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    I never know when exactly your birthday is because you're a secretive little bastard, so I'll just wish you a happy birthday now Hope the next year in your life is even better than the last one!

    On a completely unrelated note (as I kinda need to get away from thinking about writing for a bit, because my mind has gotten obsessive about putting my own damn self down again), I'm really looking forward to Romancing SaGa 3. Don't know if I'll be able to play it righ away, since I don't exactly have money to spare, but it's a definite buy at some point, for me. Now, if I could only decide who to play as. I've narrowed down the choice to Katrina and Khalid, since they're two of the hottest protagonists available, it looks like, the problem is which should I pick? I know Katrina is not playable at all if you don't start with her, so that seems like a no-brainer, but then I heard Khalid can be hard to recruit/is expensive when hue's not your protagonist. Hmm...
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    Tell me about it. Though I feel the theme can develop with the story as you go along, I'm also struggling with a hook. It doesn't help that most of my ideas are basically "ok so this starts out like regular X BUT ACTUALLY" and that's really hard to sell without spilling the beans from the getgo. Still, yeash, it's important that you write what you feel is appropriate for you now. I started with what is going to be the second or third story in the collection simply because it's the one I wanted to write right now. That said, I feel it's probably the most depressing one in the book, and that's saying something considering my last year's halloween story is set to be in this collection
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    I think it's normal that once you start actually working on a project, it loses a lot of its lustre. Like, I just started the NaNo thing and was super excited about my story that is high fantasy on the surface but it's actually cosmic horror, but now that I'm writing it, it's like pulling teeth again. You really gotta push through it if you want to finish something.
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    That reminds me I need to do that myself. I also did the Dragovian chapter on the 3DS, but never got around to rebattling the final boss to see the golden ending. Will make an attempt at some point, that's for sure.

    I've yet to sit down to NaNo, but I will try to do that today. I'm gonna work on my short story collection so that I have some stuff that I can start sending out to contest while the whole book gets rejected multiple times. Good to hear that you're excited aboyut a new project. The stuff where you've got nothing planned is usually the most rewarding once it's done.
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    Even then, I don't think DQVI is that bittersweet? I feel the only really sad thing about that ending is Ahslynn disappearing, with the world pretty much being left in a much better state aside from that
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    I mean, that's probably one of the factors. When it's a big budget thing, you need to think economically and make cuts in places that would make the most sense from a marketing standpoint (and not necessarily a narrative standpoint). It probably explains why indie titles don't suffer this problem, as they're usually already made from passion using shoestring budgets, so ironically, they have more freedom in that regard. Still, I wonder what it's like for more mainstream narrative-driven games, where the narrative is the selling point. And I don't mean RPGs, since not everyone plays those for the narrative - I mean more stuff along the lines of Life is Strange or Tellatele games or something (never played those so I don't know).
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    Well, aside from the examples you mentioned, I feel chapter 4 (of 5) in the first Witcher game is its strongest, though that's a weird case, considering the fact that it is kind of out of place compared to the rest of the game, counting as more of an Arcadian Interlude, but it's woven in so great and has such an incredible feel to it that it really kind of makes the game?

    Also, now that I think about it, it seems that the Persona games are all pretty good about having well-fleshed out later halves, and that goes for both the OG Persona and new Persona games. In Innocent Sin you do get the slightly overlong Zodiac dungeons and the final dungeon to P1 is just ridiculous, but narratively speaking, they still feel strong and fleshed out. Of course, in the case of Persona 3, the game only really goes from great to sublime in its back half, so that's definitely an example of that, though I guess the opening is pretty gripping as well.

    What's interesting is that this may actually be something that modern games have the edge over older games in, as I feel there's much more room for creating games based on a concept that's already been fleshed out and paying equal attention to all the important parts, rather than just the beginning and the end. But then again, even a game as incredibly well-designed as the Witcher 3 does kind of rely too much on retreading the story of the books at its back half, so we're back to square one in that regard. It's interesting that of the two expansion packs, the shorter (and much more narratively fulfilling like omg I can't stress this one enough) actually averts this by being impeccably paced throughout, while the second (the clearly much more rushed one but with an incredible map to explore and tons of glorious fanservice for longtime fans) really does feel like it rushes through its back half.

    I think we may have uncovered a curse.
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    See, the thing is that this game is packed, even by today's standards, I feel. It's not a smaller project that feels smaller, like Planescape: Torment. The amount of sidequests feels overwhelming in that you'll probably not even find them all on your own in one playthrough. It's just that they're all so organically woven in that none of it really feels like they're making it just to fill a quota. It's great.

    Of course, while I love BG2, it too has its issues, since I feel that (the Throne of Bhaal expansion aside), the beginning is the strongest in this game as this is where you get the most control over how you play the game. Later you're on a more linear path, which I'm not really against personally, but there is at least one chapter that feels like padding. Getting out of the Underdark shouldn't take as long as it does and it just feels like an extended detour. Granted, I know all this stems from the fact that BG1 was a miracle made by a bunch of doctors who made D&D and then the sequel had to be bigger and better in every way but they also had a strict deadline, so a lot of the stuff they wanted to put in had to be cut, and that's why it feels that way.

    Honestly, now that I think about it, a lot of games seem to hit a lull about 2/3 of the way through, don't they? I had this issue in Torment where after leaving the main hub town the game just becomes a generic RPG with a more standard setting and stuff that just feels like out of place (including a bigger focus on combat) for a couple of hours, before returning to the good stuff again. Same thing happens in BG2, as I mentioned before. A lot of FFs seem to have this problem as we,, such as with the dead horse that is the huge materia quest in FFVII, or even the Rapha/Marach section in FFT (which is still great but overall feels less developed and a bit out of place compared to the rest of the game). I honestly don't understand why this keeps on happening, but it's only now that I've really noticed it. Technically, this should be where the game builds up its climax but it just... meanders?

    A similar thing happens in Pillars of Eternity, where you leave the city that was the main hub up to that point to get to the final stretch of the plot, only for the road there to be a bit too long and the additional quests there just... not really meshing well with the overall growing urgency of the plot. But speaking of that game, it's another fantastic example of what you're talking about - Pillars was a kickstarter project that was designed by Baldur's Gate/Planescape: Torment devs (including the lovely Chris Avellone, probably the best video game writer on the Western front who is fully responsible for the weirdly beautiful Torment, whom I think you should definitely look into if you haven't already) that is deliberately evocative of those games and it is designed in exactly that way because there were no studio execs to force them to make it as mainstream as possible. I hate to sound like someone stuck in the past, but I'm beginning to believe you may actually be right and they really don't make them like they used to anymore

    Phew, so that was a long rant Glad to know DQ is keeping you happy, regardless of the actual game. That reminds me that XI is actually the first game I've actually invested a significant amount of time playing the casino, and I'll probably return there at a later point because the prizes change as the game progresses. I'm still kind of not feeling it, because there's something about gambling that just immediately repels me and I have no idea why, but I pushed through it and got some nice gear.
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    It's super easy in the 3DS version because you see them all running around on the field screen Symbol encounters are good.

    Meanwhile, I am now hooked on BG2 and once again I am very appreciative of old-school quest design. So early in the game there comes a moment where your main story goal is to raise 20,000 gp, so you're pretty much left to explore your local City of Adventure and it's surroundings for cash ad, once again, all quests are unique, have their own stories, and none of them are fetch quests. In fact, a good chunk of them involves helping potential party memebrs, who are really well fleshed-out in this game, so it all comes together really nicely.
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    So I've beaten Yiazmat recently. Had to clear up some hard drive space but I didn't wanna uninstall FFXII until I did it.
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Recent Entries

Games tha are distracting me from playing other games...

by Wolf Kanno on 12-10-2023 at 06:09 AM
Since I'm doing a marathon, I thought it would be fun to list the games that are distracting me from actually finishing said marathon.

FFXV ~ MGS: Peace Walker and SaGa Scarlet Graces
FFXIII ~ Breath of Fire 1-3 and MechCommander Gold
XIII-2 ~ Romancing Saga Re:Universe and FF: Opera Omnia

Will update more in the future...
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Projects!!!

by Wolf Kanno on 01-28-2021 at 07:40 AM
Oof, I've been a bit out of sorts with my mental health lately, and I think it's about time I do something about that. I've got a lot of balls in the air so to speak concerning projects I've been doing around the forum both past and present. So I'm thinking about tackling a few of them, but with how I've been feeling lately, I want some second opinions I guess. Of the projects I've abandoned, what should I work on next?

Here's where I'm at for the moment:

FFVI Retrospective

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WK's Top 100 Lost but Not Forgotten : Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together

by Wolf Kanno on 05-24-2020 at 11:43 PM

I'm always split on these articles. So many of these games are great and I have retroactively said a few of them made the list, but occasionally something comes along that I really want to love but the game just won't let me. Tactics Ogre is in a weird place for me because the remake and the original are pretty different in some meaningful ways, so much of this review pertains to the remake due to having only played a little bit of the original.

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Updated 06-01-2020 at 09:44 PM by Wolf Kanno

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WK's Top 100's Lost but Not Forgotten List: Silent Hill 3

by Wolf Kanno on 05-03-2020 at 01:37 AM
Is this honestly the first non-RPG on this list?

Well I fell into the Silent Hill series rather late. By the time I had played the series, the "glory years" were over and fans were knee deep in Konami trying to take the series in a different direction without Team Silent. I was a huge fan of the first two entries of the series, being instantly sucked into the second entry and surprised how much I really enjoyed the first one. So it came as a bit

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WK's Top 100 Lost But Not Forgotten: SaGa Frontier 2

by Wolf Kanno on 04-05-2020 at 02:32 AM
I was having a serious reservation about whether I was going to add this to my Top 100 list or place it here. I decided it would go here for now, but part of me feels it could be like Demon's Souls and make the jump to My Top 100.


SaGa is a weird franchise. A JRPG series made for enthusiast who feel they've seen it all. From the Gameboy entries where you built a ragtag group filled with robots and monster to climb a tower/tree to visit

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Updated 05-04-2021 at 10:25 AM by Wolf Kanno

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