Picture Perfect Paranoia

I know, I know. It’s been a while, huh? Almost a week of no upcoming posts, and here I am kowtowing to the readership for not being on time.

And you might be wondering what the heck I’ve been up to these past couple of days. Well, here. These days, I’ve been going back to my roots. Yes, that’s right, I’ve been immersing myself into games recently. Both have their origins in RPG style, but have different orientations regarding their current incarnations. So what’s that go to do with my inactivity?

Well, they’re both enjoyable, possibly diverting me from my current duty on the Internet as resident anime blogger. Yeah, they’re addictive in a way.

Now, let me talk about my personal take on these games.

First is the Tales of Legendia, for the PS2. Now, any of you who’s been reading Lupus’ post on its battle system, yes, I was one of those guys. So out of curiosity, I decided to try it out.

(In actuality, I buyed the game out of compensation. It was looking for either Ikaruga, a polar-inducing scrolling shooter and Final Fantasy XII, with its possible reincarnation, Final Fantasy XIII, now in development on Japanese shores. Both of them are for the PS2, and are on my wishlist.)

The game itself (ToL for short) gave me a dose of 2D-in-3D RPG nostalgia. I enjoyed Tales of Eternia, for the PS1 before the advent popularity of its 2nd generation relative. The story is equally engaging, as is the diversity of the fighting styles of each cast. I was leaning towards controlling supporting mage-type characters more than the melee ones, and of the latter, I prefer sword-wielding ones. I play as Reid more than as Farah (…oh wait he’s the lead character. Scratch that, lol.) The same reasoning could apply to why I’m playing as Chloe more than as Senel, the lead character in ToL.

One innovation that I liked about the game was the function to jump at will. It doesn’t take a skill to propel your character to jump and attack, because now you have that control with your character’s aerial ability. It was quite a tactical advantage, when your enemies decide to try to box you and your fellow combatants/compatriots into one tight package, so what’s you gonna do? Well, jump and unleash a skill from above that will push them towards the far sides, from where your fellow combatants/compatriots were. Now you have a leeway for a payback, decimating the enemy forces from ever trying to jampack you guys into a small space. Hah. I enjoyed it, by the way.

Another interesting feature is with regards to the puzzle aspects of the game. Pushing block to provide a passageway out of the puzzle region was intectually stimulating, and I enjoyed that one also. I was wondering why the game didn’t have bonus dungeons (ala Cave of Trials from SO2 and Maze of Tribulation from SO3) that have more of these puzzles presented to the player. Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers, right?

For more interesting aspects/features of the game, I expect you to read Lupus’ post regarding this matter.

About the second one, it’s for free, for the PC, and I played it, considering how hopeless enjoyed it, out of curiosity. Right now, I’ve already unlocked, minus the 4 default characters, 13 others (plus 2 thanks to a patch from the main site suggested here). And currently, I’m stuck on how to unlock the rest. I’m estimating that there are 7 others (plus 2 others via the same patch) I haven’t obtained. I guess they’re on Zones C, F, and J, which I’ve been failing to finish due to sheer difficulty (this was when I was playing on Normal difficulty). So, in dedicating my time to try to unlock all the characters in this Utawarerumono fangame, I’ve lost track of time.

So there you have it. I was planning on making this entry longer, but it seems that I’ve run out of things to talk about the game. I’m already wasting every minute in writing this post, while deciding on which character of the Utawarerumono fan game to unlock . Now shush, while I contemplate on what fighting strategy to use.