Some Character: ANARU!

Me: Yeah, you like sticking in the wrong hole huh?

… …

Fuck,I  feel like such an asshole.

The show is good, I like it, it is not boring.

9/10

That’s all because writing 1000 words for a Japanese Cartoon while getting all sentimental and serious makes you look like a faggot.

My motivation of playing FFVIII, despite it got bashed and raped by almost everyone, was actually due to the memories of Lion Heart being a very awesome move when I watched my bro played it 10 years ago. It’s with this simple trigger that I conjure up enough mon to brave through this supposed shitstorm. I thought I will have a difficult time to wade through this because everyone and their mother told me that this game belongs in the toilet. Thanks to that though, my expectation is so low that FFVIII blown me away with how fun it actually is.

I understand all the complains of the story and pacing issue but I can’t really understand the complain of the juncture system. Maybe I have a guide beside me so I didn’t do stupid things like drawing 100 Scan, I actually can’t share or understand the frustration that many others have on this issue. The complication of the juncture system can also be easily solved by pressing the auto button on the menu so I don’t really understand how it is supposed to be complicated.

In fact, I am more surprise at the fact on how no people point out the  unclear purpose of a spell. For one, I still don’t know what the magic, “Pain”, does even after I completed the game. Hell,players wouldn’t even know what Holy does without prior knowledge of previous FF game! Holy? Is that a fucking healing spell or something? I looked at the magic option and nothing was explained, maybe it was explained but it is clearly not in plain sight because after 60 hours of game play, I still can’t find any snippets ingame on what an  Ultima does. Having to painstakingly cast every spell to know what it actually does is definitely more complicated and tedious than putting spell in your stats to see number grow for me.

Lucky for me, I haven’t cast a single non healing/support spell after disc 1 thanks to the “complicated” juncture system that make me completely owns Ultima Weapon’s ass with one Zell’s limit break. I am actually still kinda bitter about how anticlimactic that was but I also pretty much killed every form of Nyx from P3 with one blow as well so no complain there. Hey, at least I died once during Ultimecia because I never knew that she will cast a spell that damage 6000 of my HP after tasting my badass Lionheart.

Not to mention, all the hassle of drawing of spells can be nullified by playing Triple Triad, which is something I can play for straight 10 hours. Maybe those who hate the juncture system hates Triple Triad and that I can definitely understand and sympathise with. However, I think that most people’s problem is not knowing how to exploit the Triple Triad game because only those who don’t know that you can actually refine spells through cards and items will do something as stupid as drawing 100 blizzard from an enemy.

I do want to point out that the GF summoning animation is too long for its own good though. I know that it is good that they are long due to the boost ability but I pretty much gave up on summoning GF after disc one thanks to that. Hell, I don’t even know what the “Brothers” summoning sequence look like because normal attack does the job 10x better than GF.  The terrains are very convoluted as well. Sometimes I need to walk around for 10 mins to find a semi visible ladder/door.

Now after much talk about the core game play, let’s get  to the stinkiest stink in FFVIII – the story. The story definitely have problems with its video game logic and out of the blue scenarios. Lots of stuff happen without you knowing why the hell they happen. The whole GF makes you forget  about your childhood bullshit and Squall sudden romantic interest towards Rinoa after disc 2 makes no sense at all. Not to mention, I still don’t get all the time compression bullshit on disc 4. The scary thing is that’s just the tip of the iceberg, there are tons of other shoddy plot points and pacing issues where things happen so sudden without any buildup.

However, after I played a handful of RPGs recently, I have come to conclude that most RPG have shitty writings.  Try giving Xenogears an anime/movie and see how well it will fare, it will be lucky if it doesn’t win the Golden Raspberry Award.

RPG mostly always follows a simple “save the world from morally ambiguous villain that sometimes might just be god who find this world so disgusting that he/she wants to destroy it” cliché since 30 years ago. How can one even expect a good story from this cliché is way beyond me.

Most people felt that RPG’s have awesome and good storyline because gaming is actually an aggressive activity where you  actively participated in, that’s why people will always neglect the finer points due to being too engrossed with it. They thought that they are enjoying the stories but little to they know, it’s not the story but the whole package that was hidden behind the story that they are enjoying.

There’s a reason why most  RPG anime failed. It is not because they divert too much from the original game but rather, they either followed it closely and the story is dumb like that or they have to divert it because an actual realization will just make the show real bad. It’s kinda like the Dragonball movie, divert away or stay close to the original will both spell disaster because DB’s story is dumb in the first place.

That’s not to say that the story of FFVIII is not weak at all, the above paragraph only further prove that FFVIII has mediocre writings. Still, like I once said, a mediocre story in RPG equals to an above average story for RPG and FFVIII does have its moment.

Firstly, it’s definitely set up to be a style over substance story. The purpose and motivation of each and single scene is about how cool will it be if motorbikes flew across flying fleets that crash into one another than the practicability of actually doing that. This is 1999 and gamers are mostly teens that don’t understand literature and just want to see cool scenes. So with that in mind, I can definitely see what FFVIII is trying to do with these nonsensical scenes

Remember how my motivation of playing the game is actually because I am enamored at how cool Lionheart looks when I was a kid? That should be a good indication on how well FFVIII has done in their style department and how it can captivate its target audience.

I will admit that I am still very childish( I am nearing 20 now by the way. I still can’t believe it because I feel like I am 12) to be amazed by the good-looking cut scenes  of  flying motorbikes and gunblade  and find them to be very awesome. No, getting trapped in a room because you wanted to apologize to someone does not bother me at all if what comes after that is a cool parade scene with awesome chorus. Ebou, Whowaze!

With that all said, I kinda like some of the subtleties in FFVIII though I am not sure if these subtleties comes from me giving the creator too much credits or are they creator intentions. For one, everyone and their mother is bewildered by the motivation of Ultimecia and why the hell did she want to compress time. I know because I don’t know what the fuck happen as well. Little do we know that she actually already mentioned her motivation when she gave the speech in Disc 1 where she talk about how sorceresses are scorned and hunted down in the future. Because of these witch hunt, Ultimecia suffered and her hatred grew of this world grew( I felt corny after writing that). There will be only one sorceress during one time so she has no one to rely on, she treated every human as enemies because they are the one that hunt them down. This is why she wanted to compress time and live alone in this time compressed world.

So why the hell did human hunt down sorceress? It’s because of a time paradox created by Ultimecia herself. Going back in time triggered the event where Squall will eventually defeat her and give Edea the idea of  SeeD whose mission is to hunt down Sorceress because of Squall knew that there will be this evil sorceress bitch in the future call Ultimecia, coupling with the fact that sorceress can cause lots of trouble as shown by Adel. This is also why Ultimecia wants to know the true meaning of SeeD. End of Story.Suddenly, every fucking thing makes sense isn’t it?

Not only that, there are also little inexplicable things done by Irvine that I find to be a nice touch. For example, his sudden pussified antic during his assassination and his weird, “This is fate isn’t it” line when he first met Selphie hinted at his knowledge of the orphanage are really subtle . This shows that the writer actually sort of have some ideas in what they are doing so I feel that the whole GF makes you forget bullshit and the sudden realization that they know each other since young can be less bullshitier if they paces it better.

The whole Seifer wanting to become a Sorceress Knight because he saw the Laguna’s film of a knight protecting the sorceress from a  Ruby Dragon was a very good touch as well. You will only be aware of this by observing his limit breaks and through some miss-able dialogs.

With these knowledge in mind, things started to tie in a lot better and doesn’t look as detach as it is isn’t it? All these aren’t explain explicitly and I appreciate that because I treated these as subtleties  instead of the failure on the writer’s part.

That’s why even though I know that most(I am using most and not all to be courteous) RPG can be lacking in their writing , they still have these tiny surprises and cool things that makes me appreciate RPG stories.

In the end, maybe because FFVIII was being shat on too much, it makes my expectation so low that I am surprise to receive a B material when I was promised with a S material. The meaning of S is obviously, substandard.

The ending still gets to me even though I don’t really understand what the fuck is going on. Must be the song.

Wohoo, I  just spoiled the ending of a popular 12 years old game for you … a 12 years old game…

So, anyone have any ideas on which RPG to play next? I have the mood to try something similar to FF VIII. Now I have a psp, ps1, ps2, nds and could get a XBOX360 for free if I want. MSX, NEC PC 88/98, Sega CD/Genesis/Saturn/DC, Turbografx,  Gamboy, Gameboy Advance, SNES and NES games are more than welcome as well. Don’t worry, any recommendation will do because I definitely haven’t play them yet. You will be surprise at what game I haven’t play.

Even so, I was really surprised at how good the comic actually is. It was a competently written story that carries the theme of living very well. Of course it is filled with corny lines about how we should struggle with our sadness and continue living but considering the author status when he wrote the story, these cheesy themes just seems to carry more of weight. You can feel that the author had thought really hard about the theme of life and death.

The fight scenes are really well done as well. It’s done in a tactical approach that actually make sense. This is why when our heroes is in a pinch, you will be really interested in how the author will deal with the situation because you know he is capable of  coming up with witty methods to get out of it. This is why every battles are worth looking forward to and why Alive is one of the best Shonen fighting manga for me.

After reading the author’s final note in the last volume, it does really impact me and make me reflect on life and death. It might be due to the knowledge of how the author might have actually written this note during his deathbed that I felt kinda sad. His cover note on how he thanks his fans for supporting until the end also added another meaning and depth behind it because it makes you wonder what he really meant. Is it a simple thank you message or is it a real goodbye?

Maybe I am injecting too much of my impression of the author, which in turn helps make Alive better than it actually is but I honestly think that it is a good work even without knowing the author’.

Even if you don’t like the work, I still think  that the passion of an author who wants to finish his work even with illness is something we should look up to, especially to those who put their work on hold because they want to play more Idol Master.

Kawashima Tadashi, a true manly man.

1. There is an overhead bridge where, somehow, plenty of events take place there. Now, the scenes there usually are quite lengthy, but the background ain’t as static as most other animes usually have. The cars actually move! I mean, they follow a proper traffic system for a full 5 minutes. Now that is something I have not seen in other shows.

2. The very first line. “What are little girls made up of?” And subsequently in the middle, “What are little boys made up of?”. These may seem cheeky, but that is what the main character, Nitori, seems to be confused about, and is searching an answer for. Or not. I’m not a mind reader.

3. Are kids really that outgoing nowadays? Maybe, considering the pre-martial pregnancies rate has been shooting up… But seriously, wtf? Friends with someone who rejected you during 6th grade, and someone you rejected not long after, and going out with a girl a year older at 7th grade. Jealousy over romance and ex-romance. Seriously? These kids have more life than I do man.

4. No tsunderes. Slight tsundere characteristic but no pure out-and-out-I’m-a-tsundere character. At least part of my nerves ain’t wrecked trying to bear with the tsundere girls.

5. Seriously, what is the problem with society at large being okay with girls wearing boys clothing but not the other way round? Not that I’m fine with it, I’m also way against boys wearing girls clothing, but what is the reason behind it? Society stigma? Then why are girls fine then? And yes to be honest I do not mind. Or is this just a mindset ingrained upon our society and daily lifestyles?

6. For the second consecutive anime (previous being Kure-nai) going, they mentioned about a particular food, which is some muffin like stuff eaten with jam. Forgotten the name, but it does make me hungry.

That’s more or less what I remembered. May have more, but oh well, I have pretty much lost my language capabilities after not using them for nearly 9 months.

Bayern Munich spend million of dollars on transfer but there are some fatal flaws in their plan. First, they don’t have any left back last season so what did they do? They bought a RB and let Lahm, their only competent defender and best player plays on the left. Brilliant idea! Lahm was a natural LB anyway but the reason he switched to RB was because they have none on the right! In other words, the team now only have 1 RB and  0 sub for their RB position. So what if their only RB  can’t play? If that’s the case, the team can only tap on to their shitty reserve(Koz is his name) that were on the relegation zone in low German league. Guess what happen when they do that? People attack the right side and fuck up the defence that is already weak in the first place. Simple shit.

Koz  can’t play. He loses ball every time, he won zero challenge, his tackling gave their opponent a chance to score. Total disaster. To add salt to the wound, our CB don’t fucking understand marking. They spread out wide and leave  space for opponents like some prostitute leaving their pussy open for penis. The CB don’t understand positioning during set piece as well. One seemly harmless corner kick or freekick can make the penalty box a disarray of shit where opponents are free to score. I can’t count how many balls were given away from set pieces last season. That’s clearly our weakness and one season had pass and nothing learned. Fuck it.

Now, we actually just bought some 22 years old German born Ghana CB named, Jerome Boateng , to solve our back line problems. He is promising and definitely the best in our centre defence now. The keyword here though, is promising. He played only a handful of matches last season and mainly played as a fullback for his career. Worst still, he just come back from some injury. What’s the chance of him failing and fuck up? High. Even if he became awesome, what can 1 CB do? Shit, that’s right, the answer is shit.

Though I hope I am wrong, today’s match is just some pre season fun anyway so no big deal. However, if this is their actual performance, I think we will be  3rd or worst again this season. Hey, Bundesliga just got the 4th CL place, we definitely have room to fail right?

Our attack is awesome though, no problem with that… … mostly… … if Gomez don’t fuck up … … if both our Wingers dodn’t get injured… … if Schweinsteiger actually perform like he  should perform.

I have to agree that most of my personal disdains towards Persona 3 FES may be rooted from personal preference and choices I made in game so what I will talk about below maybe things that I should blame myself. However, if I have to say it objectively, Persona 3 isn’t as revolutionize as people said it is. Dating sim, Pokemon collecting and high school setting elements are found everywhere in games, just that they are not being combined into one like what Persona 3 did. The only innovative thing I can think about is the knockdown battle system, which itself isn’t that brilliant of an idea to amount to anything anyway I don’t know about you but if you think that combining of done before things together is a brilliant and innovative thing then so be it.

Now, for some evidences of done before game mechanics, one good example of the much lauded dating sim RPG element can be found in Thousand Arms from 13 years ago where you have to interact with girls to enhance your sword power, sounds familiar? In addition, if you have played before dirty otaku games like Tokimeki Memorial and Sakura Taisen, you will know that shit (P3′s dating sim element) is just a watered down version of true dating sim, nothing amazing about it.

Pokemon collecting is just Pokemon collecting, Digimon World for RPG and Monster Rancher for general Pokemon collecting game did the Pokemon collecting a lot better anyway. Hell, even its own fucking SMT series’ innovation is this Pokemon collecting stuff and no one talk about them so I don’t think we should give any more credit than what it is.

High school setting is just high school setting; we all know that no one is interested in those exams and study to increase your academy bullshit. Those are even less interactive than going to work in “The Sims”. If you want to have some radical change in setting, look no further than Earthbound now that is radical enough for us to jizz on. High school setting on the other hand? Eh, not so much.

Now to some of my personal complain and how I disagree on people’s opinion about the Answer VS Journey Arc and why I prefer the former.

The first complain about the Answer arc is it being a grind fest while the Journey is not, which I totally disagree on because the Journey Arc has more grinding than Answer Arc when I played. This is actually all my fault for being a semi-competitionist where I have to complete a certain milestones in RPGs. These milestones are namely, having the best weapons, complete storyline with all side quest and optional boss beaten , left no treasure box unturned, and having strong enough stats and skills(strong or not depends on my own preference) for the main characters. These milestone are actually sane when compare to collect 99x of every items but never have I thought that these milestone is what made the Journey arc a fucking grind fest.

Now, in order to defeat the optional boss and get the ultimate Pokemon (the ultimate Pokemon is my idea of being strong enough for this game), you definitely need to be level 99, which itself took at least a fuck long time to accomplish. If you played the game normally without much grinding, you will reach about level 76-80(I was level 76). Therefore, you will have to at least level up some 20 or so levels.

After level 80, you will most likely need30000- 50000 experience point to gain one level. Most enemies give you about 2000 experience point per battle. If you are lucky and pick some randomly generated and shuffled experience point card and met the strongest enemy, you will gain 8000 experience point or so (which sometime can be a rare occurrence). Therefore, with some 8000 and many 1000-2000, you need the average of 10-20 battles (mostly 15) or so for each level.

At the same time, your sp (which is damn important) degenerate like fuck crazy and the enemies are so strong that if you make one mistake, you will be screwed. The final deathblow to the cock is that your character will get tired after 40 or so battles so have fun wasting more time, going to school, date some girls then go to sleep to regenerate your condition. Therefore, 15-20 battles actually sound longer than it seems to be. I will say it at least took 35mins to level up one level if all things move smoothly.

It’s only after level 90 or so that you can battle with two eyes close even when you are tired but level 90 took 5.8 hours or even more with all the regenerating, game over and such bullshit. I tell you, 5.8 hours of fighting the same monster, using the same tactic, seeing the same view with no story progress or any other purpose other than leveling up is as fun as it sounds.

Now, leveling up to 99 is actually the easiest part and I completed it without much hassle (I secretly love grinding for levels). There are more fuckup stuffs that I hated more. After leveling up to 99, you have to level some of your Pokemon to a certain level to get certain essential items for the optional boss as well. This is more frustrating than training your own level because your Pokemon do not earn all the experience like you do! Sometimes, your Pokemon will be weak against an enemy(which happens all the time), you can’t train it efficiently because you need to switch it out if you don’t want to lose 1 hour of training time due to game over.

That’s not all! Leveling up your Pokemon isn’t even the most tedious part. To be frank, it’s just a tip of the iceberg when compare to the horror you are going to face – fusing your ultimate Pokemon. Now, the ultimate Pokemon (I will call it Ulti for now) is a Pokemon with a set of desired skill that is essential to defeat the optional boss. To have the desired skill set, you need 6 different other Pokemon that each undergoes its own complicated fusions in order to let them all have similar skills to make sure that your Ulti receive the skill it needs. Since the Ulti is like some slut who accepts every skill equally, you will have a hard time to make sure you have your desired skills. It’s a complicated process and only those who played the game will understand how fucking tedious this is. To simplify it, the whole process will be literally just pressing the O and X buttons for 10 hours, if you are lucky.

To understand how tedious all these process are, a normal game completion without all the bullshit I mentioned above took about 70 hours. In the end, I took about 110 hours to defeat the optional boss and I actually cheated!  If I didn’t cheat, I think I will hate myself and threw my newly bought PS2 out of the window by then. That’s 40 more hours of mindless leveling and fusing of Pokemon, with cheat!  40 hours of mindless grinding! How long did I take to complete the whole of Answer arc with all milestones complete? 30 hours!  Even if the Answer Arc is total grinding like everyone say (even though I disagree), 40hours> 30 hours. Case close, end of story, I don’t need to elaborate anymore.

I am a nice guy so I will elaborate more. There are other things that make me prefer the Answer arc to the Journey arc. The main thing is that I love traditional RPG. I love battles, leveling up and learning new skills. I love the Persona 3′s battle mechanics and the Answer arc fleshed it out better than the Journey arc.

The lack of a compendium where you can summon any Pokemon you want make me cherish my Pokemon more. It makes me explore new alternatives and discover the usefulness of some Pokemon due to not having too much freedom now.  The best examples are the Pokemon, Loki and Cybele. Both these Pokemon are useless in the Journey arc because there are much better Pokemon available thanks to the ease of fusing. However, only during the Answer Arc where I found out that they are actually the one of the best Pokemon out there because they have no weakness! The skills they learned also complement one another, which make you unbeatable if you alternate between them. This just adds more depth and strategy to the whole battle system.

I also like how the pacing of the plot goes. You encounter a mystery and you kept on chasing it. You won’t have any distraction and what not so you are always on the run. Best of all, you don’t need to wait for 28 days to progress the plot.

The Answer arc also does the whole “show, don’t tell” part better than the Journey arc. I always hate it when the Journey arc goes all expository with their back-story.  For example, in the Journey arc, Akihiko always go all expository about his orphanage’s day and how his sister or something die so he want power to protect. On the other hand, the Answer arc actually shows what transpire when they go all back-story modes.

The Answer arc also has a better-characterized main character. Aegis when compare to the emo blue hair kid has more personality because the emo blue hair kid has none. The emo blue hair kid is just a silent kid that suck up to everyone by changing his personality whenever it suits the situation. Everyone also loves to suck his cock for no reason and he gets to bang all the women with no qualms.

It’s ok to be silent if you can customize your character to suit a consistent persona but for Persona 3, there aren’t many choices to give your character a personality.  You are forced to give cheesy answers to suck up to others in order to progress and you can’t be an asshole if you want to complete the Social Link. Therefore, in the end, you are pretty much screwed with only one direction of progression.

The most disturbing part though is that I still can’t get over the fact on why everyone is lamenting about Makoto from School Days when our emo blue hair kid is actually no better than him. I am just downright disturbed by this. I can’t get over it even until this day because no one seems to bring it up. Why people? Why? I thought all of you hate harem. So why don’t you have any complains with Persona 3′s main character?

Have you notice how I never talk about the story? I talked about the plot pacing and the method of revealing the plot but I didn’t really go in depth on what is it all about. You know why? Because both stories for both arc suck. Actually suck is too harsh, there are actually ok and serviceable. I really can’t hold any grudge with the story because even the best of the best RPG story Xenogears can’t make a good TV show too.  Hence, you can’t really gauge an RPG’s story objectively; a serviceable story is a good story for RPG. However, you can gauge a RPG by the characterization, which make up one part of the plot, which in turn is a detail of how a story reaches from point A to point B.

In this case, both character interactions/characterization for both arcs are similar. The Journey arc has more characters but you caring about them or not is another whole issue all together.  Out of the whole social links, I only liked the Dying Young man one and maybe the Devil one. The rest are kinda meh.

All the female’s social links are interesting at first but degenerate to them, wanting to suck your cock and bang you in the end. Even the much lauded Hermit link is kinda meh (I hate internet speak) except for the ending part during March 30/31.

Except for the two social links that I said I like, the rest of the male’s social links are just eh. Look around the top favourite list of social link and no one care about Kenji or that Kendo/Track&Field/Swimming guy. The Moon guy is fat so everyone hates him. Keisuke is just some boring shit about being a doctor or musician. Student council guy was actually cool so maybe I should add him to my favourite list as well. The monk and old couple have a strong start but kinda dwindle out. The sport rival guy was just ok but nothing memorable. If I miss any, it means that I totally forgot about them.

E Minor told me that he likes how all the social link interconnected to the main story or something but to be frank, I can just see some shallow connections. For one, Mitsuru seems to be able overcome her embarrassment when she is beside you pretty fast when it reaches the main story progression.

Also, even though both stories suck, I still prefer the Answer arc’s story by giving a new twist to the sacrifice self to save the world from god summoned by some people who find earth to be too disgusting, even though the Answer arc destroyed quite a lot of the Journey’s arc motivation and build up. I didn’t care about the Journey’s story anyway so who cares if it was destroyed.

I still have some minor things to say about Persona 3 but I guess that’s enough elaboration for now. So bye bye for now, I guess. Next post should be about my new favourite, Fist of the North Star or something.