confidentialmisanthropy

Just finished a brief jaunt down to Saipan. We had a few guys from the Comm Sta' along to fill in for some of our guys that were in school. I pretty much knew within a couple sentences with one of these guys that he was a complete ignoramus, and he very much cemented my opinion of him during the trip down there and back. Other than him, and the smothering heat of the Marianas, it wasn't too bad, though I'm glad it's done, and I'm in no hurry to ever go back there.

I've been burrying myself in a couple of Intelligent Sytems' latest portable offerings; Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones and Famicom Wars DS. Both of them are pretty long running series dating back to the Famicom era. When a series has been around that long, it's difficult to improve it, persay. When you've honed gameplay as simple as that found in the Wars and Fire Emblem games, you simply don't mess with it. The more I look at the quite fugly Fire Emblem: Souen no Kiseki, the more I wish they'd just stuck to GBA, or DS for that matter. It's not so much the aesthetic change that comes with polygons, the game is just better suited for a portable format. I can't take my Gamecube to the shitter either (I get +1 strategic foresight on the can, seriously). Despite the underwhelming graphics, they did bump up the production values a bit which the series could use a bit of. (Sacred Stones' webpage has more production values than the game itself.) If they were so intent on putting it on the 'cube though, I'd have preferred they kept the game in two-dimensions. I doesn't play any differently but the art direction in FE is damn good, and the polygons take away from it. There's FMV cutscenes throughout the game and even some voice-acting. I'm waiting on the English language iteration of it, however. FE games are notoriously Kanji heavy, and I'm nowhere near that adept at Japanese yet.

As much as I'm digging Sacred Stones, I have to say the previous game in the series (my maiden voyage into Fire Emblem) didn't really do it for me. I found the game pretty infuriating. It's not like other strategy games where you have "expendable", nameless units that you can non-chalantly send to certain doom. Every character in FE has a story. They have emotions. And they apologize when they die. It fucks with me on so many levels, so... no one dies. A bit of sanity is the price you pay for perfection. Makes for some seriously nail-biting scenarios, especially when I have to rely on longshots, but therein lies the beauty of the game. It's a stern teacher. If I leave myself open, my foes kindly hand me my ass. And I love them for it (after cursing myself under my breath, or at the top of my lungs). I don't quit. I power off my GBA, take a deep breath, and go back in and get even. I'm really considering giving Rekka No Ken another shot after I wrap this one up.