Whacha playing?

Oh! I'm on Steam if anyone ever wants to add me, go right ahead! Username is "This is Allec"

I'm in the middle of Dragon Age: Origins (as part of a run-up to Inquisition, which I haven't even bought yet). I've also been doing a lot of Minecraft (PS4 version). I finally got to the Nether for the first time (in a single-player game, at least) the other day, and am now preparing to do SO MUCH DECORATING in my house with the materials I brought back.

I started playing Dishonored, but something happened before I was able to finish it and I got distracted. It was tons of fun, though. I love games that require you to be stealthy and careful. Tomb Raider is kind of the same for me, actually (EDIT: In the sense that I started playing it, then something came up and I never got the chance to finish). I loved the new direction they went with this reboot, though.

Oh and I'm also about due for another play-through of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It's an old game now, but it's still my favorite. I tend to play it about once a year. I've got a lot of it memorized at this point.

I started playing FF7 a few days back. I first played it when I was about six, so it left some pretty heavy impressions on me. I was used to my games being things like Dragon Quest 4 on the NES. And at the most advanced was Lunar 1 and 2 for the Sega CD. If you compare the Sega CD versions of those two games to their Complete versions you will see just how dated the originals are.

So FF7 was some amazing shit to my six year old mind.

Over the years though I came to look back on it and saw something that was not really what I remembered it being and certainly not THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME. It's a flawed mess of a thing even looking past the graphics (which I have a fondness for really and I was sad when they had the same models for maps and battles in 8 and 9). There's something very awkward in how the game makes its shift from Midgar to the Sephiroth chase. It happens very abruptly and I don't feel that we have enough on Sephiroth and why he's important to really make this change in motivation feel natural. It just seems to me like we were all "ECOTERRORISM FUCK YEAH" and then it's "We have to find Sephiroth to save the planet". Why? I dunno. We just. Have to. This is our purpose now.

Also there's some issues with direction I think? There are times where I feel that there's no real reason I am going places. I am just moving to the next dot on the minimap because that is how you progress. Sometimes there are noted reasons as to why you're heading places. But other times it just feels like I am going there because there is nowhere else to go. Which when the drive of the game at that point is FIND SEPHIROTH AND UNRAVEL THE MYSTERY THAT IS HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH CLOUD it just feels weird that there are points where you just seem to be randomly dicking around.

I will say that I do feel it did better and balancing out the importance of its cast though. While people go on and on about how wonderful 6 is at ensemble I feel that it's kind of. Not really all there? Some of the characters get more weight than others in my opinion. Terra and Locke for example, and Celes in the second half of the game. I can't remember shit about Relm and I've played the game numerous times. I just know that she paints and is the source of the cool glitches. FF7 though seems to balance that all better. I don't feel that Berret's story moments outweighed the importance of Red XIII's. Cloud, Aerith, Tifa, and Sephiroth are definitely the big name players of that game in many respects but I don't feel like Cid is just some unimportant asshole that I picked up and then forgot about.

Also I appreciate how little frustration there is in playing it. I love the various Atlus games I've played greatly but few things have pissed me off as much as they have game wise. Just. Fuck those games. All of them. FF7 is relatively smooth though. Which is nice. It is "too easy" I suppose but eh. Sometimes I just want to beat the ever living shit out of all in path without having to grind or find out the right combination of shit to IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE the boss out of existence. And then other times I want to play Dragon Quest 1 again for the pure grind.

But yeah plus on Square for making a game that plays pretty nicely instead of being like The Seventh Saga and endless hell.