#93 – Final Fantasy

Like many long-time gamers, I grew up with a Final Fantasy game – in my case it was VIII, although VII was my first. I didn’t get to play the earlier titles until the re-releases on the PSP/DS…Dawn of Souls was extremely expensive back in the day. It’s still expensive now, come to think of it. Although I believe I have a (possibly bootlegged) copy lurking somewhere.

Anyway, this is Part #1 of my play through/replay of every Final Fantasy game! Or most of them. I’ll probably skip After Years. And IX. Definitely don’t want to play IX again. There are also quite a few I don’t own, and…eh, let’s see where this goes.

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#92 – Resident Evil 0 HD

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Resident Evil is one of those series I have always intended to get into, but just…never have. I’ve played the REmake on the Gamecube (back when it first came out in…2002, bloody hell!) and I’ve also played Resi 4 and 5, but after 5 I kinda lost interest. Completely.

So this is Part 1 of my insane quest to play through all the main series titles. In no way prompted by a 9ft 6in tall vampire woman. Nope. Stop looking at me like that!

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#91 – Sonic Advance

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Many people around my age grew up with a SNES. I grew up with a Megadrive, and I have been a Sonic fan for most of my life – through the glorious 16-bit days, the passable jump to 3D with ~~3D Blas~~t the first two Adventure games, the thoroughly cringeworthy period of the mid-to-late 2000s, and to the present day where Sonic still hasn’t really found his niche but does a pretty damn good job at putting out a good game when effort is put into it, and into being painfully self-aware. If you haven’t watched the Sonic Boom cartoon, you really should. The comics have remained consistently brilliant, too.

I bought this off eBay a few years ago and I can’t remember if I ever actually finished it before now, though.

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#90 – Langrisser II

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OK, so I really enjoyed Langrisser I. Way more than I thought I was going to. It is, to my memory, the only SRPG I have ever played that has had meaningful choices that lead to branching pathways in the narrative. It’s definitely something special and I lament that it’s not a more popular series…although considering what popularity has done to Fire Emblem, not too much.

Anyway, rather than play Atelier Ryza like I was supposed to, I thought it a good time to boot this up again!

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#89 – Umineko No Naku Koro Ni – Episode 2: Turn of the Golden Witch

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So this took me a little longer than I had anticipated, but that was primarily because I was completely absorbed in Langrisser II, and I tend to only read in the early morning and late evening.

I’m quite wary about writing my thoughts about this here, because I imagine this won’t age well as I read more and my preconceptions are shattered. But oh well, here we go!

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#88 – Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA Mega Mix

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Story time! So back in 2014, my wisdom teeth started coming through, and one got infected…I have never been in more pain in my life, and hope never to be in as much pain again. To cheer myself up one day – or at least take my mind off the stabbing pain in my entire head as it radiated out from my upper left tooth – I decided to buy myself a game. I bought Project Diva f on the Vita, since it was on sale…little did I know that would be the start of a low-key addiction to Vocaloid that has persisted since then.

So of course I was going to buy the Switch game!

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#87 – Grimvalor

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I remember my first experience with a Metroidvania some 20 years (!!!) ago now, which was Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. I was young, still ignorant of the many genres of video games out there, and thoroughly carried away with my own perceived skill as a gamer. That game was probably my first (very painful) lesson that I am really not half as good as I like to think I am sometimes. Considering the hell that game put me through, it’s a wonder I like this genre half as much as I do.

But I keep coming back for more. So, here’s Grimvalor, another one.

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#86 – Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line

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OK, deep breaths, Dawn…deep breaths. It’s all over now. You never even have to look at this game again. Keep calm. Pick up something fun. Forget this ever happened. In fact, don’t even write an entry for this. Off you go.

…but if I didn’t write an entry, I wouldn’t get the chance to tell my non-existent audience how fucking terrible this is. Which is something I NEED to do, because I probably have an unwritten, unspoken duty to warn people away from this game.

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#85 – Umineko No Naku Koro Ni – Episode 1: Legend of the Golden Witch

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When I finished Higurashi last year it was with a weird mixture of satisfaction and relief. I’m not a huge fan of repetition or stereotypical anime high school settings – seen one, seen them all, etc. – but despite that, on the whole I found it to be a very enjoyable read! Maybe not the critically acclaimed epic that it often seems to be treated as, but I’ve read worse VNs than this…and something that I actually feel motivated to stick with for nearly 100 hours has to have SOMETHING going for it, right?

Enough time has passed that I’ve hopefully overcome my long VN fatigue, so it’s a good time to dive into this!

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#84 – The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

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I’ve been on a lot of message boards and the like, and I am just about the only person I know who grew up with Link’s Awakening on the Gameboy. I never owned a SNES – I was firmly in the Megadrive camp – and I didn’t play Ocarina of Time until the Gamecube was just about to come out, so my experience with Zelda was very limited outside of this and later the Oracle titles until much later in life.

So, you can imagine my reaction when they revealed this.

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