judyonthenet

So, I got Smash on launch day, right? We played it to death a couple weekends, with the second weekend being particularly bad, since I think most of that Saturday was spent trying to do all the stupid challenges. We didn’t break all the challenges, but we did most of them. Anyway, it was enough to get me sick of the game for a while. I’m sure I’ll get back to it, since I want to eventually master Peach. I’m moving on for now, tho I probably wouldn’t be working on my current game if it weren’t for Smash. Ike was used in a lot of the brawls, given his smashes are pretty obnoxious. After hearing “I fight for my friends.” and “You’ll get no sympathy from me!” 20 bazillion times, I felt like playing Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (PoR) to find out more about this brooding blue spiky-haired dude with the sword. Apparently, I’m not the only one, as the game has recently gone up to ~$40 used on eBay, when a couple months ago, nobody gave a crap about this game. (Have you seen the recent eBay prices for Pikmin 2? Averaging $70-$80 USED. Ridiculous!)

Good thing I already bought this game… over two and a half years ago when it first came out. (At least I got it for ~$33 from a buy 2 get 1 free sale back in the day.) I opened it over a year ago to lend it to Jeff, so it’s gotten some use at least. I started playing this last week, and I haven’t been able to stop. Based on the two GBA games released in the US and this GameCube game, I’ve determined that I love Fire Emblem. I’m not really sure why, since it’s the same thing over and over again: young male protagonist with sword is joined by a whole bunch of random people to fight turmoil on the continent due to warring nations, battling because of power-hungry evils and political strif–ZOMG DRAGONS. (Okay, Sacred Stones had a guy with a lance, but his sister had a sword.) The party typically starts off with some dumbass with an ax who wants to kill everything and an overly powerful knight on a horse that kills everybody and hogs experience points.

My computer is too far from the TV, so all screenshots
are (obviously) stolen from IGN and Gamespot.

Even though it’s a GameCube game, PoR’s presentation is almost identical to the GBA games. Aside from a couple rendered cut scenes with voice acting, the presentation of the story is the same: they either show static portraits of the characters (sometimes flipped to look in the other direction, and if their eyes are closed, they’re sad) with blocks of dialogue text or they show a giant map of where they’re going covered by narration text. The gameplay looks a lot better, with tiny 2d sprites replaced by 3D models reminiscent of PS1 Final Fantasy games. The way it does the fight animations is stupid: the game leaves the stage map (where all the strategizing occurs) and loads a new screen with an upclose view of the two people fighting. Much slower than the GBA versions, this makes the gameplay time 3x as long, and its even worse when there’s 20 baddies you don’t control attacking (you have to watch every single battle). Thankfully, you can skip these animations and watch significantly shorter animations from the stage map.

One new thing they added is a Base screen in between missions where you organize your team and interact with them. Depending on how well you do on your missions, you get extra experience points that you can distribute to any of your team members on the Base screen, handy for upgrading weak-ass healers or high-level guys that only get 1 EXP per kill. What’s nice is that you can save on this screen, so if your random level up sucks (like only one stat increases instead of 6), you can load and re-do it. (If you level up in battle and it’s a crappy level up, you have to start the battle all over and level up again to get different stats.) Support conversations are also done through the Base screen, and support conversations come up between team members depending on how many battles they’ve had together, as opposed to the obnoxious old method of having to be adjacent to each other in battle for like 500 turns.

I’m really digging PoR. It looks pretty, adds some nice new elements to make team management less annoying, but still maintains its challenging/pain-in-the-ass strategic gameplay, lack of in-mission saves included. There’s a bit of reading, but I’m enjoying the plot and localized dialogue. I like Ike! While he’s like every other Fire Emblem protagonist (all about camaraderie and righteousness), he’s kinda grouchy and a little angsty. I haven’t witnessed any of his awesome Smash moves in PoR; maybe I should turn those animations back on.

So yeah, I’m spending a lot of my free time on that. Kelvin has started God of War 2, which is still a totally absurd game. (Seriously, how does anyone get anywhere in ancient Greece if they’re not carrying two giant curved blades on chains with them or can’t lift 300lb doors?) Getting back into gaming and having a new console has also gotten me back into hunting deals hardcore on CAG, very not good for work productivity and wallet. (I’ve made, like, 8 game related purchases in the last week!) *sigh* It all feels so familiar. Did someone say something about a wedding?

New thing I learned today: A myrmidon is a loyal follower who obeys orders without question. In Greek mythology, it’s the name of the soldiers who followed Achilles.

One of the classes in Fire Emblem is myrmidon, and they’re basically just sword dudes.