MarsDragon's GameLog

Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation (GBA) - Fri, 06 Apr 2007 02:46:01

Fri, 06 Apr 2007 02:46:01 CDT

Well, I finally beat my first run through SRW: OG1. Ironically, the final boss was easier than the boss right before her, since she had more people to kill (and therefore more chance to build up Will) and they were easier to kill. I still had to spam EN Draining stuff to get her barrier down so she couldn't knock 2000 HP off my every attack and use her most powerful attack against me, and I still had time to nearly completely drain her ammo before bringing her down. Stupid "more HP than the numbers can show" bosses... Even still she felt easier than the boss right before, mostly because I had time to bring up Kyosuke's Will so I could spam Rampage Ghost from the beginning instead of having to eat several attacks, replenish, eat several more attacks, then only get in a couple shots at the end. All in all, it was a pretty satisfying experience. An especially nice touch was when each character fight the last boss for the first time they said a little spiel, a little like FF6's last scene against Kefka, but with more badassery. These are robot pilots we're talking about here. It did lack the brilliance of "You all sound like pages from a self-help book!", but it had one of the characters hitting on the final boss. I can live. I am kinda sad I played the last bit over with friends so I couldn't listen to Trombe! override Marionette Messiah, but I ended the battle with Sanger anyway, so it ultimately doesn't count either way. (TROMBE!) Now I just have to decide between running through the alternate route real fast and getting all the extras I missed the first time around or just going straight to Original Generation 2. I mean, I didn't even fight the *real* last boss...

Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) - Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:08:11

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:08:11 CDT

Well. After another hour of playing, I completely failed to get past Water Land. I have been made weak by RPGs and today's soft games. Gah. As a result, I also failed to get to my favourite world, Giant Land, and failed to get to world five and Kuribo's Shoe. The shoe is lost to me forever now. I hate world 3, especially stages 2 and 3, with a BURNING PASSION now. A burning passion even greater than my burning courage, but I'm going to blame that on my roommate being around, thus preventing me from being able to yell. Victory comes from courage, and courage comes from yelling. Obviously. That said, world 3 is well put together, if frustrating. This is where the game really gets difficult, after the easy first two worlds. And, you know, I hate water levels. The combination of Cheep-Cheeps and complicated jumping is just something I can't do very well, and I had to continue several times just to get all the way to stage four, but then made it all the way to seven with no real incident. Four isn't even all that hard, it's just two and three. I do have to admit that the rising and sinking of the airships and certain water levels is an nifty idea, and one that should be ripped off more often. It can create some very interesting applications of physics in using the movement of hte level itself to get to inaccessible places, and creates and added element of danger. One thing that happened to me after I beat the castle on my first trip through (due to my good stock of lives I was able to make it through all the way to the castle, then died horribly with no remaining lives), where I got a white coin ship. I had never been able to get one of those before. It promptly fled off past the screen to where I couldn't get, and I was forced to continue several times. Amazingly, though, it hung around, and eventually moved to where I could get to it, scoring me three extra lives and a hammer. In all my years of playing Mario 3, I've never managed to get one of those before, so finally seeing one was...impressive, and pretty fun. It's good to know that SMB3 can still surprise people with what it has. Since this was a rather short (in terms of new game uncovered) session, I'm not entirely sure of what to say. Except that despite playing them over and over again, I never got better at the first two stages. Curse them.

Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES) - Fri, 23 Feb 2007 17:56:10

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 17:56:10 CDT

In according to the requirements, I began to play Super Mario Bros 3. I decided to play this as straight as I could, with no warping right to world 8 from the start. I used to have the Nintendo Power guide for this game. I'd read it all the time, probably more than I actually played the game. I don't exactly recall every secret by now (I think I spent most of my time looking at the maps anyway), but every stage of Grassland has passed into the general gaming unconscious by now anyway. As a result, there isn't much to say. I finished the first world and beat Larry with 20 lives to spare. The only secret ending I used to get out of a stage was getting the Warp Whistle in the first castle, since I hate that bit with the lowering spikes. And I didn't play stage 4, since I've had an innate hatred of auto-scrolling stages since childhood. I can beat it easily now, of course, but that's NOT THE POINT. Grassland does provide an excellent learning ground, though. There are plenty of secrets, especially in the first stage, for getting tons of coins and 1ups. Nearly everything is placed to guide you along a path, with enough hints to the secret objects that you can find them by yourself without being told. It makes for a nice prelude to the more complicated stuff of the later stages instead of hiding blocks with 1ups right at the start, like SMB1 did. It's an extremely well put together first world, even with all the tricks unveiled by 17 years worth of constant playing by near every gamer. Sandland was next, and for the most part, it's as well-known as Grassland, so I got through with no major problems (though there was one secret I forgot about...the pipe with the P-switch in Stage 2. It was amusing finding it again) until...the sun. Luckily I had played the stage recently enough that I remembered how to get past the whirlwind, but the sun would not die to kicked Koopa shells, and I got killed by it a few times; once, most frustratingly, just as I got into the end of the stage. The worst part, though, was how the Hammer Bros chose to hang out right on top of my respawn point, thus dragging me into an instant battle as soon as I came back. They were actually harder than the sand stage itself, and chewed through at least five of my lives before I beat them. And my reward? A damn music box. Who the hell even uses those? After that the rest of the world was easy, and I beat up Morton in one try. Stupid Morton. I continued to play through the first stage of Waterland before calling it quits. I have an irrational hatred of Bloopers ever since Japanese Mario 2 (THEY LIVED IN THE AIR WHAT THE HELL), so world 3 is far from my favourite. Overall, though, the first stage of Waterland is just a re-introduction to the swimming mechanics that have basically remained the same since Mario 1, so there's not much to tell, but that I've now been listening to the overworld music for twenty minutes now and I think it's driving me insane.

Final Fantasy Tactics (PS) - Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:06:47

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:06:47 CDT

Gamelog for Friday, February 06, part 2.5 Because it was late last night when I was doing my second entry, I couldn't talk as much as I'd like. Please consider this part of the second entry, just time-delayed a bit. Anyway. I told how I got to Dorter and beat the heck out of everyone, even if Dracula died to a knight in the process. And Delita wasted a Potion on Algus, of all people. I was kinda annoyed about that, so I'm thinking of taking Item off of him. A lot of my strategy to get my people up to speed is to kill my Guests so that the real characters can farm for EXP and JP without a Guest ending the battle by killing that last critical guy. Since I can't quite one-shot Delita yet, he has the tendency to use my potions to heal himself and Algus. On one hand, it's semi-decent AI, which is a rarity for FFT. On the other...die, damnit. (guests don't crystallize, so you can kill them with no consequences) One thing I mentioned was farming for EXP and JP. One of the things I rather like about FFT is the EXP system. You get a set amount of EXP and JP per action, instead of per fight or kill like in the rest of the series. As long as the action works, you get points. Now, the Squire class has two very useful abilities to take advantage of this, namely Throw Stone and Accumulate. Throw Stone tosses a rock at an enemy up to four squares away, for minimal damage, usually 6-8 max and often 3-4. This is the first long range attack you get and while it's terrible for killing things, it's excellent for sitting around throwing rocks at enemies/your team for minimal damage (thus you need more actions, getting more points) while staying out of range of counters and the like. Accumulate just adds +1 to your physical attack, which means it can't miss, doesn't do any damage, thus not ending the battle faster, and by the time you stop spamming it it's pretty easy for even a mage class to do significant damage against an enemy. Combined with the Squire's gained JP up it's pretty easy to get 300 JP in one fight, assuming you have the patience. This is, of course, breaking a system that actually makes quite a bit more sense than the typical FF system, but hey. FFT was made to be broken. Dorter is also where the story starts picking up. The first bits are mostly background (Fifty-Year War, brothers, et cetera), but with Dorter you get your first glimpse of the Death Corps (your random human encounters for the rest of the game, even though you make their leader run off to join the church before the first chapter ends) and your first hints that the guy you saved at Mandalia Plains, who in just about any other game would turn out to be a useful friend turns you to be a horrible, peasant-kicking jerk in just about every sense of the word. This is why I didn't want Delita wasting potions on him. (spoilers: you don't have to hang around him forever) Though the first chapter in general is rather slow and sets up the political drama that really doesn't matter to Ramza in the end, it does give a lot of useful character development. If, you know, you can understand it. I keep talking about how the localization for this is terrible, but it really really is. Ls and Rs are mixed up in different places (so the enemy Zalera is also Zarela), dialogue is stilted and awkward, and let's just not talk about Daravon in the tutorial or the Brave Story. (The Brave Story is a good idea though, and one I wish more RPGs would use. You can see profiles on every character in the game, even ones that never appear on-screen, rewatch old cutscenes, and get information about artifacts you found on dispatch missions. It's a little like a proto-FFXII bestiary) FFT's story is confusing enough without adding sub-SNES localization to things. It's like they didn't even bother to edit it at all, and I really wouldn't be surprised if they didn't. I'd like to have everyone where they're going by the end of chapter one (excepting Germain's equipment requirements), so I should do a few more random encounters before steamrolling over the last few battles. As I am right now I'd have a fairly easy time of it, by the end there shouldn't be any problem at all. The challenge should pick up around the middle/end of chapter 2, assuming a minimum of grinding after this.

Final Fantasy Tactics (PS) - Fri, 09 Feb 2007 04:22:16

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 04:22:16 CDT

Gamelog entry for Friday, Febuary 06, Part 2 I got up to Dorter this time, with most everyone well on their way to their chosen builds. Given that, it was a pretty easy fight. It's actually supposed to be rather hard. If you don't grind for a bit then all you'll have are Squires and Chemists, and you're up against Archers, Wizards, and a Knight. This is actually where I stopped playing the first time I played FFT, I just couldn't beat Dorter. I put the game down for three years until I finally figured out what to do. This time, I sent Vincent and Charlotte up to kill an Archer in a high place, while leaving St Germain and Dracula to take out the knight and first Wizard. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying attention and got Dracula killed, but not before he Bolt2'ed the pair. The Archers and other Wizard fell pretty quick (especially when an enemy Wizard took out one of his own guys to kill Algus. Not that I blame him.), even before Charlotte could get down to Raise Dracula. Don't mess with a Monk's fists of fury, man. FFT is one of the few RPGs to make battles actually fun, trying out new tactics and sometimes having the fail horribly. While it's not the most balanced game (some classes are definitely better than others), it fits together, and at least is more balanced than Disgaea. It's late. I'll add another entry tomorrow.

Final Fantasy Tactics (PS) - Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:58:09

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:58:09 CDT

Gamelog for Friday, February 09, entry 1.5. This is just a quick thing where I can detail my plans for my characters. Given that so far they're mostly in chat logs spread across two operating systems, this seems like a good idea. And I like to talk about job classes and builds. -Dracula (Ramza)- Main Class: Summoner Secondary: Wizard Reaction: Dragon Spirit Support: Equip Sword Movement: Teleport Since Ramza gets a male unit's physical growth and a female unit's magical, he makes a good choice for either path. Since Dracula's main power is to summon and control monsters, Summon Magic was an obvious choice. And since he's a magician, Black Magic is a good secondary. He gets Dragon Spirit (gives Reraise status) because he always comes back from the dead and Teleport because the first form of Dracula's attack pattern has ALWAYS been to teleport around shooting fireballs at you. Equip Sword is because according Lament of Innocence he used to be a knight, so hey, sword. It's not the best idea for a caster unit, but I'm going for theme over power here. -St. Germain- Main class: Ninja Secondary: Geomancer/Time Mage Reaction: Abandon Support: Equip Shield Movement: Teleport The idea behind St. Germain is that he has incredible dodging abilities. With ninja as a primary class, Equip Shield for the Uber Shield, Abandon (raises Evade) and the best mantle, about the only things hitting him will be certain un-evadeable spells and very very lucky enemies. (before anyone says "Blade Grasp", I'm going for magic /and/ physical evade here) He teleports around through Curse of Darkness, so obviously he gets Teleport, and since one of his attacks as a boss fight is to raise vines from the ground, Geomancer is a good choice, since the most common attack is Hell Ivy. He also has control over time, so I'll substitute Time Magic in as I need it. -Leon- Main class: Knight Secondary: Ninja Reaction: Counter Support: Abandon Movement: Move+3 Leon being a knight ingame, he gets to be a knight, especially since Belmonts for a long time tended to be slow, clunky creatures. Since Leon's one of the modern ones, with the decent movement, he also gets Abandon and Move+3. Counter is a good, fighter ability to have, and Throw is there because he throws his subweapons. Not much to see here. -Charlotte- Main class: White Mage Seconday: Wizard Reaction: Counter Magic Support: Magic AttackUP Movement: Fly Charlotte is pretty basic. Main and secondary classes can be switched around, depending on if I need speed or magic power; Magic AttackUP fits with her super mage image and is a good ability. Fly works since she can turn into an owl, but Reaction was harder. I eventually went with Counter Magic, if only because generally once you get hit with a spell in PoR, you'll be hitting back pretty quickly. I would've LIKED to give her MA Save, but that's a Bard-only ability, and Bards are male-only. But she works well enough. -Vincent- Main class: Thief Secondary class: Mediator Reaction: Gilgame Heart Support: Secret Hunt Movement: Move-Find Item Hahaha. Vincent's the merchant in PoR, so it's hard to say what his battle abilities are like (hint: non-existent), but I wanted a thief and with his prices, he definitely qualifies. As of such, his reaction is Gilgame Heart, which gives you Gil in an amount to how much you've been damaged, times ten, and his movement is Move-Find item, which finds you find items hidden in the ground. (and is how Germain is getting his nifty shield later) Secret Hunt lets me get Poach items and get cheaper items from fur shops. (and how Charlotte will become virtually immortal later, assuming I want to put in the effort) Second class is Mediator because uh...he talks to Charlotte and Johnathan about things? Yeah, it's a hard sell, but there really wasn't anything else. I just like Mediators.

Final Fantasy Tactics (PS) - Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:21:10

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:21:10 CDT

Gamelog for assignment Friday, February 09, entry 1. Ah, FFT. Easily the best FF on the Playstation. (the SNES ports lose because of loading times) The sprites are high quality and still look gorgeous today, with an incredible range of expression. The music is mostly awesome, the story is deep, if poorly localized, and the gameplay is pure sweet (easily broken) SRPG goodness. I've played the game before, ending with a hideously overpowered team consisting of a Wizard/Summoner with Short Charge, a Priest with Math Skill, two Ninja, one being Agrias, and Dragoon Ramza with the best spear and shield in the game. The game stopped being hard around the middle of the first chapter. I even took down Wiegraf in under two turns. This time, I decided to break the game /slightly/ less. I tried to do this before with a Ninja Single Class Challenge (everyone's a ninja, and ONLY a ninja), but I got bored with trying to grind everyone up the job tree to ninja before Dorter, the third story battle in the game. (ninja is one of the last classes you can get, so that's a lot of grinding) I'll come back to that someday, but for right now I'm going with a Castlevania-themed game. By limiting my options to things that resemble Castlevania character's powers I can't steamroll over everything without trying, but I should have a varied enough team that it won't be as hard as a full SSC. And I can build characters up at my own pace. The first few battles in the game are mostly tutorial battles with a pre-made team. The very first one even consists entirely of AI characters (besides Ramza), so you only have to worry about yourself. It's slightly annoying, because it's mostly watching the game play itself, but it does give you some idea of how the game works without letting you get yourself wiped out. They save that for the NEXT battle, where they give you a small team of cadets and tell you to kill some other low-level punks. It's actually not too hard, since you get AI character Delita on your side, who will happily absorb some hits and smack people around for you. I got lucky and had a good team, so it wasn't too hard to wipe them out. After that I stripped and ditched every single one of them. Using the money gained from selling all their equipment, I bought myself three male and one female squire. Two of the males had good Brave, and the other two hirelings had good Faith, which fit my plans perfectly. I changed the girl into a Chemist and set off to the next battle, where you gt the best reward possible: Ten extra Brave for abandoning Algus. This translates into two permanent brave, so it's a little annoying I accidentally left one of my physical boys at home while accidentally taking along the guy destined for Move-Finding (which is based on 100 minus your Brave, so lower is better). I did manage to kill Algus, though, so good for me. After that it was mostly just grinding enough to get my Chemist Charlotte to Priest and Dracula Beoluve to Wizard. Everyone has Gained JP Up to make things easier, and I should be moving along to knights and monks soon, possibly before Dorter. Money is tight, but I'm making it. My first knights will probably still be mostly naked, though.

Phantasy Star (SMS) - Sun, 04 Feb 2007 06:26:47

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 06:26:47 CDT

I finally picked this back up again, after forgetting about it a for a few weeks. I had just picked up my third party member, Odin the strongman, and since he had a Compass stashed in a chest all the way across the dungeon from him, obviously we had to go to that village in the directionless forest that guy in town had mentioned. Oh 8-bit RPGs. Once there we fought Bat Men (sadly, more like vampires than dark knights) until we had enough money to get him a gun and a Bronze Shield. And since I spent all that time fighting and getting a gun, I suppose I should talk about the battle system now. Phantasy Star fights are first-person, a lot like Dragon Quest. In fact, they're pretty much the same. Now, normally while attacking your characters will randomly hit a creature for some amount of damage. This can get pretty annoying (NO DAMNIT TAKE OUT THE WOUNDED ONE), but generally works all right. Guns, on the other hand, hit every creature for a set amount of HP and never miss. The trick is, they do really low amount of damage. The gun I just picked up, the Needle Gun, does five damage per hit. In comparison, Alis with her Ceramic Sword does anywhere from ten to twenty-five damage per hit, depending on the monster. And the weakest monster in the game has 8 HP, which means it takes Odin two shots to kill stuff Alis was one-shotting five levels and three swords ago. But they're great against crowds and chipping enemies down to where Alis and Mayu can take them out in one hit. After grabbing a gun and finding out where the Elder of the village had hidden the dungeon key (in the first dungeon of the game. We didn't see this earlier how?), we set off on quite possibly the goofiest quest in the game. See, we have to see the Governor-general of Motavia to get his blessings in the fight against Lassic, and so he can hook us up with our final party member, Noah the magician. Problem is, the Governor-general needs to be bribed with something sweet before he'll see us. Well, at the bottom of a dungeon you'd never think to look at unless you were wandering around the world map in desperation, there's a cake shop that will sell you some world-famous shortcake. Yeah, even the shopkeeper admits it's a lousy location. So after fighting my way through bloodthirsty monsters for half an hour (WITH a map), I grabbed the cake and finally managed to see the Governor-general of Motavia, who nicely gave me a letter to convince Noah to join us. Too bad he lives in a cave full of monsters across a dessert full of monsters and pissed-off Motavians who don't like a bunch of stupid Palmans running around on their planet. (actually, you can talk with the Motavians, who will mostly turn out to be friendly and give you some townsperson advice before wandering off. Not all encounters have to end in violence!) I made it to his cave, but since it was pitch-black and I forgot to grab a flashlight in town I just saved outside his cave and gave up for the night. Another nice thing Phantasy Star had, the ability to save anywhere. No matter how often I play this game, I always find myself amazed at how incredibly ahead of it's time it was. This game came out literally a few days after the first Final Fantasy in Japan and is larger, prettier, better-put together, and has a plot that actually makes a lick of sense. About the only thing FF has on it is choice of characters in the beginning and the ability to choose your targets, neither of which give it of a leg up. It's a pity we don't have a true Phantasy Star V by now, I'd love to see it. (This entry has been edited1 time. It was last edited on Sun, 04 Feb 2007 06:28:43.)

Final Fantasy XII (PS2) - Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:37:41

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:37:41 CDT

All right, another entry. Since I finished with the lighthouse, I decided to catch up on my Hunts and not advance the plot for awhile. (I still had to finish a few Rank III hunts. So behind) So I went to take care of the Gil Snapper and Roblon. Since I'm doing Hunts, it seems a fine time to talk about the gameplay and how it differs from the numeric FFs from VI to X. (IV as well, I suppose) One of the things about FFXII is that it's not really about the characters, or the plot. It's about the gameplay, and breaking it right open to do whatever you want it to. This is another common feature in Matsuno games, having to spend a lot of times in menus and tweaking things to get the best results. In this way it shares more with FFI, II, III, and V (plus Tactics and Vagrant Story, obviously) than the post-VI world that most players are familiar with. The main point of FFXII isn't to advance the plot as much as it is to kill enemies and make your characters to be powerhouses. The main game is about running through dungeons and getting those LP to get that next level of magic or weapon, figuring out how to best set up your Gambits to take advantages of enemies weaknesses, and in general playing the game to break it in half. It's not nearly as exploitable as FFV or FFT, but the idea is the same. It's the first numerical mechanics-based FF since FIVE, which is a pretty big break from what most people see as FF nowadays. But it's not that FFXII isn't a Final Fantasty, it quite clearly is, even if it's more of a stepchild than pureblooded. It's a bit of a throwback, though, and even worse, it's a throwback to games which never came to America except recently. I mean, be honest. How many people who got into FF with VII went back and played the SNES ones? And poor Tactics never got a good reception, even if it was the best PSX FF. Now, one of the problems with this that FFXII runs into is that the earlier mechanics-based FFs have all been incredibly exploitable. Maybe not FFIII, because that was an NES game and they were made to hurt, but between FFVs Blue Magic and Chemists and FFTs Ninja and Calculators, they could EASILY be broken in half once you knew how. FFXII tries to get around this by giving the bosses tons of HP, so even with Quickenings and exploiting weaknesses, it still takes time and effort to bring them down. They also add things like Palings and Magic Walls to add some strategy (know when to attack and when it's not doing any good), but it mostly comes down to lots and lots of HP. This comes with it's own set of problems, namely that long fights, such as mine against the Roblon, just come down to keeping half an eye on the fight to make sure everything's going like it should, and letting Gambits take on the rest. While it is nice to not have to mash attack constantly like in the older FFs, it would've been nice to have some variety in fights. I'm not sure if adding a hidden exploit would be the best way to do this, and they did their best with Palings to keep you on your toes, it still feels a trifle boring. Just not as bad as some of the super boss fights in previous FFs. One nifty thing that only tangentially relates to the gameplay, but adds a lot of value to the game for me, is the Bestiary. This is easily the best Bestiary I've ever seen, and what it lacks in cold stats about the enemies it makes up for in world-building flavour. Due to it FFXII probably has the best and most fleshed out world in any FF, and best of all, it adds tons of references back to older games, especially FFT and Vagrant Story. This adds a good deal of hidden continuity, which is really nice to see. It gives the sense of a larger world than you can usually do in the FF series, which reboots the entire universe every game; and lends a more Phantasy Star feel of finding things you remember seeing previously. One thing that I really got a kick out of was in an entry for a particular Rare Game, the Tower in the lighthouse. It says that the Tower is: "Babil considered the most sacred of its kind." Not too exciting, huh? At first glance it seems to be a mistranslated reference to Babel, which isn't too surprising, given the Japanese pop culture tendency to appropriate Western religious symbolism. And it essentially is. But that particular spelling is also a reference to the US version of FFIV, where the plot points of the Tower and Giant of Babel were censored by Nintendo at the time to Bab-il. (later fixed in FFIV Advance) That little sentence contains not just an overdone religious reference, but a reference back to a previous game in the series, making the older fans smile. References like this abound in FFXII, from the Red Wings (another FFIV reference) to hunts straight out of FFVI, magic and weapons we haven't seen since Tactics, and dungeons and churches lifted from Vagrant Story. FFXII not just has its own deep and engaging world, it connects other worlds in the series. Not enough to drag them together, but enough to make the fans smile. It's an underlooked at aspect which really gives the game some extra appeal to me.

Final Fantasy XII (PS2) - Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:44:17

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:44:17 CDT

Well, I didn't really want to do FFXII for my Gamelog...I'm already well into the game and am not doing anything really interesting right now, much like everyone /else/ who does FFXII Gamelogs, and I have some pretty vicious feelings to people who don't get that this isn't just another FFVI/VII rip-off like they were expecting and is something a lot better. On the other hand, I found out through Gradius once again that I just all out SUCK at horizontal shooters, and there isn't much worth in a Gamelog where the player can't get past the first half of the first stage either. (Not kidding. Guardian Legend is a classic too, you know! And a vertical shooter! Go get some carts for it!) So. FFXII. As I said, I'm well into this game, since I've been playing it since it came out. (since I'm a very slow gamer, though, I'm still only about 65 hours into it) I recently got back to it after taking a long break and finished up the damn lighthouse. While I greatly enjoy most of the game, the last bit of the lighthouse with the coloured waypoints and nasty punishment for screwing up the order is pretty mean, and fighting Hashamal without a save point is pretty vicious too. My current party was out of mana and at half health from fighting their way up from the last save point, so I switched to my other party, leaving myself without backup if they should fail. Luckily, Hashamal took lots of damage very quickly and I soon Floated my way to victory. Go go Earth Dragon tactics. Luckily, that was the worst of the lighthouse dungeon. It was interesting from a puzzle-based dungeon standpoint, and most of the ideas worked pretty well. Dark Stones were easy enough to collect, since you'd be committing wholesale slaughter anyway, and even the green/red bridges weren't that bad, even if my Gambit set-ups tended to require lots of fleeing. The Sacrifice...was less-well done. There's no reason to choose anything BUT the mini-map to give up, especially after the Great Crystal, which made both maps useless, as opposed to just having to hit Select all the time. Taking away the main map as well would've been better, but even then Items and Map are a lot better to give up than Magic or Weapons. On the other hand, Matsuno games do tend to lend themselves well to people doing stupidly hard challenges for the hell of it, which would make the other two very useful. The waypoints, on the other hand, are just kind of there and punishing. When did I use red again? And the already-mentioned Hashamal. The boss at the top was also interesting (hey! enemies don't get summons!), even if I did have to keep manually telling my characters to attack the right guy. But that's my fault for not wanting to go mess around with Gambits as opposed to a flaw in the game itself. Winning the lighthouse got me quite a bit of plot, so I suppose here I'll defend FFXII's story-telling style. I've seen some complaints around about how you just fight through a dungeon, get some story, repeat. First off, isn't this how every RPG works? Unless you want a pure movie or a pure dungeon-crawler, that's how it works. What I think they're getting at is that the story bits are too short and infrequent, to which I reply that A) it's a game. Don't buy it if you don't want to actually play it, and B) go play Vagrant Story or FF Tactics. All these games are pretty much done by the same guy (FFXII has a bit more drama associated with it, but that's mostly the way), and they all display the same tendency of making you actually PLAY the game to get to the story bits, in which you have to actually infer what the bad guys are doing, since a lot of times the main character(s) are on the side-lines, trying to do their thing and learn the "truth". It's a valid technique, just not one often used in the main FF games, which appears to be where the problem is, people who expected another rehash of FFVI and got the bastard son of Vagrant Story and FF11 instead. Personally, I think the story sequences are well done, the plot is actually interesting for once, and I rather like having to actually do something to get to the next bit of plot instead of just letting the game take me along. Hmm. From looking the above entry...yeah, I wish I was better at horizontal shooters too.