one entry lamenting the fact that I was not writing--much like this one, in fact. Why do I so often let laziness get the better of me, to prevent me from doing those things I'd very much like to do?

Of course, I haven't been entirely unproductive with my time. I've been adhering reasonably closely to my vegetarian diet for what must be three months now. On January 24th, I purchased a scale and started keeping track of my weight weekly. After a month's time, I lost 13 pounds. For my most recent weigh-in, I gained a pound back--so I've decided to redouble my efforts. Although I had been making a concerted effort to eat healthy, I'd not given much thought to my portions or calorie content. From now on--or until I develop better instinctive judgment--I'm keeping track of my calorie intake with a general goal of coming in at around 1800 calories per day. It might seem somewhat ambitious to track my weight loss every week, but until Saturday, I was consistently losing 3-4 pounds every time. I mean to continue that track record. If I reach yet another plateau, I'll have to again up the ante.

I haven't yet taken the plunge into adhering to rigorous regular workouts, but I imagine  I will have to do so soon. I'm in quite miserable shape even disregarding my weight. At this point I can't even manage 10 push-ups. Only a few years ago, I could easily crank out 20 push-ups per day. I can only guess as to why I didn't continue to ramp up the intensity of that particular workout, but I feel sure my tendency toward laziness and apathy must have had something to do with it. My motivation comes in fits and spurts--and I'm easily sidetracked and discouraged by events in my life.

Aside from my new weight loss goal, I've been playing and completing video games at as breakneck a pace as ever. I've already completed 10 games this year, which puts me well on track to break last year's record of 35 assuming I can continue my current trend. Several of those games were completed with the assistance of my co-op partner. For the first time ever, we played a game together while in the same room. It was also the first time in some years that I ventured out of my home and spent time with a friend in person regularly. I think this trend may well continue, assuming we can find something else to play.

I think my contentment level depends on a variety of factors. I know what most of these factors are, but I so frequently fail to insure that my needs are met because it involves effort on my part. It is important to me to be comfortable in my own surroundings and that part of my life is definitely improving. After months of living in miserable cold, I've finally acquired a propane heater. No longer must I hide under a mountain of blankets and wear layers simply to approach some level of comfort in my own home. However, the house is still mostly a mess and I have not put forth the level of effort required to make it feel livable even though I know it would make me significantly more comfortable and happy. Similarly, I have not put forth the effort required to regularly update this blog. It's not about writing something for others to read. It's about writing something to write something.