KILLER COMBO

After four and a half years, Final Fantasy 13 is here!

To be honest, I wasn’t that excited when the Japanese release came out, unlike with FF10 which I played both Japanese and English releases. I guess I’ve lost interest in the franchise after FF12. People who played it said that the game was actually good, but I never got around to liking it — had trouble getting past the first few hours. Plus the character design was horrible. I believe my dislike for it has something to do with the starting town, it was too massive to explore and I quickly lost interest.

Anyhoo, FF13’s start is also quite slow, and it drags on for about an hour or two. I’ve also had problems trying to be interested in the game at the start… most probably because of all the cliches the game threw at me right from the very beginning:

1. Lightning is a ’soldier’.
2. The opening shot was in a train.
3. She was with a black gun-toting guy.

Sound familiar? :D

At the bat, the game was frantic and tried to show a lot of emotions but I didn’t really care about the characters and the problems they were having. I didn’t even feel touched with the Snow-Serah engagement proposal scene amidst the fireworks (but I was ‘kilig’ with the Tidus-Yuna river scene in FF10 ~_~) which I know is meant to be a tearjerker. But now I know why. The character development in the game is in reverse, and I was taken by surprise in the story development. Now I find the characters more interesting, what with new revelations about them in every segment of the chapters. It’s quite refreshing, this kind of storytelling. I guess it’s meant to be this way so you will have a deeper understanding of the character as you progress in the game.

I heard a lot of players complained about the game being too linear. I’ve never had problems with linear games so it wasn’t really a big deal for me. I actually like the straightforwardness of the game as it made me focus more on the story and characters and not the exploring every nook and cranny for a missable item (which I totally loathe in games, by the way).

The equipment system of FF13 is very much simplified — it reminded me of Lost Odyssey wherein you only equip a weapon and an accessory (although accessories here don’t have skills, just status bonuses). The skill system is also reminiscent of FF10’s sphere grid. Each character will have three specific skill sets (i.e. Lightning - Commando, Ravager and Medic) and you can learn skills from each set by earning crystarium points through slaying monsters. Choosing proper skill sets is actually crucial to the game as this is the basis of the Paradigm system — the heart of the gameplay.

The Paradigm Shift is an innovative system wherein you do not really actively control the character on each and every command you issue, but more on their ‘fighting style’. This system will make your characters act in a certain way, but what they decide to actually do is still up to them. Say, I choose the Slash & Burn paradigm — Lightning will behave as an attacker, full-on offense, but her actions will either be attack (physical) or do long-range magic attacks. Their actions are actually more effective if they are able to determine their enemy’s weaknesses, which happens if they’ve fought it before. Really, pretty nifty stuff. You have to play it to appreciate it :D

The shops in the game are all online (so far, in what I’ve seen anyway). No NPCs that will make small talk first before you get to their goods. The online shop is with the save points, wherein you can also do upgrades on your weapons and accessories. The shops actually remind me of ‘The World Ends With You’ because of the funky store logos :) And oh, one thing I noticed about this game — money is hard to earn as monsters do not drop them anymore. So far, all the money I have, I got from floating spherical treasure chests. You can sell crap you get from monsters though, but I haven’t tried yet. I’m a packrat, and that’s how I roll :D

So far I’ve clocked about 16 hours into the game and feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the story. At this point if I was playing another RPG, I might’ve complained about the game being long and grindy but I’m not feeling this way at all with FF13. I’m actually enjoying the fact that this game will drag on for a long time. It’s gonna be epic, I bet :D

Haters to the left!

Finally succumbed to getting a PlayStation 3 (slim).  And I’m not disappointed :)

However. Those who say that the PSN is better than XBL is sadly deluded.  And! Trophies are not equal to Achievements, and you will not (cannot) be able to convince me otherwise.

That is all.

P.S. Currently enjoying Disgaea 3 and the God of War Collection <3

Yes, I’m still alive.

I haven’t been swallowed by Magic: The Gathering or anything.  Although I got into the hobby and I still play it from time to time.  But not rabidly :D

Anyway, life got into the way of gaming and writing/blogging.  Too many things going on at work that I don’t even have a lot of time to do anything for myself.  I mostly die after 10 without enjoying anything in my spare time.  Sigh.

But everything in the career department is going well.  I recently got promoted and had my raise so yay, should be more monies going to gaming.  But I think my splurging will have to wait till March since I have yet to finish paying for all the stupid shit I bought this year — namely my 32″ LCD TV, laptop, cellphone, digicam, etc etc.  The credit card which I recently got isn’t helping at all as well since I tend to buy too many clothes and whatnot with it.

Anyway, ’tis a gaming blog and will remain so.  I will continue to write about the games I play.  Right now, I’m enjoying an ancient XBOX 360 backlogged game which is Blue Dragon.  I’m also dabbling on Dragon Age: Origins in my PC. And whenever I want to play something casually, there’s Rock Band and Shadow Complex.  Whatever I’m in the mood to play.  There’s also Suikoden Tierkreis when I want to do some handheld gaming.  Overall, I’m still an active gamer!  Hooray (it’s just that I don’t get to finish anything — well, I do but it takes agesssss…)

Anyway, I’m gonna go back to my 360 and maybe fiddle on the Facebook and Twitter integration and play some Blue Dragon before I get sleepy.  Ciao guys and have a happy weekend ahead!

So, I lost the fight. We have finally succumbed to buying the real Magic: The Gathering cards because of the XBLA game I was talking about in my previous post.

The boyfriend has decided to recreate his Sliver Deck from his college days… and me, well. I got inspired by the Nissa Revane elf deck so I decided to tread that way.  I will be starting with an aggressive mono green weenie elf deck (Elfball) as a noob and we’ll see how it goes from there.

So if any of you guys are disposing cards, here’s my wishlist.  I’m buying/trading (blue and reds, mostly) so yeah. Contact me at schizoprincess AT gmail.com for offers.  Metro Manila residents only, please (preferrably people in Makati or Alabang).

–

Sliver deck:

Muscle Sliver
Sinew Sliver
Talon Sliver
Winged Sliver
Crystalline Sliver
Victual Sliver
Acidic Sliver
Hibernation Sliver
Necrotic Sliver
Sliver Queen
Sliver Legion
Sliver Overlord
Aluren
Recycle
Enlightened Tutor
City of Brass
Gemstone Mine

As for my Elven deck:

Gaea’s Herald
Elvish Champion
Jagged-Scar Archers
Elvish Archdruid
Elvish Promenade
Heritage Druid
Nettle Sentinel
Devoted Druid
Wren Run’s Vanquisher
Talara’s Battalion
Civic Wayfarer
Regal Force
Wolf-Skull Shaman
Bramblewood Paragon
Gilt-Leaf Ambush
Snakeform
Hunting Triad
Primal Command
Mosswort Bridge
Loxodon Warhammer

Thanks guys!

By now, XBOX 360 owners should have already noticed that the latest edition in the game marketplace includes this quaint little title called Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers. Yes, you are correct if you think that this game is based on the huge franchise of the Magic: The Gathering CCG.

To those living under a rock, Magic: The Gathering is originally a collectible card game (CCG) where players buy numerous packs of cards and build a nice, solid deck comprised of one or more colors from the 5 main elements in the game (black, white, blue, red and green). The main objective of the game is to defeat your opponent via the use of creatures, enchantments, artifacts and spells.

I admit to the fact that I considered the ‘Magic hobby’ very nerdy (not to mention bloody expensive), so I did my best to steer clear from it during high school and all throughout college because of my meager allowance and limited attention span. So imagine my surprise that after 10 years (or more), it was waved in my face — digitally. I decided to finally succumb to the evil and pay up the 800 MS Points to download the full game. What’s $11 and hundreds of hours from your life, right?

There are five main game modes in Duels of the Planeswalkers, namely:

• Campaign (beat all 16 stages and unlock new decks — I’ve already beat everyone but I haven’t unlocked all the cards yet)
• Challenges (play the 8 pre-made card puzzles and defeat the other Planeswalkers — I already beat them all!)
• XBL mode, either casual or ranked matches (play against another player via Live)
• Two-Headed Giant (co-op play in one XBOX against a pair of AI planeswalkers)
• Custom Duels (I don’t know; haven’t tried this mode yet)

Same as how you’d play M:TG in real life, this XBLA game follows the same format of gameplay. You will start off by choosing a deck of your own to play (either red or green which are the first two of the available decks). You then play land cards which will provide you with mana to enable you to cast spells. Spells can either be creatures, instants, sorceries, artifacts, or enchantments.

At first, I chose to play Garruk Wildspeaker’s deck because his creatures are teh awsm. Up till now (after unlocking all of the 6 other decks) I still preferred using the green deck over the other colors (at times, if I just wanted to play a quick round) because of its humongous creatures.

While most veterans gripe about the lack of customization of the decks in DotP, most noobs (like me) are content with playing the pre-made decks and its interesting choice of cards. It’s actually quite a challenge making these limited sets of cards work against each other. After playing for more than 10 hours of the game (I played through 6 hours in one sitting — from 11 pm to 5 am, oh god), I have learned to love Nissa Revane’s contrasting green-black deck. This deck is known to tear even Garruk’s biggest creatures to shreds — that is if you get lucky with building an army of elves. Although now I’m playing the Lilliana Vess (black) deck and I’m finding it pretty interesting.

One of the gripes I have in the game is that the AI tends to be stupid sometimes. I haven’t tried playing the game online with the other real players (only for three rounds with the boyfriend — where I won at least one round, hooray), but the AI sometimes lacks the foresight of passing up in order to block for the next round — which then leads to their death. Also, I get a lot of freezing whenever a card gets played up — but this is easily fixed by turning the view of the card table, at least. Another bug that we’ve noticed is that the game hangs a lot whenever we play the Two-Headed Giant game. Hopefully, this gets patched soon.

After spending a few (understatement) hours more, unlocking new cards and beating the other opponents in the campaign series, it has dawned on me that the game is an actual advertisement for the real Magic CCG. I now have this irresistable urge of buying the actual cards and starting my own deck while researching on the other cards available in the new expansions. OMG, I’m finally a full-blown Magic geek.

Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers is a pretty good effort to get players interested in the Magic CCG with its easy to get into tutorials and explanation of gameplay, eradication of the complex deck building which discouraged a lot of noobs before by offering pre-made decks, and by giving players a slew of other game modes to get their feet wet. All in all, I’d say that this game is worth it at 800 points as it provides hours and hours of geeky fun. And that if you’re looking to get your gamer significant other to understand your Magic: The Gathering obssession, this is your golden ticket :D