Level Up! Seize the Experience!

A friend recently asked me for advice on how to find time to play RPGs. He’s tired of FPSes and other genres, and he really wants to get back into the world of the RPG, but like so many of us, he no longer has as much time to devote to 70 hours of gameplay. Not to mention that unless you have at least two hours to devote to playing a RPG, you’re kind of wasting your time.

I haven’t answered him yet, because I’m no expert on this. It’s been close to ten days since I’ve played Lost Odyssey, because my husband was out of town for over a week and I couldn’t find time and awakeness to play the game after entertaining a baby all day. I played Phantom Hourglass when I could, because at least with the DS, I can just close the case when needed and walk away for a few hours.

I’ve been playing a lot of RPGs lately, but playing Lost Odyssey and Final Fantasy VII is the first time that I’ve even attempted a turn-based RPG since Gabriel was born. What RPGs have I played and completed since that fateful day? Let’s see… Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, Kingdom Hearts 2, and The World Ends with You. Do you see a pattern? These are all action-RPGs. It was very easy to find time to play these games at night because none of the battles took very long. Crisis Core became my ultimate naptime game, because I could finish two or three missions during a short nap.

My original goal was to complete both Lost Odyssey and Final Fantasy VII by the end of March. I was alternating weeks of playing them, playing each one for two to three hours a night, and things were running smoothly until reality set in. My husband would go out of town. We met with friends at night. Our son started teething. You know. Things. As mid-March approached, I abandoned my goal and focused on Lost Odyssey, to finish it by the end of March. Well, thanks to real life once more, my goal has been extended to the end of April. My goal for FF7 is to finish it by September, since I have so many other CURRENT games I need to finish.

So, all I can say is that I do my best. I try to play two to three hours a night when my husband takes over parenting duties. Will I find time to do all optional bosses and find all treasures? Well, I always try, but I give up quickly too. I just don’t have as much time to devote to RPGs as I used to, which may not do them justice, but the way I see it, if I like the game enough, I’ll go back and replay it and it’s usually then that I strive to complete all the extras.

Word has it that the entire story of Final Fantasy XIII is complete along with 80% of the graphics. The development team’s current task is to refine the battle system. This means that more than likely the trailers littered across the internet are from older schematics, and so the graphic levels and gameplay are far more advanced than what we have seen so far.

This makes me happy for two reasons. One, it looks like the game will actually be on schedule. Japan will definitely receive the game this fall or early winter, and that will ensure that the US gets the release in spring of 2010 as currently predicted. At least, it’s supposed to ensure that, but we all know how these things go, unfortunately. I’m also ecstatic about this news, because it looks like we’ll be in for a real treat graphics-wise. I was already frothing about the graphics from the trailers released earlier this year, but if those are from older builds, then I can’t wait to see the high levels of detail and gorgeous Final Fantasy graphics we’ve come to expect and love.

I’m still disappointed that it’s not coming out this year in the United States, but I also need to let that go.

I wasn’t sure I was even going to look for this soundtrack, because a lot of the music was so-so and I really disliked the music picked for the non-boss battles. But over time, I became entranced by a few songs and I found the beauty in the scores I found annoying, so I searched for the CD set and found it relatively cheap on eBay. I am so glad that I didn’t pay very much for the CD set.A few pieces are beautiful and will evoke memories of playing, especially the music from Kaim’s memories. However, a lot of the music has an annoying video game sound, like it’s off of a Legend of Zelda soundtrack or a soundtrack from the early PSOne days. Kingdom Hearts 2, even with its mini-game music and songs from The Little Mermaid, has a more mature, symphonic sound. I found myself skipping through many of the tracks, because if I wanted to listen to those types of tones, I’d play Space Invaders.

I doubt I’ll ever listen to both CDs straight through again. I’ll most likely create a favorite playlist on my iPod and play only those pieces. I don’t regret purchasing the set, but it’s not one I can really recommend in whole, either.

NIS America recently announced that Cross Edge is coming over to America this May. It’s going to be a conglomeration of characters from NIS, Capcom, Namco, and other developers in one new RPG. You can read more about it here .

At first, I was excited to hear the news. One of my wishes for 2009 was for more RPGs for the PS3, so it looked like my wish was on the verge of fulfillment. Then I found gameplay videos on YouTube. My excitement depleted faster than it arrived. The gameplay appears to be identical to Disgaea, and well hey, a few characters from Disgaea are on the roster so Disgaea fans should be very happy indeed. The graphics are also straight out of Disgaea, which is once again great for Disgaea fans, but that’s a joke for a platform as powerful as the PS3. These graphics belong on the Nintendo DS or a PlayStation 2, but not on the PlayStation 3.

At the very least, bring us the graphical content similar to Tales of Vesperia or Eternal Sonata. That’s not asking too much.

So I guess I’ll keep playing my Xbox (when I get a chance… I’m really missing playing games!) and Nintendo DS until Final Fantasy XIII comes out NEXT YEAR.

My stack of RPGs to play and finish is quite tall, but sad to say, none of them were released in 2009. I have a couple of RPG wishlists that came out earlier this year — Tales of Vesperia and Avalon Code — but that is it. Not much is on the RPG horizon for 2009 either. Final Fantasy XIII was pushed back (for the US) to 2010, Star Ocean: The Last Hope just came out but I’m not that interested, and Arc Rise Fantasia comes out later this year. The DS has plenty of other RPGs on the calendar, but I’m looking for non-handheld games to satisfy my needs.

A gaming friend of mine pointed out recently that first-person shooters have become the new IN genre. That suddenly brought everything into perspective. What has been out recently of critical acclaim? Let’s see… Dead Space, Left 4 Dead, Gears of War 2, Killzone 2, Chronicles of Riddick, FEAR 2, Halo 3, Resident Evil 5, HAWX, and Wanted: Weapons of Fate. That’s quite the laundry list. Just look at the PS3’s and Xbox 360’s list of RPGs v. FPSes. Xbox’s catalogue is 15 pages for FPSes, and 3 pages for RPGs. For the PS3, it’s 2 pages to 1.

So this could be good for me, in that it will give me plenty of time to catch up on my long list, but at the same time, when I do catch up, I’ll be watching my husband play on the big screen TV and I’ll be wondering if FF13 will actually be released. It also means I’ll have less to write about in the future, except for DS RPGs. Apparently I can count on Nintendo for that, if nothing else.

When you get close to the end of a RPG, you usually have options as what to do next. You can continue to follow the story, go on some sidequests, go back and treasure hunt, or travel back and forth encountering needless battles for the sake of leveling up. This is usually the point in the game that players get burned out and just want to wrap up the story so they can move on to something else.

I often wonder why so many sidequests are put near the end of the game. I know that the main purpose is to help players level up for the final boss, but why not sprinkle the sidequests throughout the gameplay? Would it disrupt the story THAT much? It would personally help my cases of burn out.

I’m at that point with Lost Odyssey. I’ve chosen to go through the sidequests, treasure hunt, level up, and retrieve any lost dreams that I missed. Some of it I’m doing for my own curiosity, some for my personal feeling of accomplishment, some to make the road ahead a little easier, and some for those damn Achievements. I’m having a difficult time with not ending up bored with some things. I think I’m going to have intersperse my gameplay with another non-RPG game, or maybe drink a few cafe mochas before playing.

To me, sidequests are always found during the main quest. You happen to talk to a random NPC in a town right in front of a dungeon, and he asks you for a favor. You deliver something to someone. You take care of some monsters ruining his trade route. You plant some endangered trees in the far corners of the world. You get the idea. No matter what the sidequest is, it’s found along SIDE of the main quest.

And unfortunately, because I think this, I never think of trekking out on my own to simply find sidequests. So many RPGs implement this idea, so you’d think I would figure it out by now, but I never do.

I reached the fourth disc of Lost Odyssey, and we’re on a ship about to explore the Overworld. I distinctly remember the ship tutorial saying how to “warp” to the closest ports, but all I can think of is how to get to the land-locked lake Ming mentioned. I don’t think about going back to Uhra, because Tolten and Sed are both in my party and they’re both wanted men. Seth may be as well because she freed Sed. I should have thought about going back to Gohtza since I already had a letter to deliver there, but I didn’t. I plunged my ship all over the ocean trying to find the passage to the hidden lake. Instead I found a secret cave. A secret cave with a sidequest all of its own. I flipped open the guide to make sure that I didn’t skip ahead in the main story to find out that this is one of the many sidequests you can uncover before heading to the hidden lake.

So wait… I can go back to Uhra? Doh! I should have known to go back to Gohtza! Look at all of these things I can do! Idiot! I knew I needed to traverse back to a few places to open up the Royal Seals now that I have Tolten. I was just thinking about that the other day!

I’m not sure why I never think about hunting for sidequests, especially when the game has an Overworld feature. That should be my first clue that I’m supposed to hunt for them. My second clue is when I’m forced out into the Overworld.

Surely I’ll get this. You would think that I play enough RPGs to get it, but I seem to have a mental block. Here’s hoping.

Thanks to my nonstop harping about this fabulous RPG in IM and in the Twitter-realm, I have convinced two people to purchase the game and give it a chance. One did so about a month ago, and he’s already caught up to me. (That says one of two things: I’m slow and I blame Final Fantasy 7 for that or he has no life and he’s played it nonstop. I believe it’s a combination of the two.) Another one of my friends informed me on YIM that he bought the game yesterday.

What does this mean? It means that the game is awesome, and all RPG fans with a Xbox 360 should also follow suit.

It also means that my powers of persuasion are just as awesome. Microsoft Game Studios should pay me a commission for PR.

I actually had this thought over the weekend. I then shared said thought with a fellow Final Fantasy fan, who said, “It’s called Ehrgeiz.” And lo and behold, there is one. I was so excited that maybe I had a viable idea for the gaming industry. Turns out it was a good idea. It was such a good idea that someone went ahead and created the game. I read on Wikipedia that the PlayStation Network has the game available for download and purchase. I immediately switched on my console and hunted for the game, but I couldn’t find it. Further digging through the internet revealed that the game was released on Japan PSN only. Wikipedia could really use an edit, or at least a clarification.

So I have the game sitting in my Amazon wishlist. I’ll have to check it out, especially since I saw you can play as Zack. You can always hook, line, and sink me with that promise.

However, I did notice that the game was created back in 1998. There have been a few Final Fantasy games since then, so how about an update? Add in FFX, FFXII, some characters from the upcoming FFXIII, and of course, Crisis Core. Maybe I should write Squenix an e-mail…

It’s usually the length of time it takes to complete a RPG that deters gamers from playing the game again. So many try to obtain everything the first time around: chests, spells, skills, items, limit breaks, whatever. That’s usually my goal as well when I play a game for the first time, but after a few hours, I focus on learning the gameplay and getting through the story over obtaining every item. When I come back for a second go around, I should know where to go and the layout of the land, so finding every item, learning every spell, and obtaining every limit break (if it’s a FF game) becomes a priority. For example, maybe the second time I play Kingdom Hearts 2 I’ll actually make a real attempt at completing Jiminy’s Journal.

Since I have a huge stack of games at well, all times, I really wanted to learn every skill, find all the chests, and unlock every dream my first time playing Lost Odyssey. Who knows when I’ll find the time to pick it up again. If I continue to write about games, I may never be able to. But there have been times when I haven’t explored the areas as much as I’ve should, and I know I’m not going to come close to finding every Seed since I goofed off too much in the beginning and missed a bunch. Not only that, but I didn’t fully grasp the notion of learning skills in the beginning, so I’m really behind on learning skills from the mortals. Just when I think I’m catching up, they all learn five more. Not to mention the fact that I keep finding new accessories to learn skills from. I started that too late as well.

Well, lessons learned for next time, right? Maybe? If there is a next time?

Sigh.