First thing to mention today, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I’m working on a new little side project for this summer. The, uh, “field research” is going quite well, and it should be ready to launch on the first of July. I’m thinking that since it’s a wannabe-professional writing project that I should probably hire an editor, but we’ll see how it goes. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not. We’ll see come the end of the summer.
Also, how great is Link’s Awakening DX? I think it’s pretty awesome, though it is probably the single most obvious piece of evidence that I’m not nearly as patient with my games as I used to be. See, right at the beginning of the game, you can buy a bow from the shop. But it’s 980(?) rupees, which is way more than you can afford at the outset of the quest. But there is a crane minigame that, for the cost of 10 rupees and a little professional insight, you can grind and have that money much faster than you’d acquire it normally. Each play costs 10 rupees and there are two thirty-rupee prizes, so you have a net gain of 40 rupees a run, which means it takes 25 rounds to secure the necessary funds. It takes roughly a minute to grab both rupee prizes, which doesn’t sound so bad, but who wants to grind a crane game for half an hour? So for the first time ever, I’m skipping the bow for now. I’ll wait to come back once I’ve got the cash or the need for the weapon. I seem to remember having more rupees than I’d ever need by the third dungeon, and I don’t recall the bow ever being required to advance. As far as I can remember it’s more of a convenience, which is a far cry from modern Zelda games that have you use it all the time.
Lastly, where my recent Final Fantasy addiction is involved, I think I need to take a break from Dissidia and focus on Final Fantasy XIII. The game (Dissidia, that is) informs me that I’ve played it for forty-something days in a row now. That’s great and all, but at this point I’m mostly just grinding up my characters so that they’re overpowered when I start up Dissidia 012. FFXIII, on the other hand, I am crazy about and need to spend more time with. Over the last few weeks I’ve been powering my way through the “slow” part to the game, but it’s been slow going, getting in maybe one play session a week that lasts more than an hour. I really have no qualms with what I’ve played so far though. Yes, it’s running through enemy-filled hallways to the next cutscene, but I like it that way! Plus, the battles are dynamic enough that I don’t care if I’m just mashing the auto-battle command over and over. Not to mention that the game rewards you for ending battles as quickly as possible, and I love that the game doesn’t keep an average of your battle results. I would hate to open my menu and see a less-than perfect four-star rating there every time, spitting on my pride. Really, I could talk about FFXIII all day long, but this post is long enough already and I’ll save it for another time.