Oh, man, NOW I have a reason not to finish Kingdom Hearts 2: my friend has just lent me .hack//g.u. vol. 2: Reminisce. I have just played it. Only a little bit, I still have lots of homeworks to do, you know, besides studying and stuff. This weekend is also doomed, since I'll have to help my parents take care of my small cousins (yeah, the ones who never let me play in peace whenever they come), since they're gonna spend the night here.

That might be the reason why I'm not thinking about buying a next generation video game: I barely have time to play with what I already have!! And there are also nice games I want to finish, besides the ones in my Now Playing list. There are lots of games at my shelf that I want to finish, but also a few ones I want to buy. But, as I always say, I con't like starting a new game without finishing the ones I'm playing. Sorry 'bout that.

So much for me to do and I'm not even mentioning my job and the things I need to do, courses, school (actually I'm at College, but my mom always says "school") and stuff. I wonder how can I never get tired.

Oh, I didn't mention it here, but I'm at the last dungeon of Suikoden 3 (at least I hope so). Now that my characters are leveled-up, the game doesn't seem so hard, not even the tactical battles. But still, having to split my parties in three parts... I feel like there's still a long, long way to go before getting to the end of the game... and it seems it's gonna take a while for me to finish this one, Shadow of the Colossus, Kingdom Hearts and start .hack. Oh, well, lots of games are still better than having only one, right? And there's still plenty of time (at least that's what I think) before the next generation console war begins. 

.hack//g.u. vol.2 was FINALLY released!! Awright!!!!!!

I don't think I''ll buy it for now. Well, at least not until I finish Suikoden 3. I already said quite a lot about the games I'm willing to finish before writing a review, so I'm not gonna mention them again. Still, there's a lot to be done in Suikoden 3 and, considering my awful tactical skills, I may finish it only by the month of July. I also have lots of works to be done, so I guess I'll be out of time for a while...

Well, I haven't seen anything of the second game yet so I wouldn't spoil the story myself. I hope nothing of the gameplay has changed, but I believe it hasn't.

I also know a few forms of the Terror of Dead, but the truth is that I can't wait to play volume 3, with Haseo's Xth Form. Gosh, two pistols!!!!! How cool can this be?

I'm also quite curious to know the other Rengekis. I think Rengeki is one of the best things in the G.U. series (besides the gameplay at the best Kingdom Hearts style).

What else?.. Oh, yeah, Atoli. I wonder what happened to her.

And I also miss that "I'm at an online game" style. Listening to music, changing wallpapers, reading e-mails... I almost fell like I was Haseo.

Too bad the japanese dubbing service will not be kept...

Man... it's been quite a while since I last played The Bouncer. I remember playing it with my father when we bought the Playstation 2. Oh, boy, those were good times. I remember the disc was with some sort of problem and never got to work again and the gameplay was so catastrophic that we gave up in the part were you have to control one of the characters and go through the dungeon while protecting Dominic... Oh, man, that part pretty much sucks. I remember spending a whole sunday afternoon with that weakling Sion Barzahd only because my girlfriend liked him. Women...

And now that I think about it, I feel like playing it again. Honestly, it can't be worse that Chaos Legion. And it's all a crazy bash of buttons anyway. 

Now that I think about it, it's been a long time since I last played the other games from my Now Playing list. Shadow of the Colossus... well, the game is pretty nice, but requires a hell of a patience to play, since the controls' response time is awful, as I keep saying over and over. Don't get me wrong, in a general way the game is VERY nice. The story is very deep even though there are almost no dialogues during the game. The idea of having no "middle" enemies until you get to the final boss is EXCELLENT. I really like not needing to level up your character at any part of the game (even though the optional events of killing the small white-tailed lizards may eventually help with your grip).

Speaking of making level ups during the games... I believe that is a tendency that is getting lower. I mean, nowdays the most hardcore players are around 20~25 years old, maybe even older. Very few people have time to "waste" with a game that make you keep levelling your character up. I mean, if they want to meet a good story, on the other hand they want something with fast action (and if you doubt of this tendency, try working and studying at the same time, including Saturdays, and see if you'll want to spend you precious time levelling your character up).

Okay, back to my Now Playing list. Let's see... Well, whenever I have time, I play a little bit of Suikoden 3. Now that's my first priority. Even if Suikoden 3 is not one of the best games I've ever played, the story is fascinating. I can't wait to see how it ends. But I'll leave the details for whenever I play it.

Kingdom Hearts 2... I was playing it before starting Suikoden 3, but since I had to stop to make level ups (see what I mean?? Level ups over and over!!!!), I stopped it for now. Maybe I'll play it when my cousins are here (they're little kids, so they don't really know what they're doing - yet -, so whenever they come I stop doing my "homework" so they won't ruin my computer, notebooks, books and stuff, and go play something which doesn't require too much of my poor brain).

Final Fantasy VII... I don't want to ruin my Playstation 2 too early, since I don't have money to buy any console from the "new era", so I usually avoid playing Playstation 1 games on it. I'm using an emulator to play FFVII on my computer, but then we end up in the levelling up issues again.

Zelda: OoT... I'm also playing it in the emulator, I don't have money to buy a Nintendo 64, but I really like this game. As I already said, I finished this game already, but never wrote a decent review, so I felt like playing it again. I heard there's gonna be a remake for Wii, I wonder if this is true... I hope so, if I get a job next year, I may buy a Wii...

Ok, maybe I'll just take back what I said about Suikoden 3. After spending about 20 hours with the game, I can say the story is pretty good. It certainly can't beat Suikoden 2 nor 5 (at least until where I played), but the story definitely catches your atention in each of every character you control. The battle system is still annoying and I still hate it, but since I still have plenty of things to do in the game, I'll just have to get used to it. The tactical battles are not as fun as the ones from Suikoden V, but they're also very nice. I mean, the main idea is pretty nice, Konami should use this base recipe to make the next Suikoden.

**SPOILER ALERT!!!** 

So, I finished Chris' scenary yesterday. The first chapter (maybe not only hers) was very, VERY boring. She is one of the Six Zexen Knights, the elite of the knights of that part of the country (the other ones are Salome, Roland, Borus, Percival and Leo). Even though she's got the status and the strenght, what she really wants is to find the truth about her father. What she was told is that her father died in a war, but she somehow feels that he is still alive (and since some people already told me a few spoilers, yeah, her father is still alive and I think she'll have to fight him. Whatever, he dies anyway). Chris really wishes she could go around the world to search for him, but she can't, since she has a really busy life as a Zexen Commander. Luckily enough, her friends (that are the other knights) notest that she feels this way and find a way for her to escape and follow her own way. She is told that if she wants to find a man entitled Fire Champion. In this process, she encounters a man named Nash Latkje (that's me!!!!), who is a spy acting under the orders of the High Priest Commander Sasarai, from Harmonia. He seeks for the Fire Champion and his followers, the Fire Bringer. So, both of them go on a journey to find this misterious man, who can, apparently, bring chaos and destruct Grasslands and the cities around it.

Well, I already know that Luc is the villain this time. I only want to find out why the heck he is causing all that mess.

Meanwhile, I got to know Thomas, the master of Budehuc Castle. His chapters are interesting, but not as much as the main characters.  I only got until the end of chapter 2, his history doesn't give the opportunity to make a decent level up.

I also got until the end of Geddoe's first chapter (which I also found pretty boring if compared with the other chapters from Chris' Story) and started Hugo's second chapter (by the way, I hate Lilly Pendragon. I wonder how the heck a cute little girl turned to be like that). I guess I'll finish Suikoden 3 before the end of the year... 

You can expect REALLY BAD critics about Suikoden 3 when a make a review of it. Man, I'm about to know such irritating game as Suikoden 3. How can such a beautiful game contain such irritating and, why not say, "non-Suikoden" elements?? In the previous Suikodens and even at Suikoden V I don't remember having to go from one place to another one just to level my characters up. And that should be a characteristic of the Suikoden series: there are random battles enough to keep you in a level in which you can confront any enemy, including the bosses you'll find along the way. Oh, well, I can assure you that this does NOT happen in Suikoden 3. And I don't think I predicted this, because I'm playing a part where Hugo has to run from the Zexen soldiers... and I can't seem to pass this part simply because I'm not strong enough!!!!! What happened is that I already saved the game, so I can't go out of Vinay del Zexen either! No one would ever understand how MAD I am now!!!! Gosh, how irritating!!!!!!

Of course, there are other aspects that help me NOT liking this game, like the horrible battle system. If you're used to that 6 characters you can freely control on the Suikodens I mentioned, controlling 6 characters in three turns doesn't offer you the same experience, you know. Do you imagine how absurd it feels to give only ONE command to TWO characters at once? I can only say I don't like this at all!!! Konami, why did you do this to me????????

Another thing: since WHEN you can stop using runes whenever you get hit? That's ridiculous!! The fact of not being able to use an item to "recharge" the rune is already bad enough. Now they put a limit of turns to use the runes???????? That was NOT suposed to happen!!!!

You know, I already said once that Suikoden IV is awful... but it CAN'T possibly be as bad as Suikoden III! Even if in Suikoden IV you only control 4 characters, at least one character can use Medicine on the other characters, as well as control each of the 4 characters.

But believe me, I'm trying to be patient with this game because the story is interesting. BELIEVE ME, I'M TRYING. 

 

*wondering if the video will be posted correctly*

Man... this video is SO perfect!!! And I'm not saying this only because I'm a Suikoden series fan, it is because the edition between the scenes and the song is QUITE well-done. Perfect, why not? I usually don't really like japanese music, but this one seems to use kind of a "Celtic" style and the edition is very nice, even though I saw a few mistakes.

Lovely! If you ever get the chance to see this video, do it! That's DEFINITELY worth watching! 

I don't know about you guys, but I really hate when some people low-rate a game with no explanations of the given grade. Whenever I make a review for a game, I obviously put my opinions about every single aspect of the game (well, at least I try), but I also try to explain the reasons why something is nice in a game (or not). When I was snooping a few reviews, I saw awful grades with comments in the review session like "this game is awful, don't buy it. It's boring. The characters are stupid". I won't tell the game's name, but I can guess there are lots of games which go through the same problem. The hell, that's not a review!!! These are just opinions with no acceptable explanation! I wonder what gamers that want to buy that determined game will say about the game just by reading the reviews...

Man... Kingdom Hearts 2 may be quite frustrating at times, but it is really nice. I was playing a little yesterday. Almost finishing, I still have "The World that Never Was" and the events on Jiminy's Journal. I don't know if I'm gonna do them, but... Oh well, whatever, since I'm already playing, might as well give it a shot, huh?

Anyway, yesterday I confronted one of my favorite bosses of Kingdom Hearts 2: the MCP from Space Paranoids. Except for the part of the stupid spider-like robots in the space ship, it is my favorite world and the MCP is one of the best bosses (yeah, I'm addicted to a crazy-button-bash session). The MCP was quite easy to win, even though I was in a lower level (the challenges from here on are above level 46, and currently I'm at level... I don't know, 47?). I didn't realize there was an action command so you didn't need to confront Sark each time the MCP recovered the barrier. Bad thing, I wasted too much time in this part. After finding out that you could interact with a barrier at the other side of the room and perform an action, the battle ended up real fast.

After that, I followed to The World that Never Was. I lost several times to... what's the name of the dude? Xigbar? Well, whatever, I must've lost 'bout two or three times in that beserker shooting attack, so I came back to Twilight Town to find a few more treasure chests (I missed a lot of them in this "speedrun wannabe"). I tried to use the Reflect magic when he started his crazy shooting, but there is one part of the battle when I'm out of MP, my HP is going to the red line, Donald has no MP either, Goofy is out of potions and I never make it to use the Ether in time. You can see the results from here, huh? It's a complete disaster. I guess I'll try mastering Master Form so I can get that high-jump. Maybe like this I'll be able to escape this part.

Speaking of mastering forms, it seems like I got to the last level of Brave/Valor Form and Wisdom Form. It was faster than the second time I played, specially speaking about Wisdom Form. Master Form is indeed pretty fast to develop, but Wisdom...

About Suikoden 3... it is in my Now Playing list, but the true is that I'm not in the mood to play it until I finish Kingdom Hearts 2... and I'm in the mood of finish Kingdom Hearts 2 again, because I skipped all of the cutscenes. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Roxas and since I skipped all of his cutscenes, I started doing this with the other ones. It makes the game run faster, but you miss all the fun of the stuff.

And just to think about facing the Organization XIII... man, I hate them all. They have a few tricks that make you unable to attack and take a lot of energy. I hate to confront Demyx and the guy with the spears (you know, the one you confront at the Beast's Castle).

Another thing I hate in Kingdom Hearts is Alladdin's world. Damn, the Genie Jafar sucks!! I still don't really understand how the hell you can beat that guy when he starts throwing things at you.

Oh, well... 

Man, I was playing Bloody Roar 4 yesterday... what an awful game!!!! I mean, they caught everything that was good on the other games and destroyed it! The dubbing service from Japanese to English can be one of the worst onesI've ever seen. Terrible!!! How could they do such a lame job with such an important aspect of the game? The voices should give a little more emotion to the game, but the fact remains that it DEFINITELY seems like the voice actors are actually READING the script!! There's no emotion, there's no lip sync... NOTHING!!!!!!

The controls seem to remain the same... at least 'til where I played. But... I don't know, the impression I got is that the response time is a lot slower in order to improve... I don't know, physics???

Mah, whatever. I only know that as soon as finished Arcade Mode once, my hands were red (crazy button bash, if you know what I mean) and my mind was tired. What happened to the Bloody Roar series??? Godness, how decadent!! You can wait for a REALLY MEAN review as soon as I finish my Now Playing games.

Speaking on my Now Playing list... I guess Kingdom Hearts 2 will be the first one to earn my review. Let's see how much time I'll have available to play.