rionaleonhart | Entries tagged with dark chronicle

Q: Riona, do you really have time to write mini-reviews of every game you've ever played?
A: I absolutely don't.
Q: And yet.
A: And yet!

Some of these are more just reminiscences than reviews, but I've said at least a line or two about every game. Possibly. I've almost certainly forgotten about some.

For the most part these are listed alphabetically, so you can easily track down any games you're interested in, but games in a series are listed together, so, for example, 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, Virtue's Last Reward and Zero Time Dilemma are all under Z for Zero Escape, and World of Final Fantasy comes under F. I've put a (LP) next to games I've only experienced through Let's Plays. Flash games, text adventures and electronic versions of card, tile or board games are not included.

Games I first played after originally posting this entry are marked with an asterisk.

( Thoughts on every game I've ever played, or close enough. )

I'm glad I've put this very important and necessary entry into the waiting world.

Crossposts: https://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/469022.html

Today I woke up to find that Kingdom Hearts III had been announced and that Final Fantasy Versus XIII had been rebranded Final Fantasy XV (here's a trailer) and was coming to the PS4.

I'M EXCITED.

(What I really, really, really want to see in Kingdom Hearts III is the Shibuya of The World Ends With You. I don't know how likely this is - there's never been a Square world in a Kingdom Hearts game, after all, despite the presence of Square characters - but Shibuya was mentioned in Dream Drop Distance, so it definitely exists in the Kingdom Hearts universe!)

And of course there's Lightning Returns coming out in February. Square Enix is going to destroy my bank balance and I'm looking forward to it immensely.

(One thing that does annoy me, though, on the subject of bank balances: the PS4 is to cost almost a hundred pounds more in the United Kingdom than in the United States. That's really quite outrageous. I'm hoping the price will have come down a bit by the time the games I want to play are released, though.)

I'm replaying a bit of Final Fantasy XIII here and there at the moment. I love the way the characters communicate during battle in this game. I love that they'll sometimes address each other directly, or call out to check on someone who's been hurt. It's such a small, charming detail. Sazh saying, 'Thanks, Vanille' when Vanille heals him really makes me smile.

I also smiled when Hope, travelling with Lightning in the Vile Peaks, quietly told himself to calm down. Oh, Hope.

It strikes me as a strange decision to have the party broken up into two groups of two for such a long time. It's good on a story level, allowing the Lightning-Hope and Sazh-Vanille relationships to develop, but the battle system really wasn't designed for fewer than three characters. Not that this is the only time Final Fantasy XIII prioritises story over gameplay, of course.

It's difficult to claim that Final Fantasy XIII is a good game, despite the strength of its battle system - it's a game that actively resents being played and takes every measure it can to minimise the player's input - but it's probably my favourite film. I just adore the way it builds up all these relationships within the party. To me, no other cast in the series felt as strongly bound together.

I've also been replaying Dark Chronicle recently, because apparently I'm in a very videogamey mood. I have my issues with Dark Chronicle - although it's fun and pretty, it's also awfully repetitive and makes me feel a bit empty if I play it for too long - but it's got one of my favourite soundtracks of all time. Just listen to that boss battle theme. Or the Gundorada Workshop music. I nearly linked to six other pieces here, but I'll restrain myself.

Crossposts: http://rionaleonhart.livejournal.com/361270.html

Questions I Can't Believe I Have Genuinely Considered:

- If Pyramid Head had an accident that sent him back in time to when Silent Hill was an active town, who would his DCI be? (Let's set aside the question of how he could possibly have a severe accident if he's more or less invincible.) I'd quite like to see him under the command of Gene Hunt or Greg House. Or, er, Geri Halliwell, just to continue the 'GH' theme. Please do not actually write fanfiction about Pyramid Head working with the Spice Girls.
- If Sherlock Holmes and Watson visited Silent Hill, what would Holmes deduce about the nature of the town? Would he be able to solve the mystery of the disappearance of James and Mary Sunderland? (A while ago,

thebaconfat wrote a beautifully mind-destroying fanfic about Holmes and Watson in Silent Hill. If you haven't already read it, I'd highly recommend it.)
- Why hasn't anyone written about Sherlock Holmes being sent forward to 1973 and meeting Sam Tyler yet?
- Are zombies permanently erect as a result of rigor mortis? (I tried to use this to break the ice on the day of the Canadian Invasion and can now pass down my hard-earned wisdom to you: zombie sex is never a good icebreaker.)
- The Top Gear team meet the protagonists of Withnail and I. Should fluffy-haired commiserating-about-insane-friends James/'I' slash ensue?
- During Oz and James' Big Gay Wine Adventure, James says something along the lines of, "That is the mystical cosmic energy in my penis. Oh, and it's gone off again; it usually does." Oz responds, "Yes, that was about four or five seconds; that's about right for you." HOW DOES HE KNOW? (A related question I genuinely can't believe I've considered is 'Why don't more people write Oz/James?' I mean, I know it's not a terribly attractive pairing, but it's so blatant.)
- "My name is Sam Tyler. I had an accident and I woke up in the eighteenth century." The very confused and out-of-place Tyler finds himself on a pirate ship with Captains Clarkson, Hammond and May, quite possibly the worst pirates the world has ever seen, shortly before they run into and probably eventually reluctantly team up with Captain Jack Sparrow and his crew. Would it be too much to have the Doctor turn up with the intention of sorting out the horrible tangled time-mess and recognise Sam as the Master?
- How is it possible for a programme that has a cyborg punching a pterodactyl to be so rubbish?

(Questions I almost included in the list but didn't because I can definitely believe I've considered them include 'What are Captain Jack Harkness' moral boundaries when it comes to shagging? I'm sure he wouldn't do anything nonconsensual. In my mental canon, he thinks of monogamy as a highly outdated concept, but he's aware that a lot of importance was placed on it in the past; would he have sex with a twentieth-century married human if the husband/wife were unaware?' and 'What the hell is the plot of Dark Chronicle, anyway?')

In entirely unrelated news: if you haven't read

mistful's post-Deathly Hallows fic (I think a second half is forthcoming at some point), do! It has managed to make me not hate the epilogue any more, which makes me very happy indeed. Spoilers, obviously.

( The HBP observation of the update. With no mention of Phineas Nigellus! Apart from this one. )

Anyway, apart from that, it's a videogame-rambling update! Haven't done that in a while.

At the moment, I'm playing Dark Chronicle (Dark Cloud 2), and it is officially one of my favourite games.

You get chased by knife-weilding clowns. There's a car/train-chase sequence with a clown throwing bombs at your train. As I think I've already mentioned, a gorilla-man says the memorable line, "The Holy One is a great fish that has brought happiness to this forest". Said fish is enormous, violently purple and must be fished up using poisonous apples (after which he complains about having a hook stuck in his 'beautiful lips'), and hearts fly out of his eyes when he blinks.

Okay, it's completely insane and the voices are terribly annoying, but it's great fun. You get a camera! You can photograph all sorts of startlingly beautiful places in the game! There are nonsensical minigames (I never, never got the hang of Spheda)! You have to do all manner of convoluted tasks in order to persuade people to travel on your ridiculously flashy train! I am overusing exclamation points! You can build places yourself! The gameplay and upgrade system rock!

Play the game. Play it now.

I'm also playing Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer. SPYRO WAS MY FIRST VIDEOGAME LOVE. SHUT UP.

The original Spyro games were great, but if you're going to buy an Insomniac game, you might want to go for the Ratchet and Clank series. I love Insomniac both for the sheer enjoyability of its games and for its bizarre sense of humour, and nowhere is that more evident than in Ratchet and Clank 3. I've talked about the Qwack-O-Ray before, and nothing will ever top that. Also, what other game companies include a robotic version of Britney Spears singing cheerfully about exterminating all organic life? Fighting with a huge robot on a film set, while in the background the director yells 'cue the giant ninjas!'? A spaceship bridge where you can stand for ages just to listen to the crew arguing with each other? The line "...I don't suppose there's any chance that he's the evil Clank?" Robotic pirate ghosts? Some of it is worthy of eyerolling, but some is sheer brilliance, and they're fantastic games even without the general silliness and parodying pop songs, comics, arcade games, films and pretty much everything else.

Okay, I admit it: I am hooked on Doctor Who. I have, in fact, reached entirely new levels of hookedness with my sudden and entirely unexpected love of Doctor Who. I also wept far more than any sane human being should have at the most recent episode (Father's Day).

You may now mock me.

Also, everyone needs to play Dark Chronicle (Dark Cloud 2 in the US). It has a large gorilla-man saying, "The Holy One is a great fish that has brought happiness to this forest." What more could you want?

Trabia Garden

Entries tagged with dark chronicle

Procrastination Simulator.

You Didn't See That One Coming, And Yet You Did.

You Know I'm Feeling Better When I'm Rambling About Crossovers.

Cue the Giant Ninjas

Don't. Touch. The. Baby.

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