The Struggle to Complete the Pokédex

You remember how back in the day, completing the Pokédex was some sort of big accomplishment. To be honest, I don’t remember because I never once did it. The first time I ever did it was in the game Pokémon Legend Arceus. The reason was simple. It was the first game I played that allowed me to actually get every Pokémon just by encountering them in the wild. What I am trying to say is that I never really had anyone to trade with and online trading wasn’t very convenient so I never ended up completing a Pokédex until that game. However, I decided to give it another shot this time and have been trying to collect all 400 Pokémon in Pokémon Violet. Here are a few of the problems I ran into while going for this.

First off is getting the starters is a bit of a pain. Truth be told I didn’t have this as bad as some other people because I had by sheer coincidence picked the least popular starter Quaxly. That meant it was a lot easier finding trades for the other two since he was in such high demand. Although funnily enough the first starter I ever got from trading was another Quaxly through a Wonder Trade. This would later be a symbol of my luck to come.

Next up is the Pokémon who have very specific evolution conditions that you will not know unless you look them up. Some of them are very useful Pokémon to have, but they can have such annoying evolution conditions. Thankfully I got lucky and managed to find some of them through Tera Raid battles.

Now the good news was that after I managed to track down the starters, by then I had found a way to find people who were trading for version exclusives. I just needed to input certain link codes I found online to locate people who were hopefully looking for the other exclusive Pokémon. Now the key word there is hopefully. It seems a lot of other people were also enjoying Pokémon Violet because Pokémon Scarlet players were either offline or trading with everyone else. There is a feature they added that I picked up on eventually where your Pokémon would glow if the other party doesn’t have it. I thought it was a nice touch. More importantly, it let me know that I would very often get matched up with a player who had the same version. Everything about it was pretty much a gamble so I just had to keep trying my luck until I had all of the exclusives. Did it take some time? Absolutely. Did some take longer than others? Oh, you know it. Did I succeed? Fortunately I did. I managed to finally find all of the version exclusives. However I am still not done and that is because of one big problem. Lack of friends.

I realize how depressing and misleading that last bit sounded so let me clarify. There are a total of four Pokémon in the game that are difficult to get without having easy access to a friend who plays one of the Generation IX games. These four are Gengar, Scizor, Slowking, and Palafin. The first three require trading with someone or finding them in Tera Raids and the last one has a special evolution condition involving playing with friends or finding it in a Tera Raid. Thankfully, Gengar can be gotten easier than the others if you trade an NPC a Pincurchin for a Haunter in Levincia City. So, the main problem is the last three because I have to gamble by hunting in different Tera Raids until I find one, and then I have to actually beat the Tera Raid as well. So, far I have only managed to get Scizor, but here’s hoping with luck I get the other two soon. It would be nice to get that Shiny Charm. But more importantly, it will mean I haven’t spend all my time doing this for nothing. Wish me luck!

I understand that this is not the most efficient way to do things, but when you are playing alone sometimes there are certain gambles you need to take. That’s how I will justify this at least. Anyway, that is all for today. I have to go back on the hunt in a few minutes once the raids refresh. See you next week! I realize this might have been a bit shorter than usual, but I hope it was at least somewhat informative for once. Besides, if you forgive me, I can get you a Quaxly.

Configuring Controls

I will admit that I am a stubborn person. I tend to act a bit too rigidly. For example, I usually only play games on PC. The main reason is it just more comfortable for me. The thing is that I only use keyboard and mouse for gaming, because that it what I am most accustomed to using. I am terrible at using a controller if I’m being honest. The only major advantage I can get when using a controller is using an analog stick, but that isn’t enough of a merit for me to use a controller when I can’t use the buttons as effectively as I would like. Would practice probably help rectify some of these issues? Most likely, but again I would like to mention that I am stubborn and so learning how to use a controller effectively seems like a bit of waste to me. That, and I don’t own a good controller at the moment and I don’t really feel like buying one right now. Hey, I never said I wasn’t lazy.

This has it’s own share of problems obviously, and that is what I am here to talk about today. You see, there are many games that I have played on my computer and they all usually fall into one of two categories. The first category of games are ones that were designed to be easily played using a setup with a mouse and keyboard. The second type are those that are designed to be played using a controller. Usually the second type is targeted towards those that play console rather than PC. If you play games on people often enough, you find some that have a very strange control scheme that seems to have been made with a different species in mind. It is especially annoying when games do this when many other games have no problem adapting controls between systems. In fact, controllers have less commands than a normal keyboard and mouse, so how is it that hard to reasonably map all of the buttons?

What is even worse though is when they have you stick with annoying controls. Any game that doesn’t have control configuration included in the settings is insane. Personally any game that is ported to PC should have some setting to allow you to customize controls. I can understand that if the game was made for PC you wouldn’t need to have that option available. It is a choice that I can respect. I won’t, but theoretically that is something I could do. However, if a game is ported over and the way the controls are mapped to the keyboard are clunky to use, then I just won’t play the game. I understand that some games work better with a controller and that is fine. There are different ways to design games and how they control. However, if you want me to use a controller to play, at least be upfront about it.

Games always put in that caption of “controller strongly recommended” for games that were originally meant for controller support. However, some games have the audacity to act as though they tried to fit the controls over in a way that makes the experience feel smooth only to basically leave you with no option other than to find a controller. It is one thing if you make keyboard controls harder but still effective. It is another thing when the game is nearly impossible to be played properly and doesn’t allow you to change the controls in the settings. At that point it is clear you do not care.

I know this doesn’t apply to every game. However, it does bum me out sometimes when there might be games I want to try or get back into playing, but it too troublesome to relearn the convoluted control scheme. If I need a guide for every button press I make, my interest will wane considerably. That might be why I prefer games with simpler control schemes. I don’t want to have to study or learn a foreign language to play a game. It is already hard enough navigating through the menus of certain games. I don’t need to make things even harder for myself.

Well, as usual things became a rant on something, but that’s to be expected at this point. I figure that might as well be my modus operandi. Before I go tonight, I want to give a shoutout to Elden Ring for getting Game of the Year. Congrats! Sure you didn’t have much competition with half those games breaking their ankles the second they were nominated, but you still deserved that win regardless for all the work you put in. Good job!

Current Thoughts on Mario Movie Voices

Okay, so we got a new trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie that dropped this week. There is a lot to love about the trailer, but that isn’t what I will focus on here. Why? It’s because I can’t help but make things more complicated for myself. It is some sort of sickness. Anyway we have gotten more voice acting from the cast members and we have heard almost every main voice that was cast in the movie. So it seems like now is a good time to talk a bit more about the characters and their voices just so I can voice out my feelings on the matter. Not like my feelings will really influence anything. Let’s be honest here, you have already decided whether or not you are going to see this movie already. That won’t stop me from talking though. I think that things might be easier if I break up each character into their own section though. Especially because I have to talk about certain characters more than others. Alright, let’s go.

Kamek

He only had one voice line in the teaser trailer a while back, but the voice seems respectable. Personally I prefer the deep older voice with the design they gave him, instead of his usual high-pitched kind of voice. No problems here.

Toad

Not as high pitched as I was expecting, and I am honestly okay with that. If I am being honest so far, I don’t really know how to feel about it but not in a bad way. I like the energy that the voice gives off though. I feel like he isn’t going to be just a comic relief character though, which was something I worried about. Overall, pretty good.

Bowser

Do I even need to repeat myself? As I have said before, Bowser sounds great in this movie so far. He has a more commanding voice when he needs to and he sounds sinister when he needs to and all while providing a lot of energy into everything that he does. Not to mention, I really do love how cocky he seems to be. Overall, worth watching this movie based on this voice alone.

Luigi

So, he finally got some Luigi action here in this trailer other than just a yell. It seems that he is the one captured this time other than the princess. Based on the trailer and the whole origin story premise, his voice has sold me. He is on edge, nervous, afraid, and in full on panic mode. Considering he has been captured by a giant turtle dragon and has been imprisoned in a lava fortress with no way to resist, he is honestly doing better than I would. Good for him and great levels of panic in the voice.

Princess Peach

Now this was the one we were really waiting for since the last trailer. They could have taken things in different directions but I am glad they decided to go the direction of a competent ruler who isn’t just a liability. She sounds like a competent ruler rather than just a surprised stand-in. I like to think they decided to use the influence of the original Peach voice actor from Super Mario 64 as a basis. After all, they opened up the trailer with that poster showing striking some imagery from that game. Personally, I am glad they decided to give her some depth to her voice.

Alright, now who’s left to talk about. Oh yeah. Okay, let’s get this over with. Let’s talk about the guy who is supposed to be the star of the show.

Mario

Now here is the thing. I have mixed feelings about Mario. For the record, I don’t think that Chris Pratt was a bad casting choice for Mario with respect to this movie. Now I know how that sounds, but hear me out for a second. Notice I said the words “with respect to this movie”. You see the thing is that at the end of the day, despite whatever you believe you know about Mario, this is an origin story and because of that we are in uncharted territory. In other words, this is a Mario that we haven’t seen before and the trailers are heavily indicating now that he was actually doing plumbing prior to this movie’s plot kicking off. The only reason he ends up in The Mushroom Kingdom seems to be that he was trying to save his brother Luigi from an uncertain fate. Before this he was just an ordinary plumber and as far as I know, being a plumber is something Mario hasn’t used once since going to The Mushroom Kingdom. So, with that in mind what kind of Mario would we expect and the only thing I could come up with is generic man. Hello, Chris Pratt.

Now a lot of people say that Chris Pratt doesn’t match Mario, but the thing is Mario himself doesn’t really have a lot of personality. That is somewhat intentional on Nintendo’s part, but I don’t understand how people can expect Mario in this case to think of Mario as anything more than a random guy. So I will not take that excuse anymore. However, if you were to say you didn’t like him because he sounds as though he feels out of place, then there is more merit to that argument. Even though Mario doesn’t have much of a personality, that doesn’t mean you can’t give him one. So far, all I can say is that maybe he is the type to jump in without considering the consequences. That’s all they’ve shown us. Personally speaking, the voice of Mario sounds a bit… out there I guess? It’s hard to describe. I just can’t pin down who this Mario is supposed to be.

The problem is I can’t really pin down Mario because we haven’t seen him interact with anybody. All, of his lines so far have just been statements out loud directed to no one in particular. Everyone else has at least has some sort of conversation with someone else. I can gather from that at least a bit of personality, but I can’t really say anything about Mario. I don’t want to dunk on Mario, I really don’t. I am trying to be as considerate as possible, but I am just not being given much to work off of here. Give me some sort of interaction, preferably more than just getting dominated by an ape in a tie. Also, some Donkey Kong lines would be appreciated too while I’m being greedy and asking for things. At the end of the day, though I am still going to see the movie. Why? I shouldn’t have to answer that. so I won’t. Instead, I’ll sign off for today. See you next week.

The Vicissitudes of Violet

Pokémon Violet is a very vexing videogame. The variable of this vexation is not the version, but the very vicissitudes of the various variables involved in this game. Visuals can be varied from venue to venue and due to the variable vision I would vent of a virus involuntarily. This virtual venue has its virtues. The videogame venue is vast and values the virtue of verifying your own voice. Furthermore you can visit the various villages and venues in various variants. There have been various efforts to revive and revitalize the value of this very valuable franchise. This latest version of these videogames has virtues for sure, but vices are vindictive. The vices are that visuals dive so the viewing experience is vaguely visible at times. The view is varied but is veiled by the visuals falling at various intervals. There are various new Pokémon that bring new variety at least and variety is what will vertically vault the franchise’s value. Although if they valued variety would have given the verdant feline the virtue of not evolving vertically inclined. I vividly remember the various victims when viewing that evolution. Victims of veritable naivety. Onto more virtues I value them reviewing the previous version and allowing us more velocity when driving our “vehicle” from venue to venue. The most valuable asset this videogame has is it’s versatility after all.

Other virtues are that gym challenges are varied to help victories feel valuable. In fact, you can verify that each venue the story values has its own type variation. You can visit your vocational venue to learn valuable information or you can advocate for vagrancy and voluntary avoid involving yourself with classes. Certain vicious Pokémon can be viewed if you veer of and their vibrant glow verifies they are very violent and view you as a victim to their vicious attacks. Their typing also vary since they evidently have a variable variance that elevates their viciousness. Although these versions are veritable vestiges of the various violent acts this videogame put you through. The Titans are voracious and invigorate themselves through veggies. Level scaling is not evident and various stories have you very underleveled. Even if you are vehemently victorious, it can be viciously voided if the videogame freezes leaving your victory in vain. Granted, leveling is very viable thanks to the valuable candy that are verily on the verdant soil. Enacting violence against the vagrants who aren’t even vandals and are virtually the most virtuous people in the story and yet are victims of violence is very vexing. The most vexing thing is actually the veracity that this videogame is void of any voice acting. Nintendo has neglected voice acting in the vast majority of their videogames, but why are there no voices? I would think it would be a valuable vocation to voice a Pikachu.

This version of events has veered all over the place. Using this vernacular with my vocabulary has made me vexed. However, this is a vision of veering through Pokémon Violet. Every event is a victim of virtues and vices that virtually run through the videogame. This is verified in the other version as well. Also no videogame version has been visually appealing in this franchise since Generation V. Ever since virtually increase the volume of the videogames, the games has had their valor vacuumed up. I can verify that this videogame has a sort of vibrancy and vigor that is valuable, but is also veiled by volumes of visual viruses that are viewed very easily and could have been verified before unveiling them to various people of various vernaculars. I view this videogame as a very extravagant endeavor. I feel that this is virtue of the veracity of the fact that development for various games have had even less time to verify variables that can effect the viewership of these videogames. It’s very much a vision of vanity if these videogames weren’t victims of the elevated volume of this franchise. It’s inevitable and verifiable. I value this series as do very many others and so I believe they should be valued by the developers. These versions have various vicissitudes due to the volume of problems in visuals. However, if more love and value is given, we can have something more valuable than ever. That’s all and I’m on the eve of victory in this valiant challenge. Or I am just a victim. Very well, until next time.

How Sonic Frontiers is Evolving the Franchise

Now, I want to start by saying that this is definitely the best 3D Sonic game that has come out in years. I am not saying that this game is perfect. It definitely has its fair share of problems, but considering the hard times Sonic has gone through in the past ten years, I am willing to look past them. Especially since none of them had a major impact on my overall experience of the game. Anyway, I won’t talk too much about the cyberspace levels because they feel pretty much handle the same as previous 3D Sonic titles. What I want to talk about is the big open world we have to explore. Now you are limited to an island per story session, but each island has a lot of ground to cover. It is honestly a lot of fun to move around the area at high speeds and just explore while doing some cool stunts. There is also combat that you can do with enemies, but it can be difficult to pull off at first. However, it does get better once you understand more about how it works. The game is mainly broken up into two parts. The first part has you going around unlocking level portals with gears from defeated enemies so you can collect enough keys to unlock Chaos Emeralds. The second part has you collecting special tokens to talk to characters in the overworld for dialogue that continues the story and nets you the Chaos Emeralds that you are missing. once you have six, you face off a colossal Titan to grab the seventh, turn into Super Sonic and defeat the Titan to move to the next area. Then you rinse and repeat. Pretty simple stuff, but honestly Sonic tends to do a lot better when he doesn’t try to be too clever or overly complicated. Although, to be honest what sticks out about me the most is not the open world, but the character moments.

You see, it all starting when I learned about one of the mechanics returning to this game from previous titles. This game surprisingly has fishing available for you to do. Now before you run off fans of Sonic Adventure, this is an optional thing. You are not required to fish for any reason. Truth be told, there are only two reasons why anyone would fish in this game despite the mechanics not being bad. The first is because it is the easiest way to break the game since progression items are sold for pretty cheap and powerups are sold there as well for even less somehow. The second reason, and my preferred reason, is to get your hands on the Egg Logs. In case you aren’t familiar with it, it is a weird drink people like to harp on about during the holidays here for some reason. Wait, sorry I was thinking about Eggnog. My bad. I won’t take back what I said though. Anyway, the Egg Logs are a series of recordings that you can purchase from Big by trading fishing tokens. This is a minor spoiler, but Eggman causes himself to be trapped in cyberspace and these logs are some of his thoughts regarding the events happening throughout the game. Many of them center around his new artificial intelligence Sage and you can see his progression into a doting father as the recordings progress. This makes for some of the best dialogue in the game. Not only is it entertaining to see Eggman’s thought process, but this actually helps us see him as less of a cartoonish villain and more as a person. This is especially apparent when he talks about his opinions related to Sonic’s friends. I won’t mention specifics, but even Eggman acknowledged that they either had grown a bit from the past, or had a lot of potential to grow. After reading these, I started to look at the game in a new light.

One of the biggest things that stuck out to me, when I first played this game was Sonic’s voice. I immediately thought to myself as a joke that Sonic was finally hitting puberty. Thinking back, I think I wasn’t too far off. Now Sonic doesn’t really show any real signs of growth in this story. Aside from a few minor details, he is still the same fast, headstrong, and reckless hero that we all remember. What has seen a change is how he interacts with his friends. Typically, there was a lot more jokes in previous games whenever there was dialogue. Even if there wasn’t it still felt kind of cheesy. Now it finally seems like they are having deeper conversations with each other and are starting to form their own identities. Amy is no longer as obsessive about getting Sonic to notice her and has thankfully calmed her character down considerably. Knuckles is contemplating is their is more than just being the last guardian of the Master Emerald. Tails is finally starting to accept himself as more than just a Sonic fanboy and is considering finally jumping out of Sonic’s shadow. Now, I know there are some people who might not care about these changes. That’s fine, continue enjoying going fast. That is the main point of the game after all. What I am seeing though is there seems to be a change in the direction the series wants to take. I think they have started to understand how to do a more serious storyline without making it seem edgy. I think they are starting to understand to not go too heavy on the jokes. I also think they are finally reflecting on the fact that most of these characters haven’t had significant character development since the Sonic Adventure series. I can only see this as something to look forward to in the future. I can’t guarantee that this new journey will be smooth sailing, but at this point I think they might finally be moving into a new phase of 3D Sonic. I will sum this all up by saying the game is fun, but I won’t be remembering it for the millions of loops I did on rails. Anyway, take care everyone and see you next week.

Skill Tree Talk

Good news. I was worried for nothing. The games that came out have been holding up. There were two big games that came out this week. One was God of War: Ragnarok and the other was Sonic Frontiers. They are two very different games and yet fun in their own ways which is quite welcome honestly. They seem to know what they are doing and that is great. I just started to think about something because of these games and thought I would do the normal thing I do each week and lay out my thoughts for you to think about once again. While these two games obviously differ quite drastically from each other from a mechanical standpoint there is something they do have in common. That is the fact that they both have skill trees. For those unfamiliar with what those are, a skill tree is a skill window where you can upgrade your character’s basic skills by picking and choosing from branching paths in order to personalize your character’s moveset. That means that in the situation where a skill tree is present in the game, each pathway in the skill tree should be equally viable in allowing for clearing the game. As an example, imagine that you had a skill tree with three branching paths. One for melee, one for range and one for magic. The melee one would probably offer more damage when wielding melee weapons and special melee attacks to keep combos going. The range one would probably increase the number of projectiles that could be fired and boost the capability of ranged weapons. The magic one would allow for different elemental attacks and maybe some healing magic and AOE magic. However there would still be similarities such as a skills that helps take down multiple enemies or has increased chance of critical hits. There could even be branches that don’t even relate to combat and are instead focused on crafting since that is tied to many open world game formats. The increased crafting abilities could be used to craft better armor or weapons to make up for the lack of skills you get.

Now that we have got the idea of what a skill tree is out of the way, let’s talk a little more in depth about it. You see, a skill tree in my opinion, should be a way to allow the character to specialize in a certain field of play. That isn’t to say that they should pick one path and run with it only, but rather they should at least aim not to be a jack of all trades. The reason is because most of the best skills that you can get are reserved for after you reach a certain point in a skill tree. Now, skill points can be earned in multiple ways such as doing quests of leveling up, but they are not infinite. They are a valuable resource used to unlock more of your skill tree and continue to build upon your skills. As you upgrade your skills, it becomes more costly to unlock their superior versions so it means that you could end up with a bunch of half-baked skills if you do not specialize properly. Now you could rectify this by doing every side quest in the game to unlock more skill points, but even then some games don’t even let you unlock the entire skill tree by doing this. Some game almost force you to go through another playthrough to unlock the full skill tree, so by no means should you attempt to do this on the first go. Especially if you can already tell what skills you will find useful to beating the game. Again, the games are designed so that you can invest in any specialty to win so they wouldn’t be too unforgiving and require you to unlock most of the skill tree to win the game. Some skill trees even discourage you from doing this by making other branches more expensive to learn from once you commit to one. The point is to have the option to play things multiple different ways. At least, that should be the intention.

Now the problem with that is that everything I have listed in regards to how skill trees are set up bears a closer resemblance to an ideal rather than reflecting reality. While there are many possible choices, the problem is that sometimes there is the problem of too many and too few choices. Just because there are a lot of choices, doesn’t necessarily mean you will like all of the choices. Certain branches can sometimes be too complicated for their own good and branch out too much so it can feel like a waste. So sometimes you might have to collect other skills you might not care about to get to the ones you really want. This can occur in multiple branches as well if you are unlucky. There can also be a problem that can happen where certain branches are locked until you unlock a corresponding skill in the story. However, sometimes you have no way of knowing when you will get it so you have to ignore that branch for a while. The thing is that by then you may have already develop a playstyle that doesn’t include that branch and may ignore it because of that, despite its usefulness. Truth be told, I think skill trees shouldn’t give you new skills. I think it should be more focused on chaining abilities and skills together and upgrading them instead. To get new basic skills you will mainly get them through story quests or side quests. That way you can use them before deciding whether or not to upgrade them. Instead, usually you are just given a description and a little teaser showing you how it works. Unfortunately, that might not show you how well it chains it actual combat. I don’t think I am alone in thinking that, but this wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong. Maybe people do like being a jack of all trades after all. It’s possible, but unlikely. I am not saying that skill trees are bad, I just feel like you shouldn’t have your cake and eat it too. Otherwise, why bother having the branching paths in the first place? Why not just give us the useful skills from the get-go and have us choose what armor we want to wear instead? That all for now everyone. See you next time!

Let’s Talk About This Year

Alright, normally I don’t do things like this, but I felt the need to address it. Now, some people might have noticed that this year in particular has consisted of various levels of me bringing up the same types of games for discussion on this blog. I understand that I am at fault for that, but the main reason for that is because I honestly don’t know what else to talk about this year. This year has just been very lackluster for gaming. The amount of big name releases this year has been pretty low so far. And for the ones that we did get, they were a pretty mixed bag. Honestly, did anyone even remember that the new Saints Row came out after a month. I sure didn’t. I was literally looking at a list of games that came out this year and realized in shock that it was on the list. You know how many people are playing that game now? Nobody. Literally no one. Gotham Knights ended up also feeling bland as well so soon everyone will just forget about it too assuming they haven’t already. I’ll be honest and say I forgot about this too. It’s hard to remain relevant when your previous games were just better in every way.

Now maybe I could choose to believe that is all due to the live service nature of those games, but honestly most of the decent games came out at the beginning of the year to be honest. Elden Ring was great, the new Kirby game was good, and so was Horizon: Forbidden West. The thing is that they cannot hold an entire year on their own. Sure there are other games that came out aside from these, but I can’t see the others fighting it out for game of the year. We had a long drought this year and so the fact that most of the releases since then have been mid is slightly disappointing. Honestly, one of the most memorable games this year has been Stray and that is just a walking sim with a good story and world building. Honestly, it just feels unfortunate since a bunch of interesting releases were pushed back until next year. That is not anyone’s fault. We had a pandemic. Plans changed. We are just feeling the brunt of it now, that’s all. However, the current trends make me nervous for what’s in store.

Now this could just be my daily dose of paranoia so you can take what I am about to say with a grain of salt. I am fine with you going down to the rabbit hole with me though. You see, I am worried that any games coming out later this year might have their share of problems. Since development times have been thrown off, I am worried that people might have cut corners to have games on shelves for the holiday season. It wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened. Especially, when referring to the franchise that is unveiling their first real take on the open world formula next week. Sonic the Hedgehog really deserves a win at this point and so I really hope this latest game is what every fan of the series is hoping for and more. I just really don’t want it to be another dark spot in his history since Sonic has gone through a lot over the years. I am less worried about the other games, but I am still suffering from this needless anxiety because sometimes I am not sure if I trust this industry. So I figured I would share the wealth so we can hopefully all suffer together. Again, it is probably nothing. However, now I get the luxury of getting to say I told you so if I am right. I will not feel the least bit good about doing it though. It would just be obligatory. Anyway, that’s all. Bye!

First Final Fantasy Game?

Final Fantasy is one of the foremost examples of fantasy RPGs, but I for one found out after years of fooling around with forums online that featured facts about Final Fantasy VII, that one Final Fantasy game that people fought for as their favorite game ever forged by the facilities of our fathers and forefathers. After I found out about this famous franchise, I found out I had already followed in other’s footsteps and had found a Final Fantasy game to play. However, my first Final Fantasy game was a spinoff far removed from the franchise and featured a far friendly format for fighting foes in fights. First off, the spinoff was Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales. This game was a fondness of mine during fourth and fifth grade when I had the most fun finding time to fool around in funny games. For the record, going forward this will feature fragmented spoilers. I figure that is only fair when talking about the features of this fabulous spinoff in the Final Fantasy franchise. The plot is fairly straightforward. You are a finely feathered fowl known as a chocobo frolicking on a farm with your feather friends. One day on the farm as it is time for fun fables to be read, a fearsome looking fable from far away is brought in by a fellow friend of the farm who loves finding fascinating books. The farm owner flips the pages to find it is filled with freaky fortunes that foretell a frightening fate will fall upon the farm. This freaks out the fellows gathered there and soon the fable is revealed to be a fearsome foe trapped in the form of a fable. He feeds off of the friendly fowl at the farm save for yourself and a few friends without feathers. He then flies off to find the facilities he needs to free himself and achieve his final form.

Now in true Final Fantasy fashion you must fight and defeat the fearsome foe that has broken free. The game’s foundation is focused on different fantastic fables that have fallen in different places and have found themselves filled with magical force. The main feature of the game is fighting it out with feathered fiends in friendly games to fulfill different tasks. these function as a way to find paths to move forward to face the foes you need to fight for the main game. Each fable you find has three fortunate happenings that once fulfilled in the fable can help you find your way forward. Of course there are not just fables to find as there are fun minigames that feature a few fun prizes to help fight foes. The fables also feature some of these as well. These fun prizes are for the fights you face to move forward. There are only a few fights, but they are fought by fighting with cards. Yes, to face off against foes, you must find fearsome cards and configure a deck that can face off against them. You can find many of them in fables and fun minigames, but some are found just by finding them on the floor. There are factors that can influence the feasibility of your deck such as the form of the foes in the opposing force. It is fine to fail at first as you just need to find cards or fill up a different deck before fighting again. There are four minibosses and four major bosses in the four featured sections of the game. Each fight is fought with your best fighters from you deck. Fighting and defeating them all will lead to the final fight.

You see, after defeating the fable boss for the fourth time, he reveals it was fate to fail to you four times and that by fighting and defeating his four forms, he can finally achieve his final form. That was why he didn’t feed on you at the farm. After he flies off you head to the final area to fight his final form in… air hockey? For real? Oh right, I forgot about the fun and friendly vibe for a few seconds. Anyway, you fend him off and finish the job by using the fearsome might of the four crystal and finish the game. The game finishes with it all being a fever dream with the farm having never fallen to the dark fable. All in all, it is a fun game that features a different formula from other games in the franchise. Of course in fourth grade I didn’t fathom that this was a spinoff of a famous franchise. Further down the line I would finally play a full-on Final Fantasy game in the form of Final Fantasy V. I figured it wasn’t fair for me to judge a franchise from a game I played fifteen years ago. It was fun for sure, but it felt a bit more formulaic that the freedom offered in the Final Fantasy spinoff game that fueled a few moments of friendship in fourth and fifth grade. It’s not fair to do this to Final Fantasy V, especially since the freelancer system which allows freedom to perform different professions for fun is far more flexible than other titles in the franchise. I guess I just felt like finding an excuse to fondly look back on a familiar but nearly forgotten game from before when I just found things fun. In fact, fables and fairytales were some of my favorite pastimes other than gaming. I found the game so much fun, I once failed to find my copy of it and used my few funds to pay for another one. Fortunately, it was the final time. Anyway, that was fun. Feel free to let me know of your old favorites if you feel that is fine. Otherwise, farewell and have a fabulous Friday! Fin.

Let’s Talk About Platformers

It’s that time again. I cover a topic that nobody was really asking for because I have a personal interest in it. That’s why I got my own blog in the first place, so that I could write for fun and people could maybe enjoy it. Now the thought that popped into my head this time is that I think there should be a distinction between platformers. I know that sounds confusing, but hear me out for a bit. Platformer itself is a pretty broad term. It can encompass any game that has jumping from one place to another as part of it’s core gameplay. Obviously most games have a jump button, but that doesn’t make every game a platformer. Also, a game can have platforming segments without being a platformer. Game developers usually love doing this kind of thing, but that is really what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about a distinction between different types of platformers. You see, there are two types of platformers in my opinion. There are platformers that focus on movement and there are platformers that focus on combat. As an example let’s look at the Crash Bandicoot series and the Spyro series. In the Crash Bandicoot series, the game it centered around platforming and once you complete all the platforming challenges, then you clear the level. Most of the upgrades that you unlock for him make it easier to platform and add new techniques to attempt more platforming challenges. In the Spyro series, you are platforming in different levels, but the gameplay is more geared towards fighting enemies. I would consider them both platformers, but they are very different styles of game.

I think the main way to differentiate the two types are the way enemies are used in the game. For instance let us take the example of the Goomba. If you aren’t aware of what a Goomba is, that must be a very comfy rock you are living under. The first enemy you face in the Super Mario Bros. series, the Goomba is an iconic enemy and remains one of the least threatening enemies in any videogame. The reason is because they function more as obstacles than as enemies. Usually you don’t even have to bother fighting them, they are just there to be in the way. However, in games like Mega Man, you are meant to clear the enemies in order to proceed with the stage and they will stop as nothing to eliminate you. The point is that you cannot avoid the enemies as obstacles because if you don’t defeat them, you will meet an untimely demise. Here’s another way to think about it. How do you clear a stage in a platformer? Is the requirement to win passing through the obstacle or is it beating up enemies at the end of the stage? Mario usually jumps on a flagpole or axe, Sonic usually runs into a signpost or ring, they just move through the stage and anything along the way is just extra points. Whereas in Mega Man, you aren’t beating the robots and the robot master at the end of the stage by jumping over them. In Castlevania, you aren’t getting by without taking out bosses as you go through the game. I am not really trying to say anything amazing or profound here. I just want to say that there are two different types of platformers. One where you jump and another where you jump and shoot. There is nothing wrong with that.

So, then why did I bring this all up. Well, the reason I wanted to make this distinction is because I feel like I have a preference and I realized this as I have played games over time. Personally, when I play a platformer I like to usually have the game stay structured more around platforming than combat. You know, like when you get upgrades that make platforming more interesting. Does anyone even enjoy doing combat while platforming? I am rarely in a situation where I enjoy fighting on a moving platform. Maybe I am just bad at games, but I am allowed to complain a bit right? Anyway some games I feel like it enjoy doing the platforming more than I enjoy fighting enemies in them. However, there are some platformers that feel as if they need more enemies to impede progress because as things stand there isn’t a lot of challenge otherwise. This is noticeably rarer, but it can still happen. I can’t think of a good example off the top of my head, so I won’t try and overheat the one wrinkle on my brain. Instead I will talk about a game that I would have enjoyed more platforming as less combat. Ori and the Blind Forest is a game that has a beautiful design and story, but the platforming was the most fun part of the game for me. Some sequences in the game were pretty cool, like when you had to escape the water in that tree. Yeah, that is as specific as I will be. If you know, you know. The thing that I felt was the most lackluster part of the game was the combat because the combat felt kind of loose to me. The thing is that your character feels so acrobatic that I wanted to have more diverse platforming, but I feel like the game held itself back a bit too much by focusing on combat. The sequel game isn’t something I played so I can’t be sure, but I am willing to surmise it was about the same. Whether or not it is true doesn’t really matter to me though. What matters it that a game makes clear what the focus is going to be. Sometimes I see platforming in the trailer, but then the game offers up combat sections for no reason. Sometimes a game has a good combat flow going, but then it has an annoying platforming section for no reason. I am not saying you can’t have both, but I just want a warning is all. Okay, the mini rant is over now. That’s all, so see you next time. I will probably sound just as crazy so look forward to that I guess.

The Most Broken Mario Party Map

We all should know that the Mario Party series consists of some of the most innovative ways to destroy friendships ever designed by man, but there are some entries in the series that are more brutal then others. Everyone knows the original gave Nintendo a few good lawsuits for implementing minigames that were designed to give people physical pain. Luckily, Nintendo realized that the emotional pain was a lot harder to get evidence for so they stuck to that instead. Now despite the first few games in the series being a janky mess, they still had some fun maps. In fact most games in the series have a couple of maps that are well known due to their sheer randomness or uniqueness. Some of the more well known examples are Waluigi Island in Mario Party 3 and Snowflake Lake from Mario Party 6. These maps had elements that mix in a special kind of randomness that can make the results completely unpredictable. That is, in my opinion, the essence of a good Mario Party map. However, today I want to highlight a particular map that people might not be aware of and I want to show how despite being deceptively tame, it is probably one of, if not the most, broken Mario Party maps in history. Before I talk about the map though, let’s talk a bit about the game it comes from: Mario Party DS.

Now Mario Party DS was actually my first exposure to the series. I was naïve back then and didn’t understand the world of pain I was about to embark on, but no one ever learns a lesson without trying something new. Now there are a total of five maps in the game, which is pretty low for a Mario Party game, but they are all fun in their own way. The first one is a pretty simple map with no special gimmicks other than just try to get to a star space before your opponents, but the rest have other gimmicks that have been taken from previous titles in the series and rethemed. Well, except for the last one which is basically a typical Mario Party map with a lot more gambling and a lot more pain. It actually has the most brutal trap in any Mario Party game where if you get unlucky you will lose all your coins and all your stars, putting you immediately in fourth place. I can’t think of any other time Bowser has been that brutal, but I guess that’s just Mario Party DS for you. Surprising enough, the broken map is not that one. It is actually a map called DK’s Stone Statue, which is a seemingly simple map. All you are required to do is get to the top of the DK statue to buy a star. That’s it. It is one of the newer kinds of maps in which the Star Space doesn’t move so you just need to travel in a straight line to get to it. Well, not necessarily straight, but it is very linear compared to other maps in the series. Seems fine, until you learn that it isn’t a Star Space up at the top, but a Star Splurge Space. This space is what changes the game entirely.

Now you are probably wondering what makes this particular Star Space so problematic. It’s actually pretty simple. This space allows you to buy multiple stars at a time. Now some of you might be thinking “Is that it?” That is fair response since there are other boards in the series that have allowed for purchasing multiple stars at a time. However, there is something those games included when purchasing stars that this game didn’t and that is a star cap. You could only buy a certain amount of stars at a time in other games, but in this one that doesn’t apply. As long as you have enough coins, you can buy as many stars as you like. That is crazy powerful, especially if you are good at the minigames since you can rack up a bunch of coins heading to the summit. However, there are a couple of things to note. You see, Mario Party DS makes a distinction between items. There are two types: items and hexes. Items are used in a way that they only affect the player whereas hexes are used in a way where they only affect other players. Some hexes steal coins and stars from other players, but the important ones for this map are the Space Swap Hex and the Coin Swap Hex which can greatly the change the outcome of the game do the linear nature of the board and the added value of coins compared to other boards. After all, even if you have a good amount of coins, it doesn’t matter if you can’t spend them. So in the end it is all a matter of how much you can spend at once. You might think that this still isn’t chaotic enough and to that I want to throw in one more curveball.

Now in most Mario Party games, there is something called The Last Five Turns Event in which someone, typically Bowser, shows up and has a player spin a win to spice up the game for the remaining turns. This is typically done by the person who is in last place. This is also true in Mario Party DS, although in this game it is called the Final Five Frenzy. It actually is a lot tamer than it sounds. Most of the options aren’t anything that will affect the board and instead, most will directly affect the player. Sometimes they receive coins, and sometimes they can receive a star. However, there is one option that directly affects the board. Want to take a guess? No? Fine. There is one option that makes it so stars are five coins each. Now, this function is only available on boards where it doesn’t interfere with the gimmick, but DK’s Stone Statue is not excluded from this option popping up. Meaning that in the last five turns, all stars are now 75% off. So not only do the bonus stars and duels essentially become irrelevant, but it becomes a mad dash to get to the top and the standings fluctuate wildly during this period. Just imagine that if you have fifty coins, you can now buy ten stars at once. In fact, sometimes it might be better to play so that you don’t spend coins until the Final Five Frenzy is over so that you can make sure to get the best price. However, it is a dangerous play to make since the Coin Swap Hex is available. My record I believe for one game was I had 78 stars as my final total and no one was even close to touching me. The most dangerous part of the game is holding onto coins, but once they are converted into Stars then there isn’t much that opponents can do to catch up. There is no Chance Time event is this game after all so once you get the lead, you pretty much keep it. Other maps have some checks for this, but only this one actively encourages you to run away with the lead. I believe there is actually an in-game achievement for getting at least 70 stars on the board. However, just because it was programmed to be easily exploitable doesn’t mean it is any less broken. I am not saying that the map isn’t fun. What I will say though is if you have the opportunity to play it, see how much you can break it. Provided you can find a copy. Anyway, that’s all for today. See you next time!