kasumin

This seems to be the year of the 3DS for me. The first new game I picked up this year was Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, which I really enjoyed despite not being a fan of dungeon crawlers at all. After that I played Fire Emblem: Awakening, which was fun. It's probably the only Fire Emblem game I'd ever care to play due to giving you the option to not have stupid permanent death (still one of the dumbest things ever, in my opinion).

And now I'm playing Project X Zone and having a total blast. This game is amazing! For the unfamiliar: Project X Zone is a strategy RPG crossover between Capcom, Namco, and Sega. There's over 40 playable in the games overall, I think? It's pretty simple for an SRPG, but surprisingly fun.

I originally bought it because I was one of those people complaining that we never get cool crossover games like this (we never got Namco x Capcom on the PS2). So when the game was, seemingly against all odds (I heard the actual creator begged for it to be released outside of Japan O__o), I pretty much felt obligated to buy it. I hadn't heard much good about the actual gameplay. Apparently the game bombed in Japan, and reviews as well as some of my friends here have been saying that it's boring and repetitive. So I tentatively picked it up without even playing the demo...

I thought the gameplay was literally mashing buttons, but it's not that at all. Doing damage is all about juggling the enemy in the air for as long as possible and carefully managing when you call in assist units to keep enemies airborne. The attacks themselves are repetitive, but I'm too busy focusing on figuring out the best way to do damage and build up my meter for special attacks to mind the repetitiveness.

Gameplay aside, though, I love crossovers! And this game is so ridiculous about it, oh my god. In one of the battles I just finished, I was fighting off a horde of zombies with Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine from Resident Evil, Yuri and Estelle from Tales of Vesperia, Frank West from Dead Rising, Hsien Ko and Demitri from Dark Stalkers, and Dante (the original) from Devil May Cry. Amazing XD Never thought I'd be able to combo Nemesis into oblivion with Savage Wolf Fury, hahahaha.

Even with the game play and the crossover awesomeness, though, another reason I was pretty much obligated to buy this game was because you get Mega Man X and Zero in it as team members. Out of every Mega Man, X has constantly been left out of crossover games (never got into any Capcom fighting game unlike classic Mega Man, Zero a million times, and Mega Man from the Legends series). As my favorite Mega Man character, I just had to get a game that featured him (not to mention that the X series is dead). This is pretty much my last chance to ever play as X in any capacity. And I must say, he is awesome to use. He even has the Hadoken from the first MMX game!

The localization for Project X Zone is really impressive, too. I'm noticing that they take some liberties with the translation, but it's mainly so that they can have characters' dialogue match the English releases of those games. They even made a reference to a somewhat obscure joke from the first Resident Evil. And as far as I can tell from looking at some of the characters' move names, this translation matches the original games (which in many cases departed from the original Japanese in naming attacks and techniques). Just... amazing. I love attention to detail like this in a localization.

I'm already on chapter 24, so I think I might try to slow it down a bit in this game, lol. I really need to savor this game. They may never make another one like it since it didn't sell well in Japan. I didn't expect to love this game this much. The 2D sprite artwork, too! Oh man <3 It's so rare that you can see such lovely and detailed sprites these days where everything's 3D models.

Speaking of crossovers, I finally uploaded chapter 2 of In Stark Contrast. It seems to be getting a few favorites and even some reviews. I'm really surprised. Guess I'd better hurry up and get the next chapter ready. I really hope I can push myself to finish this. I've already accepted the fact that a beta is a luxury I'll never have. It takes me awhile to write a new chapter because I have to go over it a bunch of times. Even then, I still miss things. Oh well.

Current Music: Final Fantasy IV - Mystic Mysidia

I am... alive. I haven't made a regular post in awhile, I guess? Not much is really going on. Last semester ended, which I'm thankful for. It was a long, grueling semester where I (was required to) took 4 classes, which was a pain. I still have some work left over from them that I need to complete. And right now I'm taking summer classes to finish up my first Master's degree (yes, first...)

In gaming news, I finished Etrian Odyssey IV and have moved onto Fire Emblem: Awakening. Once I stopped bitching about how much I miss Tactics Ogre, I've started enjoying FE:A. But I think it's the changes and the addition of Casual mode that make it enjoyable. I don't think I could enjoy the earlier entries in the Fire Emblem series at all. I think permadeath is a video game is the dumbest thing ever. So dumb that even Yasumi Matsuno stopped putting it in his games. Final Fantasy Tactics, Advance, A2, and Tactics Ogre's PSP remake didn't feature immediate permadeath. Diehard fans of the series tell me that permadeath is great because it makes you take your decisions seriously, but from what I know, they all reset the game when one of their units dies most of the time, anyway. In my opinion, features like that inconvenience the player more than anything, but that's just my two cents. Perhaps I shall rant more on that later.

I find it amusing that you get to make an avatar character to represent yourself in the game. You even get a choice of three different male or female voice actors! I accidentally ended up having my avatar marry the main character, even though I wanted to pair him up with someone else. Woops, lol. The whole support system is pretty cool, though, and I can see why the game has been so popular. Though part of me is bitter that Tactics Ogre didn't get this kind of recognition when it came out two years ago T___T

Other than that, I'm about 12 pages into this one really aggressive plot bunny that's taken over my life as of late. My goal is to some day finish a fanfic that's more than 3000 words, no matter what canon it's for, and it seems like this one might be the one! But maybe not, ugh. I always run out of steam before I can get anywhere close to the end. Then I feel pathetic and sad :( Perhaps I'm just not meant to be a writer. Not that I'm thinking of ever going pro. I just like being able to write. But sometimes I wonder if my characters come out sounding interesting at all. I'm not very good at understanding people in real life, so it only follows that any character I write would end up sounding rather uninteresting and flat. Or maybe I'm overthinking this.

Though I am having fun with this particular fic. So many OCs that I'll have to kill off eventually. Thinking of how they should die in as un-cliche a way as possible is the difficult part, however.

Also, I'm pretty sure no one'll be interested in reading this because it's for a canon that no one writes fanfiction for. And well, the way the canon itself is structured doesn't make it conducive to fanfiction, anyway. Oh well.

Current Music: Tales of Vesperia - A Vow of Unity

My friend who after over 5 years of careful coaxing has finally gotten me into the Etrian Odyssey series likes making character backgrounds for his characters. So in celebration of beating Etrian Odyssey 4, I decided to write up my own backgrounds for my guild characters.

I've based a lot of my characters names and/or personalities off of other fictional characters. See if you can guess who comes from whom (one's really obvious, I think).

There are some spoilers, especially for labyrinths 3 and 4.

( Character profiles under the cut )

Current Music: Etrian Odyssey 4 - Labyrinth IV - Library of Puppets

For many years, a good friend of mine has been going on and on and on about the old school dungeon crawler series Etrian Odyssey, which originally came out for the DS in 2007. I've always liked the cutesy art of the series, but old school dungeon crawlers (and, well, dungeon crawlers in general) aren't really my thing. So I'd listen to his harrowing tales of crazy dungeon adventures and fighting horrific monsters (like the dreaded FOEs) and it always piqued my interest.

Cut to 2012 when Etrian Odyssey 4 comes out for the 3DS in Japan. This time, however, they announce a "casual" mode for beginners. So I finally say, "Okay, I can do this!" And I get the demo early last month. I played on casual mode until I realized it made the game too easy and then switched to Normal (unlike Fire Emblem: Awakening, you can switch the difficulty when you're in town, which is very nice).

From what I've read, EO4 streamlines a lot of mechanics from the earlier 3 Etrian Odyssey games. Some people complain it's too easy (some series veterans), but I don't mind that at all. For an old school dungeon crawler, the game is very fair about stuff. It'll present challenges to you while giving you clues as to how to deal with the challenge. And the ten different classes available in the game are so well-balanced that it's hard to make a team that doesn't work well together.

Also, you can generate cool stuff for street pass like Guild cards!

It'll probably take me awhile to beat the game (I just got to the 3rd major labyrinth dungeon), but I'm happy with taking it slow. I'm pretty sure I'll have to make some major tweaks to my party soon as I'm having some trouble in the latest dungeon. But once again, it's a lot easier to do that in EO4 than it was in earlier games in the series.

And once again, I loooove the character designs: