TIDUS

Last week was the most ridiculous week... our brigade pretty much spent the entire week bickering. It got to such a point that I thought it'd be funny to just transcribe the entire thing.

( re: Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade (☆LV209) )

Anyway, I swear I have more to talk about than just Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade these days. It's just that I'm having a bit of trouble composing my scathing criticism of Ni no Kuni into something comprehensible. Hopefully I'll have that soon before FFAB explodes with more events to talk about.

SO, my (second) brother decided to quit Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade. This actually makes me really sad because we worked so hard on the Final Fantasy VI event only for him to quit on the very last day. I mean, it's his prerogative but we started playing this game together (both my brothers and I) and now it's just me playing. I have some friends playing with me too but it was kind of a thing that my brother and I did together and now it's...not.

( re: Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade (☆LV184) )

I said a month ago that I'd write up my thoughts on Tales of Graces f. Actually, I said I'd write up my thoughts on a lot of games but don't worry, I swear I'll slowly get around to it. It's just that I've been game hopping back and forth for quite a while and there's...a lot to talk about. Especially about Tales of Graces f.

SO FIRST OF ALL, since you could have up to four separate people controlling four separate characters in battle, my brother and I decided to play this game together. Sometimes, he played and I just joined in battle and sometimes it was the other way around, but for the most part the suffering was shared. I'll probably write up a more coherent post about this game in the future but this is less a review and more a collection of tweets and some other thoughts I had while we were playing. Most of it isn't positive. I'm probably more sorry than you are.

( re: Tales of Graces f (☆153:28) )

TL;DR: this game is ambitious but rubbish. My Twitter rants aside, the game can be summed up like this:

1. The battle system is pretty fun but the characters have idiotic AIs so it's more frustrating than fun 85% of the time.

2. The main plot is interesting (if highly predictable) but terribly paced. Character reactions are sudden and awkward and they spend too much time making dumb Tales jokes instead of properly fleshing out the characters.

3. There is no real character development; instead, characters go through personality transplants with rampant time jumps. Our main hero is a glorified self-absorbed idiot and our main heroine is an emotionless robot (literally).

4. There are plot holes everywhere and the english voicing is awkward and terrible.

In short, it is not a very good game. My brother and I spent most of the game playing the Accurate Predictions game and making "ARE YOU SERIOUS" comments at every dumb thing the characters said. I swear you could make a drinking game from the stupid things these characters say. We've finished the main storyline and are moving into the "f" portion of the game but it's slow going because I keep getting really bored. Finishing the game completely may take longer than I originally anticipated.

So, a few weeks ago, the Fire Emblem 3DS bundle came out in the US. My feelings on it were incredibly torn because, you see, I wanted it so badly. A beautiful US 3DS at US prices capable of playing US games. The problem was this: I already have one. That in itself wasn't the full problem because I had justifications for getting that JP region 3DS and normally I would've been totally okay with getting a second region system. The problem was that I also already have a perfectly functional US region 3DS that, unlike my first Japanese one, didn't need replacing. This commercial pretty accurately summed up how I felt about the entire thing. It's just that... well, Japanese game companies have always been really bad about localizing their LE game systems which was one of the primary reasons I bought the JP version instead of waiting for the US version but then...argh. GDI Nintendo.

Over the next few weeks I went back and forth on whether to get it or not, and in the end I decided to place a pre-order anyway just so that if I ended up wanting it, I would have one on reserve. And then after I'd done that, I waffled over whether I'd actually end up picking it up and in the end I decided that I wouldn't because I already had the Japanese version, why would I need the English version too?

Fast forward to today: I went and picked up the US Fire Emblem bundle. Yeah, I said that I had decided against getting it but then all my friends were picking it up yesterday and I just felt so irrationally jealous that they were all getting it when I wasn't. Irrational because: why am I feeling jealous over something I already have?! In the end, today, I went and completed my pre-order, and here I am with a US Fire Emblem bundle! And since I have both the US version and the JP version, I decided to take a side-by-side comparison photo of it!

( FAIR WARNING: if you're getting it and you don't want to hear my criticisms, please skip this cut! )

With the arrival of my own 3DS came my own copy of Theatrhythm which I started to play. Except then Square ported it to iOS and in the process pissed off a huge number of 3DS players. There are reasons for this. (And I say huge because all you have to do is read the customer reviews on the iOS version to see how unhappy most people are with it.) GOOD JOB, SQUARE. In any case, I made a huge rant on Twitter back in mid-December about it and I don't really care to re-type it all so here are some screenshots instead. With all the original fury still intact!

( re: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy (★11:07) )