You stand before the final dimension...

Okay, thats another Final Fantasy down, lets keep things a rollin' here. In other words, I just finished Final Fantasy IX and will thusly either move on to 10 or maybe slip to the side and try Chrono Trigger instead... Hmmm.... Well, either way I'm watching Battlestar Galactica Season 3 first since I'll burn through that in like.... tomorrow. I am a hardcore marathonner my friend, just not the running kind. I spent all day Sunday burning through extra stuff on Final Fantasy IX, I'll spend.... Well, maybe not Wednesday. Thursday is gonna be all abouts the BSG, basically whatever is left over from Wednesday.

Anyway, getting back to the subject at hand: I beat Final Fantasy IX and am coming to the conclusion that I'm really liking all these games. I mean, for a time I had it held in my mind that Final Fantasy was generally a notch above most everything else, but after just playing through 8 and 9 again.... Just so good. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to start making note of the games' flaws because comparing high points is too difficult. Which one has a better story? Psh, very difficult. I can tell you that VII is my favorite, but thats because I love the characters and world its set in. VIII is a hands down romance set against a saving-the-world backdrop, and I thouroughly enjoyed it. IX I finally understood this time through, there was so much I had forgotten or just not understood the first time through... Though the ultimate final boss, while very impressive, is rather random. Hey, one difference between Stephen King and Final Fantasy? Final Fantasy knows how to do an ending to a long tale right (Which I hear Mr. King doesn't)... Though VII's coulda been longer. Seriously, so much of my satisfaction with IX came out in this ending part. Sure my Zidane, Garnet, Freya, Amarant party was flippin' sweet at that point, and the battles were truly epic, but the story aspects and philosophy concepts they throw at you in the end... Its good but maybe a little over the top. Final scene? Perfect ending. And, of course, Crystal theme at the end. Interesting note, near the end there's a tripped out version of the Crystal theme playing. Weird eh? Well, not really considering the last area I guess.... But thats beside the point. My one great complaint against IX is its ability system which, at times would require that you equip inferior equipment for a long period of level grinding, just to gain one ability. Did you always need that ability? No, but you'd be kicking yourself later for not getting it. Oh, and then some of these abilities you have to equip. So even if you spend all that time learning them, you don't really get to use them unless you have the crystal points to equip it. *Sigh* Oh well. You get a high enough level and it doesn't matter so much, but its still something that I'm glad has yet to be repeated.

I think I will do Chrono Trigger next just because I'm afraid that 10 will some how betray my memory of it, and I know that Chrono Trigger is good... And I have an early save file of it that I found so I can skip the parts that I've played 10 times before in my previous efforts to replay it. And I've been enjoying giving my little PSOne a work out since the PS2 has been somewhat iffy as of late.

Well, they're going to start tiling my room tomorrow so I guess I better sleep or something.

Beware the Stroper! (It rhymes with Groper!)

So, two things are rather recent for me to write about: Samurai 7 and Final Fantasy IX (or 9 for you sorry folks who can't read roman numerals).

Firstly, Samurai 7 is an anime series based on Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai". Its a rather good anachronistic telling with real-type samurai juxtaposed to giant robots (In the role of the bandits). Basically.... Think of a "The-long-way" telling of the Seven Samurai where they're still protecting an Edo-era rice producing village but the town they travel to in order to find Samurai is Steam/Cyber-punk as is much of the technology outside of rural villages... And the bandits are giant robotic beings... So far as we know. I only have the first two discs right now, so I'm not sure how they'll end it exactly, but I'm betting on a plot twist involving the bandits as "The enemy is not what they seem!" tends to be a common anime plot twist when dealing with large foes that don't directly interact with the heroes (And sometimes even when they do!). Anyway, its good, Netflix a disc or something!

Secondly, I've been playing through Final Fantasy 9 and am already on the 3rd disc. Now I will tell you up front, right here, that anyone who says they love FF9 but hate 10 with a main reason being "You don't get to even use a world map till late in the game, its so linear" (Which I've never heard, but I'm sure some fool has made it) has NO point to make. I just got to disc 3, about 25 hours in, and feel like I'm not being led around for the first time all game, like I actually have a realistic choice of where to go and what to do. Sure there were some minor instances here and there earlier on, but the first continent you're on is constructed in such a way as you can't go very many places EXCEPT your next destination... Which I don't really have a problem with, but I know that something a fair number of people try to pin on 10 is its lack of world map exploration, and I say "Good Riddance". World maps have a nice nostalgia to them, but they are ultimately impractical now that we have the technology to render actual levels all the way inbetween towns and such. Speaking of impractical things: Tetra Master. I don't know if I mentioned the card game in Final Fantasy 8, but for some reason I remembered this one's being better... Well it isn't, its an inconsistant random mess that is kept intentionally vague because I don't think the creators fully developed it properly! The problem comes when two cards have to "Battle". You can have two cards with the exact same values attack each other, and some unknown background factor affects the numbers that actually come into play. AGH!! Thankfully I read something that said "Yeah, the card game will never really win you anything." Thank goodness, because I'd much rather waste hours on a worthwhile mini-game like "Chocobo Hot/Cold" in which you hunt for treasure with the aid of everybodies favorite yellow bird:

Isn't it adorable? You know what isn't adorable? The Stroper, an enemy in the Lifa tree. I would describe its appearence in detail, but women visit this site... I hope. I will say that it is a blatant tentacle monster, which you will either understand or not. I've noticed that a LOT of the enemies in this Final Fantasy are kinda... Odd. For instance the enemy that seems to based on an ancient Japanese horror monster, and the Snake woman who is ironically ugly to contrast the fact that in the old SNES final Fantasies she was quite hot. *Sigh* I guess that Square was just making a giant series of references to its older games with this one since, based on an FAQ I read, there are more references to previous games in this Final Fantasy than any other, which I can believe. But anyway, I was talking about mini-games. The Choco Hot/Cold is so much better a game because 1. Its fun. 2. There is serious rewardage when you find the treasures. However I'm not sure I'm going to indulge too much because I kind of want to get through the game and move on in my rampant replaying of Final Fantasies past which I've kind of decided to just go ahead and do: Play all the Final Fantasies that I haven't played through more than once. I've played 4 enough that I'm not going to play it again, but I need to play 6 again, and I'll try to bring myself to play 5 though of the ones I have played its currently my least favorite. Also 10 which, I may have played through twice, or maybe I just did it once and then watched someone else do it a second time. Heck, its skill system beats 9 at least, which I really am not a fan of because you have to let equipment sit on your characters until they get enough Ability Points to permenantly learn it, so you have super weak armor sitting on your high level character that wasn't able to learn the skill early on because the game forced you along a certain plot line where only the main character was playable for a while...... They just better be glad I really like the art style and music and am liking the story because nary but the core Final Fantasy gameplay goodness aspects am I liking of the combat... Worst limit system ever and the turn meter fills...so....freakin'....slowly.... Oh well, its still fun, and some people will try to convince thats all that really matters.... When its cheap or free they are correct, so with a game that you bought 8 years ago I guess it applies too.

In other good news, tomorrow I'm going to buy the Blade Runner 4 disc set, the Criterion Collection version of "The Seven Samurai", and Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. Why such a big purchase? Because for the entire month of June all DVDs are Buy 2 get the 3rd free. As my manager said "I spend $500 easy." I won't spend quite that much, but I do plan to take advantage of the deal at least once more this month. I'll see how much more I can spend after Ninja Gaiden 2.

Final Fantasy VIII Finito

So I just finished playing through Final Fantasy 8 for the 2nd time, SO much better than I remembered. Story made a lot more sense, as did the combat system which, as I explained last post, is very strange.

My final battle was always very dramatic because I had forgotten that when you start your battle with the final boss the party is randomly selected. So my carefully honed party of three had an ill-prepared member thrown into the mix and sudenly found itself in dire straits. Needless to say it went down hill from there, though I made a valient last stand as main charcter Squall dealt a finishing blow to the 2nd of 4 forms you must combat, only to succumb to the irremovable Doom status at the beginning of the 3rd form. Tragic, and yet Epic. Of course I then spent 30 mintes re-Junctioning the various GFs to different supplementary characters (Irvine, Zell and Selphie, also known as the comic relief team) only to enter the final battle a second time with all thee of my best best characters. I was happy yet slightly frustrated that my beautiful re-Junctioning was for naught. The first form passed quikly as I dealt a punishing blow with the ultimate GF "Eden" and a few deft blows from Squall's nigh ultimate Gunblade quickly dispatched the minor menace. Then it was onto Griever, a GF under Ultimecia's control that has a fortunate weakness to Holy (And I a fortunate surplus of Holy spells to Triple cast, along with the use of the GF "Alexander") So before too long he curled up into a little ball, but then Ultimecia is all like "I'm gonna combine my power with his" and she does, so I'm all "Yeah, well, eat Eden!" So, I started to summon Eden, but got interdimensionally pimp slapped and she took out Eden in a single attack! I wasn't taking that, and after a little thinking I determined "Aura time..." So I slapped Aura on Quistis and tried a few things til I discovered that Aqua Breath was doing 9999 damage. So basically, I beat her down with a giant squirt gun. I felt vindicated. But.... The fight was not yet over. The true form of Ultimecia arose from the darkness of a Space-Time void to confront my party. Changing tactics yet again, I stuck Aura on Squall and Rinoa while leaving Quistis to Triple Cast Curaga. Why? Because Ulti had this nasty little move called Hell's Judgment that knocks everyone down to 1 HP. Didn't do me no trouble though, just kept whaling on her with Squall's Renzokuken (Multi-Gunblade hit combo with a powerful finisher on a perfect, which ain't hard to get) and Rinoa's attack combo with... Her dog (Don't ask me why, all I know is that she's got this move "Wishing Star" that has run out of bubble gum if you take my meaning, and she conveniently did it ALOT.) So this poor defenseless final boss basically had no chance, though I was a little disappointed that she didn't last at least long enough to finish her little mid-battle speech. She ended on "And..." So I'm left wondering "And what? And remember to brush your teeth? And remember to be excellent to each other?" The world may never know.... Unless they just google it.

So yeah, lots of flashy explosions and escaping from compressed time, happy ending finale. Now I'm going to play through Final Fantasy IX. I've actually already started and am remembering all sorts of stuff I'd forgotten about it. Maybe the identity of the Final Boss will make more sense this time....