New Leaf: Days 2 Through 8

I don't have a whole lot to say, I think. I've come to learn that a lot of the things in New Leaf need to be unlocked, which takes like weeks to fully complete, so most of my time is spent making bells. Also, I think that I need to migrate screenshots from the SD card to my computer, contrary to my belief that I could email the pictures from the 3DS. So yeah, no pictures for you guys yet.

I don't know for sure if I mentioned this or not, but like an idiot I checked out the HHA Showcase right when it opened and was actually surprised to find that there were no houses available even though it was clear to me that I hadn't StreetPassed with anyone yet.

Also, how the hell are Digby and Isabelle twins? I guess you could say they sort of look like the same breed.

On my second day, I was ready to start building everything in the game, so I went over to Isabelle to find that I need a permit to be the mayor, which I found funny considering just the day before the town seemed willing to take any bum off the train as their new mayor. I had trouble getting approved because I did all of the one-time methods of getting points, and after I watered all my flowers and pulled all my weeds, I realized I could only help villagers in order to gain approval rating. And in a fit of terrible luck, Elvis's birthday was today, so him and Elise were busy partying all day. I mean, I first saw then partying at noon, and then at one in the morning I checked up on them and they were still celebrating. What the hell?

So with two options out of the question, I had to rely on my three other villagers for help, and of course Dora was out shopping at eleven at night for some reason. So I was down to Puck and Tutu, and no matter how many times I spoke to them, I was never asked to do any favors. It was frustrating, especially when I looked to see if anyone else had this issue and everyone else was saying they did approval nonsense in one hour. Yeah, okay.

Eventually, the Summer Island opened up for me and I was able to go over there. I took on deep-sea diving, although most of the deep-sea creatures are honestly not all that interesting. I also did some solo tours. As the week progressed, I unlocked more solo tours to do, but regardless of difficulty, most of these were fairly easy. I'm trying to save the medals for a wetsuit, but I've yet to see a wetsuit in that place. I did find a Mermaid Floor, which I actually happened to like. Then I saw what the Mermaid Series is and so I decided to break male gender roles and commit a room of my house to being a mermaid room. But right now I only just bought a second floor, so that will probably wait a while. Expanding the house is getting costlier by the day (I bought a second floor expansion, which was 498,000 bells), but thankfully I have found quite an incredible method of making bells.

My goodness this sounds like a song about cancer.

This guy is so sad.

Ummmm.... Ooookaaaay. Somebody's getting too frisky on this boat.

It says that the palm tree beetles appear at five in the afternoon, but I don't really see them until seven at night. Also at that time, sharks like to swim around. All of these things appear in the Summer, but thankfully it's always Summer on the Island! So at seven I head down and walk in circles, catching rare beetles and sharks. This takes about an hour for me to fill up the dropbox in the lobby, but when I sell everything to Reese, I make about a hundred-fifty to two hundred thousand bells at once! So this will be my primary method of making money throughout this game.

When I was finally able to attend to mayoral duties, I set the town ordinance to Bell Bloom to further increase whatever money I make from Reese. Over the past few days, I built a couple of bridges, a camping site, and a yield sign as per Colton's request (which makes me wonder, nobody drives, so why do we need a yield sign?). I probably don't need to fulfill direct requests like that, but I have a feeling doing so will benefit me somehow in the long run. I found that I need to do a variety of things to get the museum upgraded, the most notable being that I needed to donate one item of each category, which for a while was a problem as I had no art to give. It's funny because I already had more than half of the fish and bugs donated to the museum, and about a quarter of the fossils as well, but with an empty art exhibit. Thankfully, Crazy Redd came over yesterday and actually had a piece of art that wasn't a counterfeit, which was the Valiant Statue. I love that you can spot the counterfeits now, and sometimes it is pretty amusing to see how certain pieces are counterfeits. Like for example, my Valiant Statue would have bat wings instead of angel wings if it was a fake. Colton also came by later and gave me a Jolly Painting out of nowhere (finally a villager gives me something good!), but when I looked at it I found the guy had a carrot for a nose, thus making it a counterfeit (I knew it was too good to be true, damn these useless villagers).

I find that I am, for the most part, walking around with an abundance of money even after spending a couple hundred thousand bells on public works projects or upgrades to my house, so I'm trying to get the Nookling's store and the Able Sisters shop upgraded, but this is going at a snail's pace. I especially need Nookling's to get upgraded to T&T's so that I can get a slingshot already, and possibly more fortune cookies. I'm tired of going there and seeing barely anything for sale. As for the Able Sisters, it seems that Sable as taken Isabelle's place in being the flirt, which was a bit unexpected for me seeing as how she starts off all like "..." when I started talking to her. I knew she gets more friendly and all, but I didn't know that Mable would start telling me about how Sable would talk endlessly about me and how she wanted more employees to help out so that she could spend time with me... So strange how all the female animals are all over me in this game. I guess that's the perk of being the mayor?

Nothing else has really went down yet. Oh wait, I also managed to StreetPass with a couple of people from my mom's apartment complex, both women. They have cool houses and stuff, and one of them happened to have a full Mermaid set somehow, so I got to see what that looked like. She also had the rainbow screen, which was strangely available for purchase, so now I have all of the downloadable "exclusives" so far. The other girl had something even more interesting: the Aurora Screen, which apparently was only available as a Japan-exclusive download.

Forgot to include pictures of the interior and the other house.

Also, one of the villagers that moved in was a female dog named Cherry, who I think is new in this game. She has the new "Uchi" personality, in which the character with this trait acts like an older sister to you. I wanted to see what this was like, although it kind of eluded me that I'd have to be better friends with Cherry after a while as opposed to being so right off the bat. Uchi is actually supposed to be a mix of peppy, normal, and snooty, and I hate snooty villagers because they tend to make things difficult to be friends with. So combine this with "peppy" and now I have a confusing mix of traits causing me to wonder if Cherry is actually cool with me or not. I have made her sing a few times in one day, though, so I'm sure things are just fine.

Oh yeah, and also a character named Daisy (another female dog) came by and pitched a tent at the campsite. I played several gambles with her, and I made a fair amount of money but man there was hardly any good furniture. I just got a couple of things that were okay: a lefty cat and a Tearoom Wall. The notable thing that happened was that she kept saying "it's so nice here," and so I kept suggesting her to move her, and then I found myself gambling for her to move to town. I didn't actually want her to move in because my town is nearly full and I still don't have a cat villager, but I was curious and before I knew it, I was betting my fishing rod. Nookling's is a pretty stupid store at this point, as I've rarely ever seen a fishing rod for sale, so I decided I wasn't going to just lose my rod over a space for someone else to move in. This game wasn't really a gamble as I had to "guess" the most price-fetching insect, and the golden stag was listed among a fly, a mosquito, and a flea, so there was absolutely no challenge to this at all. Even without knowing what bug makes the most bells, I could've figured this out just as easily by guessing from the stag's name. The answer was so obvious I was worried that I actually got it wrong for a moment.

I might have to drive someone out of my town, and I'm guessing it'll have to be either Kody or Puck. I haven't spoken to Kody at all, but he might be cool. Puck honestly annoys me sometimes, so right now he seems to be the most likely candidate. I initially thought of kicking Elise out, but that I realized that urge was due to some racism against monkeys.

Hopefully next time I'll have quite a ton of things to share. I've seen somebody with practically everything after having played this game for a couple and a half weeks. I want all that stuff already!

Update: Added some photos. Also, here are some photos I couldn't find a place for above.

That's smart: place your humongous stag next to your tea set.

Wow, Elvis is so posh! He has a harpsichord and not one, but TWO thrones!

Later he asked me to catch a Great White for him, and thus he displays it in his home.
That's a nice pet to have swimming around in your house.

Sahara came and criticized my original matching floor and wallpaper, so she went with what she thought would be better: an exquisite carpet that looks completely out of place against the shanty wall. Also, why would any interior designer recommend making my walls look like something out of a slum?

Blizzard's In-Game Store for World of Warcraft

I just watched a video from Nobbel, my trusted guide for soloing old content, that informed me that apparently players are getting harassed for having stuff from the Blizzard store. I couldn't believe what I was actually hearing, but it turns out that people with transmog helmets would get kicked from LFR/LFG just for having that stuff. And it's not just limited to the helmets, as people with pets and mounts have been harassed too. If you are one of these people harassing those with Blizzard store items, what the hell are you doing on the Internet? Do yourself the favor and get off the game before Blizzard employees make you.

I've been aware of the controversy over the Blizzard store for a while now, ever since a couple of months after I got back into the game again, but I don't think the complaints have ever been this vocal. I'm sure it has to do with all the advancements Blizzard has made with that store, having added several items and having plans for the store to appear in-game. People seem to fear that Blizzard is just trying to take more money on top of the monthly subscription, that having little items that people paid for is somehow ruining the actual in-game items everyone else plays the game for, and thus all of this is leading to the end of WoW. If that is your belief, I won't discriminate against you, but do know that I think you are an idiot. You can rest assured that I won't do anything to harass you over your belief, but if you're ever in a group with Blood Elf paladin, who is tanking with her little cinder kitten out, and if you bitch at her and if she just abandons your group, know that that tank was me.

Let me start with the idiots who think they know economics. This store cannot hurt the game's economy because all the items you buy from the Blizz store are bind on account, meaning you can't trade with other players. Therefore, it's not like the store is giving you free gold. So for god's sake, enough of that already. Now for the idiots who are treating this exclusive content as if it was something new: this has been around since the start of the WoW TCG. There have always been mounts and pets and other odds and ends that you could pay real-world money for and have in the game, and all of these have no method of obtaining in the game aside from spending ridiculous amounts of gold on the auction house. Maybe you could say that this hurts the market, but really, do you think there are enough people spending two hundred dollars or a hundred and fifty thousand gold on these items in order to ruin the game's economy? This has been going on for about eight years already, so how is this a problem all of a sudden with the Blizzard Store?

One of my questions is the same when applied to the Blizzard Store. People complain that Blizzard is just making killings and mountains of more money than they need because of the overpriced Blizzard Store items plus the monthly subscription, but do you really think there are that many people buying from the store to justify this nonsense? I'm pretty sure Blizzard doesn't think of their store as quite the cash cow and the probably never intended for it to initially be just that. Why else are we all paying a monthly subscription then? What I truly believe is going on is that Blizzard is considering making WoW free to play, so they are trying things out by experimenting with this store, seeing what people will and won't pay money for. I'm sure that as time goes on and as more items get added, the outrageous price of fifteen dollars for a stupid cosmetic helmet will drop. People seem to suddenly believe that everything Blizzard does is set in stone, when they're forgetting that Blizzard has actually made quite a huge number of changes to this game during Mists of Pandaria; so much in fact that they said themselves they felt like it was during this expansion that they've made the most changes to the game.

Maybe I'm just optimistic, but I really think this store will be the revenue Blizzard makes off this game in the future. Blizzard already has another MMORPG in the works, and I seriously doubt they are going to pull a Square Enix and charge subscriptions for two MMO's when all they need is revenue from one subscription. So that's what I think makes sense for WoW's distant future, but I'm sure there are bizarre, miserable people out there with stones for hearts and monkey feces for brains who believe that making WoW free to play will destroy the game somehow. To that, I really have no comment. I don't know about those people, but spending constant money on a game isn't exactly part of the gameplay for me.

So yeah, that was my pointless rant that tries in vain to shut up the blowhards and the babycries that seem to dominate the player base these days. Say what you want about what you miss from WoW's old days, but what I truly miss is how nobody whined so much about things a they do now.

Day 1 of Animal Crossing New Leaf!

That's right, Readers, I finally got Animal Crossing New Leaf all thanks to three gift cards that magically appeared in my wallet. The best part of all this is that I probably won't have another 3DS for another month, but at least I got my brother's for now. I'm kinda skeptical about using his since I'm not sure where my town data gets saved, but I'm sure it'll sort itself out when I get my own 3DS. Anyway, as much as I was looking forward to this game, and as much as I enjoyed what I played so far, I'm kind of disappointed with it for now. It's really only because there isn't much to do on your very first day, because even though you become the mayor of the town, the game decides to be a little extreme with how much time it gives you to adjust to all the new Animal Crossing features (which is pretty much the entire day). So when Isabelle ran out of things for me to do, I found myself wandering aimlessly catching bugs and making bells.

In past Animal Crossing games, I would often cheat and time travel, but I decided not to do that with this game. First of all, I'm tired of using Action Replays, and I don't even know if there is an AR for the 3DS, or if it is even reliable if it does exist. And I also value my town and such, so I don't want to ruin anything by time traveling. Unfortunately, that also means I'll have to wait until tomorrow to continue my endeavors, but whatever.

The game starts with the classic train sequence and Rover (is that his name?) coming up to you out of nowhere to talk to you, just like in the good old days of Animal Crossing for the GameCube. I named my town Alsatia, as per tradition, and named myself Axel. I tried to be silly with the options, but the first time I did it my guy looked cross-eyed so I immediately shut off my game. I realized I could've easily gotten any villager I wanted by resetting the game at the end of each train sequence, since Mr. Resetti isn't going to pop out of the train and complain to me like the whiny blowhard he is. Anyway, I kind of liked the new town layout option, but it turned out I picked a town with a section of the beach isolated from all means of getting there. It's no big deal since I can build a bridge later, but I found it weird and silly. Anyway, after getting off the train and being a little disappointed with my funny-looking animal citizens, I spoke to Isabelle and went off with her to start getting things done.

Moving on to my responsibilities as mayonnaise.

Now, I normally would never say this since I think of myself, or like to think of myself, as kind-of-a-feminist, but my god, Isabelle wants the D. I'm kidding, kind of. I mean, she's kind of flirty, which I find funny for a character in a secretarial role, but when I went to check out my... tent... she came right in out of nowhere. If the game had some kind of abrupt method of getting her in my tent, I would've freaked out. Later I go to speak to her, and she starts asking me to take her to the beach and collect sea shells together. It's kind of cute I guess, but since part of me is absolutely terrible, I cracked some stupid jokes about all this. I like building relationships, of whatever kind, with anyone (disclaimer, however: I'm only attracted to women in real world romantic relationships since I'm not a homosexual [which is also unfortunate because, fun fact, gay men have hit on/flirted with me before]), so I went ahead and got a sea she'll for Isabelle. Then, when I gave it to her, she kind of fawned over it and talked about how great it would be to decorate her house with it (sidetrack: where exactly does Isabelle live? Probably somewhere in the Dream Suite). I'm sure that sea shell will be somehow involved in her method of satisfying sexual gratification through self-pleasure, but that's as far as I go with that. Then she talks about decorating her whole house with sea shells and I'm like, dear god.

I'm being kind of wishy-washy with the exact order of how I did things, but whatever. Let's continue that by talking about when I got a house... I mean a tent. So the new thing now in New Leaf is A) Tom Nook is a realtor and not a shopkeeper anymore, B) which also means NO MORE PART TIME WORK, C) you can put a house anywhere you want basically, and D) you don't actually live in a house because Tom Nook is a scandalous money-grabber twirling his little raccoon mustache. I decided to put my house right smack in the middle of town, which I actually did unintentionally as I only wanted to be close to Isabelle... Erh, I mean, um, be closer to the town hall. It was actually the only reasonable spot between the town hall and the beach (for some reason I want to be close to the beach too), and as it turns out it'll be more convenient as I can build a bridge over a river that sections it off from the northern part of town. I already knew about Tom Nook giving you a sleazy little tent, but he then goes on to say that I'll have a real house once I pay him ten thousand bells. For some reason that sounded pretty reasonable to me, I guess I'm just numb to the evil that is charging penniless newcomers thousands of money to live somewhere. It also looks like Tom Nook has become smarter with his real-estate business, because before you could just live in the house and never pay him anything, which always baffled me until I said to myself, "Well, he's just a raccoon..."

Soon I'll actually find that making bells isn't really all that hard in this game. It actually didn't feel too different from when I recently played Wild World. In Wild World, I restarted the game and on my first day, I got a fishing rod and made my money selling fish, sea shells, and fruit. In New Leaf, I nearly did the same sort of thing, only instead of fish I was selling bugs since Nookling's only had a net and a shovel. I don't know what else it is I did different, but somehow I'm making a lot more bells than I did in Wild World, and I know it's not the bugs because fish sell better. So within an hour(?), I made the ten thousand and paid off my house. I could've probably finished it sooner if I wasn't so caught up with Isabelle... I mean *cough,* sorry, getting used to my town and the new game.

So with my house finished and with Isabelle out of ideas for me to do that don't involve forming a relationship with her, I set about on some odds and ends for the day. I don't know if it's just because it's my first day, but talking to villagers feels like a waste of time. Maybe it's because I don't particularly like any of the villagers I got, but they also barely have any quests for me. In Wild World, I was constantly delivering letters and gifts and being asked to catch something and so on. In this game, I only delivered one present and got a peach for it. Like, really? A peach? And mind you, this is my town's native fruit. Isabelle was awesome enough to give me cherries (oh god, more sexual innuendoes), allowing me to plant them and make more money without having to travel to my nonexistent friends' towns! Later I was asked to catch a catfish, in which I was S.O.L. because Nookling's didn't have a fishing rod. I guess this was evened out by a couple of times when I was asked about a bug I caught. And a couple of villagers did give me things, once because she had an extra, another because he wanted to know how he looked in a shirt (this was a bit funny to me). But mind you, this was across the span of about eight hours. In Wild World, I would've been sick of doing all these things already because they don't stop.

I guess that's where the easy money balances things out. I don't quite know what it is that makes this game more generous with bells each time I go and sell nonsense, but I guess it's because I sell everything at Re-Tail. That store is like Nookling's, but happens to be where you can buy items twenty percent cheaper than at that store (I think). I know for sure though that they pay you twenty percent more than what Nookling's pays you for items, and it seems to me that Re-Tail is now the place to sell stuff. In Wild World, you can strangely upgrade Tom Nook's store by selling things to him, further convincing me that Tom Nook is the video game industry's worst business man, but I don't know if that... weirdness works with Nookling's in this game. So anyway, I tried to find something to spend this excess money on, but the neither selection at Nookling's nor at Re-Tail was all that appealing, so I just dumped it into my bank account. I did but a fortune cookie at Nookling's, which actually costs two Play Coins instead of bells. It kind of sucks in my opinion, but the fantastic thing is that doing this will get you all sorts of really cool Nintendo items (forty five of them).

I bought a fortune cookie and managed to get the fire bar from the classic Bowser's lairs out of Super Mario Bros. I hope I can get a Metroid one of these days, and it makes me wonder if you can reset and still have the two Play Coins in case you didn't get what you wanted. My guess however would be that it wouldn't work since a change in Play Coins seems to be associated with a change in the system, in which case wouldn't be affected by what happens in the game. I guess this is to keep people from resetting. The other thing I did was redeem the palm tree lamp off the Internet from Nintendo. I missed the "Rainbow Screen," but it's not that big of a deal to me. I'm excited to be able to get these rare items that seem to have no other means of acquisition in the game, like the mushroom kingdom stuff Nintendo did with Wild World. All these rare things will probably be available to anyone with an AR, but I'm trying not to use one for this game, so I'm glad I got the game now and not years in the future when none of this stuff would be available by any other means.

So that's about it really. The rest of the day was spent catching bugs and selling them, along with other things. Then Re-Tail closed, so I donated stuff to the museum until they already had what I was catching. There didn't seem to be any special events going on that day either. I stumbled upon a tarantula, which is really rare and happened to be Re-Tail's item of the day, but I messed up and scared it off a cliff. I spent a good while trying to find another one, but that never happened. I learned I can now equip tools with the D-Pad, which is really handy for a situation like that. I tried going to the island, but that place hasn't been unlocked yet. Gah! So many places I need to unlock! I wanted to start upgrading Main Street but Isabelle kept kissing my ass to the point where it went from cute to the annoyance of realizing that the game isn't going to let me continue, which was the ultimate gripe I had with it all day. But don't let that confuse you Readers of what I thought of the game so far, I really like what I see and I believe this will be the best Animal Crossing yet. So I gave up on my effort to keep progressing through the game, and instead I saved up about fifty thousand bells, which I'm sure will be plenty for tomorrow.

One cool thing I want to point out is the game's secret QR Code scanner. I'm probably the last person on Earth to know about this, and I highly doubt the couple of people who come across this blog every now and then happen to be, out of all the people who play this game, uninformed of this cool thing, but I'll mention it anyway. So Sable, the quite hedgehog who's been too busy sewing away at something for the past several Animal Crossing games, will give you access to a "sewing machine" that "doubles" as a QR Scanner, which you can then use to scan online codes and download a pattern off the Internet! Finally, I don't have to break my back trying to copy down a design I saw on the Internet! This is pretty cool, and I've already seen some impressive designs on a few tumblrs, even though a majority of them are for female characters. Maybe I'll make one just to wear these designs, I don't know. I did see a still painting of He Man from the I Said Hey "music video," which cracked me up so much that I decided that will be the first thing I get. Unfortunately, this is also another thing you need to unlock, but I think the method is pretty cool at the same time. You have to talk to Sable at least once a day for ten days straight, and then she'll tell you about the secret "sewing machine." Possibly nobody knew about this until the guy who decided to talk to her for ten days found out about it, and I think it's cool that this game comes with its secrets.

This game is great news to me, as I now have a feature for this blog, and features are pretty much what keeps this blog alive, as sad as that sounds haha. I probably won't write every single day I play on Animal Crossing, but I'll be sure to write about the noteworthy. Also, I'll try to get screenshots in next time. As for my computer, still no word, but I'm sure I'll have to have it by at most the middle of next week.

Update: LOL I JUST READ THE ANIMAL CROSSING GOVERNMENT DEFUNDED MR. RESETTI AND RENDERED HIM OUT OF BUSINESS LOL FAREWELL YOU EVIL MOLE.

I could recommission his Surveillance Center, but really the only point of doing that would be to see if I can visit it. Perhaps I can recommission it and then demolish it all over again once I visited it, but why waste the bells?

Update 2: Added a picture.

Stuff About My Computer and Final Fantasy

I have some terrible news for... Well, really for myself. So lately, I've had some issues with my laptop because I accidentally spilled soda on it, and now it seems that it is done for. It's a strange case too: after a month of inactivity, due to a lot of procrastination on actually getting the computer fixed, I got my computer seemingly working again. For a few weeks everything was fine, until one day my computer kept blacking out on me. I left it alone a bit, and then returned to it and it ran like normal. Then, last weekend, I took it to my dad's to work on some blog posts and videos, and then it blacked out for good. According to a "genius" at Apple, the motherboard on the computer is done for. So now I have to take it to someone who isn't the Apple corporation who can repair it. So no PC gaming for a while - I just hope I don't miss the Steam summer sale (not that I think I can even afford ninety nine cent games anymore).

While I'm missing my computer, I decided to take on the task I set my mind to a couple of years ago, and that was to finish Final Fantasy III. I've had a troubled history with that game, as it started off with a huge interest in the game (and admittedly, it was mainly because of Refia for some reason I have no idea why) and then quickly diminished into a passing thought whenever I was bored. "Should I play Final Fantasy III? Maybe some other time."

Then the worst thing happened to me when my best friend Zoso brought me back to World of Warcraft. While I can say with pride that that game has not consumed my soul and, therefore, I can live my life away from that game, WoW has pretty much diverted my attention from other games. It's even diverted my attention from this blog (what I should be doing is writing posts about my experiences with WoW), but now I'm trying to make amends to that. Since my computer is inaccessible right now, I'm able to check out whatever other game I want. So I decided to finish Final Fantasy III.

I am happy to say that Final Fantasy III is quite a wonderful game even without the grand spectacle that is a Final Fantasy plot. The plot in this game is simple: a group of kids go out to travel the world and destroy darkness. Doesn't get any simpler than that I guess, not without feeling completely bland and boring. I guess you can hold it against me when I say that I refuse to play II or I just because they are "boring," but I don't care. Final Fantasy III is where I draw the line, and I like it that way since I believe Final Fantasy III for the DS is pretty much what FF and FFII were meant to be, before the developers decided that these games needed a story as well.

When I played FFIII, I realized that this game is essentially what Final Fantasy is, in general. Well, I would say that the truest Final Fantasy would be FFXII, but this game works there too. FFXII has it all: the vast and exciting world to see; the fantastical elements whether they be influenced via fairy tale or science fiction; the strong, dynamic, likable, and sometimes badass characters with a compelling arc (Balthier, Fran, Ashe, Basch, Gabranth); the flat, laughable (not in a good way), appealing-to-idiot-teenagers characters who annoy us along the journey (Vaan, Penelo); the usual "rise against an oppressive government" plot done somewhat well, even with some strange plot points that might not make any sense; the grand and wonderfully orchestrated soundtrack; Square-Enix's consumption with making graphics top notch; the list goes on and on. The only thing I could say is missing is the turn-based battle system, but if you're a FF fan who has played FFXII, you'll see how that game works better with the battle system it has. I felt Final Fantasy III had nearly all of those things as well, just in their core, basic form. It is also pretty much the game that first boasted chocobos, airships, Moogles, and several other common Final Fantasy elements all in one game, whereas the earlier two were just starting to get these things fleshed out. The only thing I really bitched about from this game was the MP system, but I don't think anything can be more ridiculous than how magic worked in FFVIII (you don't even need to use magic in that game to begin with). I'm sure many will probably tell me that FFXIII is the worst everything because the magic system removes the challenge and blah blah, but at least it lets you play the game (well, if you can make it past the tutorials).

This leads me pretty much to where I wanted to go with this post. I know this blog has a lot of mixed messages about how I felt about FFXIII, but I want to clear the air with what will probably be my permanent opinion of that game. Blue Highwind recently wrote a review of Final Fantasy XIII, which was pretty scathing. And it is agreeably so; I fully understand now why so many people hate that game. After playing III, VI, VII, half of X, and XII (and VIII is currently being shown to me through Blue and the FFWiki's let's play videos, which I found to be the best way to experience that game), I've got a good idea of the series's ups and downs, along with what has worked and what hasn't.

That being said, Blue made a point that I have retained since I first played this game. Somewhere beneath the linearity, the terrible characters and cutscenes, and the ridiculous story, there is (or in my belief, was) a potentially great game. You get a sense of it when the characters reach Gran Pulse, where even though there are no towns, you can see what FFXIII would've been like if there was an open world experience. There are other things that hint at what could have possibly been a better game, but Gran Pulse is probably the one that really stands out there. I'm not sure how I'd feel about FFXIII if I were to play it again, now that I've played several earlier titles, but I'm sure that this concept of what could have been a better game will be what will allow me to forgive the game for its misguidance. As it stands, even though I am aware that FFXIII is one of the worst games in the series, if not the worst itself, I still like the game. I think what allowed for me to like the game was that I pretty much grew up playing linear action-sequence games, so I thought of this as pretty much any other game I played. I've also only played FFXII before XIII, and even then I couldn't remember FFXII very well. In the end, FFXIII, as strange as it seems, is what bridged me to the series.

I've thought every now and then about what it would've been like if I was on the FFWiki. Just how much hate could I possibly receive for this guilty pleasure? I suppose this is why I write here and not on that website. I'm sure anyone with a conscience would understand where I'm coming from. At least I'm not actually arguing that FFXIII is actually a better Final Fantasy than others.

I'm actually afraid to play that game again, because I believe I will actually completely hate it now that I have played the other games in the series. So even though I'm sure it is terrible and that Lightning isn't really as good of a character as I claimed her to be in earlier posts, I want to be at least left with my memories of enjoying FFXIII when I first played it. At the time, I was getting fed up with console video games no thanks to Call of Duty (which ironically motivated FFXIII anyway) and other stuff, and I still credit FFXIII for finally getting me off of those horrible abominations. I don't want to ruin that, so hate me all you want, FF fans.