Wednesday, April 29, 2009

My Review of Tales of the Abyss

I have to say that, even though it's a game, and this could get really sad, Tales of the Abyss has had a huge impact on how I see the world. Mainly this reacurring sentence and story theme "Do what you can." I have adopted this as my personal motto. It's the nerdiest thing somebody can do, but I realize it had also once been my motto before for a brief period, after my basement began to flood. I actually used the sentence "Nothing get's done if you don't do it." I just felt like a country bumpkin using that, so I stopped, and now I use this phrase almost daily as advice. Almost all of the time in highschool with all of the drama, and such, people constantly lose hope, or don't know what to do, so my advice is, and most likely always will be "Do what you can." It's the slap everybody needs to get back on their feet.

Actually that "slap" is precisely one of my favorite features of the game. See, the Tales series to me is like an interactive story book, sorry to steal a word of yours John, but it is. You don't play to make headshots, or fool around for a bit, the entire game is focused around getting the characters where they need to go, and seeing what happens next. Of course, you can go wherever the hell you want once you get a plane. More on the plane later. But you can also run around doing other little missions for people, or maybe just explore, but that's straying from the point. See the interactive story thing is normal in most JRPGs (Japanese role playing games) and most of the time you have a self wallowing hero, or some other people regretting their past. In this game, that ain't an option. All emo moments are removed by either insanity or all too quick slaps to the face, both literally and figuratively. This makes me happy, because A) Insane characters are interesting, or amazingly cool. B) I hate emos, and emo moments. Grief can bleed to death in a ditch, it bores me to hell. Partially why some of Buffy the Vampire slayer is a failure. Nyeh nyeh nyeh! Straying from the point! I guess some of this is because pretty much every one of the characters has military ties, the other ones are slapped, slap, slap, slap! I'm a slap happy guy. Also Guy a main character, is immune to emo, because he's just cool like that.

Another reason to love this game is the characters themselves! There's Luke, protaganist, and for the first part of the game, the biggest ass hole the world will know, but he becomes the hopeful emo later.(Not really) He is also heir to the throne of a one of the three nations in the game. Tear, the female lead, is this mysterious girl who comes in randomly to kill Luke's teacher, and not too far along you find out that his teacher is her brother. She is generally cold, and acts like she cares about nothing but stopping her brother. Jade Curtiss, god among men. He is the most childish annoying and greatest man to ever enter my knoledge of pop culture. He is 30 years old, and a lot of the time acts like he's 7, and the mean big brother to all! He is rarely seen mad at something, otherwise he purposely over acts enthusiasm. For anybody in the +Anima rp, he might sound farmiliar, that's because my own Jade character has his style based off of Jade Curtiss. Guy Cesile, and later known as Gailardia Guardios. He is a pretty cool character, and is best friends with Luke. He's the guy who is pretty much always happy, with the exception of his irrational fear of physical contact of any kind with girls, but charms the ladies so easily it's like snapping his fingers. He is generally mature, and throught the game has view debates with Jade, them both being the wisest of the group. Anise, I won't even get into her career, because I don't want to explain that much plot. Basically, she is the 12 or 13 year old guardian of a world leader of roughly the same age. Probably the most proposterous parts of the plot. Anyways, she is a money chaser, constantly seeking rich men to marry, you can imagine what she see's in heir to the throne Luke. But she's only got the truest of intentions at heart. To cap off our characters is Natallia, the princess of Luke's nation. Also Luke's fiancee. Don't worry, Luke is a Duke, not related... Although Luke's mother is the king's sister, so they are cousins. I bet you thought that Luke would end up with Tear, didn't you? There isn't much to Natallia, because she comes late enough in the game that if I go too much further, we enter spoiler land. Anyways, she seems arrogant at first, but she is caring, and passionate, loyal patriotic, and charitable. Okay, maybe there is stuff to her, but I think I broke spoiler point a bit.

Besides that there is HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE variety of characters, including the six god generals, each of which being the nemisis of one of the main characters. Funny thing is, one of the generals is named Major Legretta, anybody want to cover that? Other than Legretta, who is Tear's nemesis, you have Asch, Luke's, Sync, Guy's, Dist, Jade's, Largo, Natallia's, and Arietta, Anise's. But I won't go much farther there.

I think I'm done for now, I might continue this.
___

Alright, since there was some interest in this I've provided the opening cinematics to the game, so you can get visual aids for this.

Red hair in white is Luke. Dark brown clothes, and light brown hair is Tear. Jade is the guy with glasses long brownish hair, and in green, he also pulls out a spear. Guy is the blondie with the yellowish orange vest. Natallia is the blond haired girl in the blue with the bow. Anise is short with black hair and has a giant teddy thing. Other and that, Van is the guy with the same color hair as tear and in the navy blue shirt, he's Luke's teacher. And finally, Asch is the orange haired guy in black.

OH! And the cuddly bunny thing is Mieu, the highly abused pet.

OK, so anyways, I think it's time to move onto game play. There are some things that I think should be considered flaws, but really I don't mind. One of them is the amount of time you need to spend going from place to place. This is really only later in the game though. Early in the game, when you're sent somewhere, you'll need to walk to that place, and something significant happens. But once you get the AlbioreII, a plane, you can go anywhere really quickly, flying the plane, one of the highlights of the game for me. It's so fun to fly over the entire world. :) Sorry, I like flying in games, one of my more favored activities. So yeah the flying is a plus, but the problem is, is that you go to places a lot more often and nothing happens. Like eventless places. In fact there is a chunk of the game where you won't be in any dungeons, or fighting any monsters or anything, just flying from one place to another, and as much as I tried to be annoyed with it, I really didn't mind.

Another thing that slows down game time, is skits. They are annoying, because they normally come in strings after an event. But they are optional, so I can't really complain. And as much as I hate it, I love skits. They are little most of the time, pointless conversations between characters, showing personal views, or just having fun. It really helps you love the characters more. But when you're in a volcano and you get a string of them, you think "Ugh another one!" but you always end up watching the skit because you don't want to miss the funny conversations.

And finally, the battle system. The Tales series has the best battle system ever. Tales of the Abyss keeps this battle systeme, but they add in a bunch of tedious things that I never needed before, that just makes battle complicated. Basically, you are in a circular battle field, with you and three team mates. You battle the enemies you're up against, normally starting with the closest one. Like, say I have a lizard in front of a wolf, I'll attack the lizard, because it the game chose the one closest to me. I can change my opponent, and even set my team mates to all attack the same guy. Other than that, you move on a line from your opponent, but you can always hold down the free run button to run around the battlefield the way you want. A lot of people say "Oh it's all just button mashing, you don't need any skill" but those are also the people who will end up dying. Which is actually a lot harder in this game than most of them. You really need to learn to know when to attack, dodge, block, run away, use items, I even needed to change all of my moves for a boss, because I had a fraction of a second of vunerability while using them. So you also need to know what moves to equip and when! Not only that, but they through in several different features too, like, now you're ememies can sneak up on you, and certain moves leave energy fields, that if used correctly can give you a special move, but only with certain moves, and overlimit, which allows you to not flinch when attacked but only after you beat something up enough, and capacity cores that enhance your abilities, but you need to be able to read a chart to determine how to use them. Plus your AD skills, which I still have no idea what they are, but that they help me somehow. And your special move called a Mystic Arte, and it took me a whole chunk of time to learn how to use it, and it apparently goes into overlimit, but you can only use it while preforming certain moves. And you need to keep track of your twenty or so different kinds of stats. It's frustrating all of the stuff you need to remember for just one section of the game. But the thing is, you don't need to remember it. You can go on through the entire game by being ignorant to it. I boiled down my equipment buying to if it costs more, it's better, and capacity cores all have names, so I just chose the ones that sounded farmiliar to my origional ones, and I just ignored my AD skills. So all in all, you don't need any of that extra stuff.

And then there is Mieu. He becomes a character early on, and his only purpose besides being cute, is that you can use him in dungeons to advance. You get many powers to use outside of battle for them, but I made it through the game with two. The ability to tackle things to destroy them or make them drop treasure, and the ability to shoot fireballs. Those are all you need for the entire game, both of which you are just given. Apparently there is the ability to fly, and shoot gusts, and there are probably three others, but you only need the those two. Mieu fire, and Mieu attack.

Overall, it's flaw is that some of it was overdone. But it makes up for that by just being fun in general, and an amazing cast of characters, plus a brilliant storyline, and great philosophy. It's made it to my list of favorite games. It's a really great story.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Fair and Square

Random quote by me.

The people who say life isn't fair, are the people who don't want to give people a fair chance.

Over and out!

Nathaniel.

Oh hey! See my new sign off phrase! Yeah, yeah you did.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

I need to get more creative, or something.

I'm thinking of updating pictures and such, but I need a story to occupy my time. I was thinking of getting back to Silver, since people seemed to like the idea, but I'm not sure. I have several ideas actually.

Vendetta

Astrologists

And there was totally another one, but it was either a fan thing, or I ripped it off of something, which sums up the majority of my rejected ideas. The fan stuff might make it to rps though. Alright, I'll explain both ideas.

Vendetta was spawned from me really liking the word, and so I searched it. My results were an Italian right to kill one who killed your friend or family in a fair fight. This was of course around Shakespear time, and Vedetta actually took effect in Romeo and Juliet, when Tybsy kills Merc Cutio. Sorry, I make up my own names for the characters. So Romeo kills the radio star... I mean Tybalt. (Obscure eighties music reference away!) So my idea was that it's the story of a kid who has his home attacked by a feuding family, so he takes the right of Vendetta on them, but takes it to the extreme by hiring mercenaries to surround the other family's house so he can go kill the people who killed his family. Mainly a horror story, and it will not be told from the point of view of the kid, who will be like 16, and was married, settin' the time there, and his wife was killed as well as his family, and possibly friends. It will most likely be told from the point of view of the daughter of the house who is being murdered, and is running around their mansion with her douche of a fiancee. Needless to say, that both will probably die. So after all that, it might just be about a feud, because that is the other meaning of the word. Oh, and that isn't the official plot, but it's the one I'm leaning towards. Sorry I just want to have a story with the word Vendetta as a title.

Then Astrologists, name is not complete, is about an alternate history, or similar history, that is basically the same, with the exception that arts known as astrology are like magic. The magic uses stars and patterns and such to be able to shoot fire balls out of your bare hands, or other similar things, like laser blasting the crap out of somebody. Of course they are all based on actual astrology, like the chinese astrology involving the five elements of Fire Water Earth Wood and Metal. This will probably be called eastern astrology at some point, because I can't seem to find a form of astrology that fits the bill quite as well for Asia. I just need a good historical war or probably just make one up. Anywho, those are the two of them.

I found a huge rp that takes up an entire forum. You can buy ninja stars on the forum. I don't know if they are for flame wars or something, but it's pretty odd. Anyways, if you want to try it out, it's in the makings, I'll need to find the adress, but it's fantasy stuff, so yeah, check it out.

Other than that... I found my cell phone, yay!

Keep on rocking!

Nathaniel.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

A long awaited update on my life.

In the time since my last update, I found a perfect girl friend, other stuff far less significant than Carls happened, and now I'm having a home coming. St.John's is awesome! And my time in it is a little less so. Not that I've had a bad time, it's just that all the amazing times are ruined by whenever I meet somebody I used to know, I always get asked "So is your family here?" or "Where's your family?" or anything along those lines. Which pisses me off, because it's like saying, "Hello person who is close to much more important people, where are these people? Oh, it is only you. Now you depress me with your presence." I hate that. In fact, one of my relatives specifically asked for my brother, who is in freaking france. I mean, you know how offended I am!? I'm Nathaniel John Issac fucking Leon! I spent like fifteen years of my life (for family) with you, and you can't even pretend that having me visit alone is at least a little exciting! So after all that, I got to help my baby cousins with their easter egg hunt. They are so cute! And I love punching them!... With a sockum bopper... onto pillows... to be fair they love it. The younger of the two is actually better behaved than the older one. She's a little trouble maker. And one of the best parts is that they love to hug.And now I have spent much of my days killing zombies, or aliens at friends houses.

KEEP ON ROCKING! (Y'all.)

A quick summary of the rest of the Silver series.

Alright, I have had a lot of comments on this. I think the story for Silver was pretty good, but I just don't feel into the story anymore. Kind of lost intrest when I fell for Carls. Still, it's a sacrafice I was more than willing to make. I didn't know how to continue, and I wasn't quite depressed enough to write my depressing story. Long story short, gang of werewolves, gang of vampires. Shit happens, they find out how they are made, in certain cases of death, if you are deemed worthy, you turn into one of them. I also didn't have any plans for the second chapter besides walk around being a depressing prick, who finds a little girl, who later on turns out to be a reletive of his past life. Bladdy bla, the obvious fore shadowing in the start shows that a vampire buddy takes him away from the wolves who betray him or some crap, he starts staying with an old werewolf, studying something under him, then there was probably going to be a sequal called Blood, where it continues fromt the point of view of the Vampire who helped him, who is also somewhat depressing, and meets a girl who falls in love with him or something. Once again pasts come up, girl finds out vamp boy was her arranged fiancee past life style, she also finds out how to become a vampire, takes her chances and kills herself. Boy finds out he loved her, then she's reborn a werewolf, under the name Ash, (pheonix, hint hint.) he becomes even more depressing, while a PI gets on the trail of the gangs. Viewpoint switches to the PI, and the third part of the series, Fire starts, I belive. After that everything goes to a flaming pile of ass, where the first protaganist ends up defeating an old foe, with magic daggers, or something, and then the old werewolf's old buddy comes up, then stuff happens, and they all, either die, or live happily ever after, I haven't decided.