Level Up! Seize the Experience!

I, unfortunately, am not going to be able to continue my love of RPGs here. I’ve been slammed with a couple of huge freelance writing projects, and between those and caring for my one year old, I’m not going to be able to give my blogs on Today.com the time they deserve.

I’ve had a lot of fun, and I hope I can find time in the future to pick up where I left off.

Thanks for the support!

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.

I can’t have a RPG blog and NOT blog about my RPG of the year on the last day of the year.

I may get a lot of flak for this because there are some RPGs that came out in 2008 that I’ve never played, like Lost Odyssey and Mass Effect. Before you gather your torches and pitchforks, please know that I own both of those games and they are in the queue list to be played. Also please know that this is my game of the year. I’m sure IGN, Gamespot, Nintendo Power, PlayStation the Magazine, Kombo, and GameInformer will all disagree with me. Meh.

My RPG of the year was Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7. Fable II came as a close second, but it was Crisis Core that I couldn’t wait for the baby to take a nap so I could pick it up and play some more missions. It was Crisis Core that made me want to level for the heck of it, because some of the missions were fun, although a ton were outright sadistic. Crisis Core had the story that kept me up at night pondering what it meant. Crisis Core had the spazzy protagonist with a giant sword. (If you knew me, you’d know that I have a thing for the spazzes, not the emos. So no, Cloud will never replace my love for Zack. Oh, I also love swords.) Crisis Core made me cry during the entire ending sequence, and for about thirty minutes afterward. I couldn’t even tell my husband about what happened without choking up. I have never cried while playing a game before, not even when that Lucien bastard shot my dog in Fable II.  And here’s a big kicker for me: I want to play it again. Sure, I’d like to play Fable II again using a different personality, but I want to play this game again to see the exact same wonderful story. Again. Plus, there’s a spell called Hell Thundaga. How could I not love it?

But here is to Zack, and to all of you on this lovely New Year’s Eve. May 2009 be just as much fun to RPG fans!