If you do end up coming to Europe, Poland is definitely an underrated place to visit
Very true with the experimentation. I imagine you have your hands full with the coming arrival of a third entity within your home, but I'll be here to read it when the time comes. Glad you're having a blast and you should take a trip abroad sometime. I think once things settle here, I'm really going to see what it would take to got to Japan or even England for a little while. I've never truly been out of the country, or at least not off the North American continent, and I've always dreamed of traveling.
Yeah, it’s sad that era of experimentation is gone, but I think it’s not just SE. all this probably has to do with the fact that video games are just very expensive to make now, so it’s no surprise that big companies prefer taking smaller risk, what with the larger gaming mainstream being quite easy to satisfy. Whenever you’re ready, man. I know for certain that my first draft won’t be ready for anyone to read it, so you’ll have to wait a while to read my stuff too. Yeah, isn’t Hawaii the state with the largest Japanese minority? Or was it California? Either way, this game has kind of motivated me to maybe try and save up what I can to actually make a trip to Hawaii. But first, I need to write that bestselling novel Also, I don’t think Ultra Sun is as challenging as the original Red and Blue, but at the very least it’s been a very nice experience, what with the game actually forcing me to think about my party and move composition a bit, which is still much more than any game that came after Gen 1, especially the past two gens. And while it’s still not really possible to get lost and the path isn’t really non-linear, the routes are winding and interesting and make exploring this archipelago really immersive.
Once I get a bit more written I may take you up on the offer. I may even simply just go by an outline as opposed to a chapter by chapter scenario since a good chunk of the first part will need to be rewritten anyway. I'm not surprised they nailed Hawaii so well, it's like Japan's favorite part of the U.S. and the one most familiar to them, which is hilarious in hindsight cause Hawaii is probably the most foreign state culturally from the rest of the country. Legend of Mana has been a neat trip so far. Not sure if I'll play it to completion since I've beaten it several times before anyway and I have a host of PS4 games begging me to play them as well as Romancing SaGa, but I'll stick with it as long as I can. I think the biggest insights of playing so many PS1 games lately is how completely daring Square was in this time frame in terms of design and content. It's hard to feel like the modern company would greenlight anything like Chrono Cross, SaGa Frontier 2, and Legend of Mana nowadays. I mean there was a brief moment in the PS2 era, but it feels like the company wouldn't really do anything as experimental as these titles unless they were mobile titles. I also forgot how much Square pushed the PlayStation Pocket and how Legend of Mana actually had save file bonuses for having other Square game files on your Memory Card. LoM gives you a Chocobo Pet for having an FFVIII file while you can acquire the Cinderforge (best Steel Weapon in SF2) for having an SF2 file on the card.
Real life stuff always takes precedent. I hope you get to have more time to do more of your thing this week then! As always, if you ever need a critique partner, I’ll always help out. Even if I am a bit busy and it might take me a while, I definitely wanna help. Generations 1 through 4 were based on Japan - Kanto is based of real-life Kanto, Johto is Kansai (what with its far more traditional architecture), then Ruby and Sapphire’s Hoenn is based on Kyushu (hence the slightly more tropical vibe) and Sinnoh from Diamon and Pearl is based on Hokkaido (which is why it’s both so cold and so large). Since Gen 5, however, things get a bit different, as Unova from Black and White is based on NYC, Kalos from X and Y is France, and now Alola is Hawaii, and while Unova for example felt very much like New York through a Japanese lens and Kalos didn’t feel particularly European, it seems they’ve really done their work with Alola. People even call each other cousins and aunts and stuff, which is a very nice touch. Glad you’re enjoying LoM again! It’s nice to come back to an old game that you don’t replay all the time only to find out it’s much better than you remember Happened to me a couple times during my FF marathon
Well, just keep working on that writing sine it's ultimately more important. I wasn't nearly as productive as I wanted to be this past weekend but that's largely due to RL stuff getting in the way. I hope to do a better job this week. Good luck on your own story and drawings. Hawaii is one of the few U.S. states I've never been to along with Alaska and Maryland. I do dig the Hawaii vibe the game has, but didn't some of the previous entries get inspiration for their areas on places in Japan? I ended up starting Legend of Mana, which was enough of an eye opener for me that I ended up going back to my Top 100 list and rewriting the whole section on it because I don't feel I did the game justice like later entries. Been pretty groovy so far.
Sorry for the late reply. It’s a lot and ivr been a bit busy Oh yeah I’m definitely not unhappy that this idea came now. There’s gonna be a ton of rewrites anyway obviously so I am not afraid to experiment now. And your approach sounds solid - whatever you focus on at the moment, it’s important that you just keep on writing really. You’ll get to all your other projects when the time is right. Again, both series I really wanna get into more someday, and your recommendation certainly helps. But today is not that day. Heck, who knows - I might just play them with my kid Ultra Sun definitely feels different, and it definitely feels like a far more complete game than X or Y. I’m also very thankful that we’ve actually got an interesting plot and characters again, after how incredibly bad the previous Gen was in that regard. I’m about halfway through the main plot and so far I can feel this game is up there with the fifth generation when it comes to my favorite Pokémon experience. Also, I’ve always just really wanted to go to Hawaii and this kind of gives me that a little bit
I don't think it's bad to at least start developing some of the primary characters later on, of anything you can use it as an opportunity to add foreshadowing in the earlier chapters. So don't worry about working on the guy. The new idea story is simply me trying to create a baseline of the general flow and direction of the story. In truth it's likely going to read like a collection of smaller stories that happen to be interconnected as opposed to my usual grand epic nonsense. I don't know why I'm thinking of the Destroyer story so much lately, maybe I'm tapping too much into my misanthropic moods lately which that story is a bit of an outlet for. Soul is one where I'm just wanting to sit down and really dive into it. Like not my usual careful and slow pace, like I seriously just want to get the basic plot out and just start fixing the chapters. My goal for the summer is to have the full story written out by August, and to have a final draft ready by the end of the year. I feel if I just focus on getting the main details out and worry about foreshadowing and "being clever" in the revisions, I can finally get the bulk of the story out and give myself a better chance of editing down the early bloated chapters and fix the pacing. It helps that I've always wanted Soul to be just one book despite knowing it could easily be a trilogy in itself, but I would rather do the former. I was doing a Mana playthrough a year or two back but got distracted by shiny new stuff. I did finish one of the newer games and was going to start Legend of Mana but instead opted to try out SaGa Frontier 2 since I never touched it. My first attempt didn't go so well since I started in Wil's scenario and it's not only a slow burner story-wise, but a serious kick in the teeth gameplay-wise as well. I kind of want to go back to that replay of Secret of Mana, but the TV I have my SNES attached to finally died, and I also acquired the remake recently... I think the reason Legend has been on my mind is that it has a bunch of stylistic and gameplay similarities to SaGa Frontier 2, so playing the one is getting me into the mood to play the other kind of deal. It's also been ages since I've played it and it was one of the more interesting surprises for me in the PS1 era. Speaking of games I started and never finished, I need to get back to Pokemon Ruby, I think I got halfway through before stopping. Sun and Moon always looked like they were trying to really revamp the series, so it's cool to hear the confirmation that it did. Pokemon was always an interesting idea, though I still feel Nintendo has never really tapped into its full potential outside a of a few oddballs games here and there.
Yeah, I guess. The character is still relevant to the book’s plot, it’s just that he probably won’t show up until waaaaay later. His importance is actually kinda reminiscent of Xeno-y plot twists, but we’ll see how much of that makes it into the final book. I am doing my best to focus on just the one story for now, though. If I keep distracting myself with other projects, I honestly don’t know when I would finish it Still, it’s hreat that you got your creative juices flowing! I did try a Mana playthrough once but never reached Legend. Maybe someday! Meanwhile, Pokémon Ultra Sun has been incredibly refreshing! One thing I didn’t expect is that they actually balanced the game for the fact that all party Pokémon gain exp at once, so this game is actually challenging. The lack of gyms makes the journey feel that much more new, and the setting in general is just gorgeous and feels more alive than any orevoous Pokémon region
Hey, every lit bit helps if you ask me. I've been jumping back and forth between brainstorming ideas for three different stories I'm writing. My new one is just in the phase where I'm jotting out ideas for it, I kind of came back to the Destroyer storyline, and of course Soul is never far behind in my mind. I've also really want to replay Legend of Mana for some reason.
