A Gaming Diary
Archive for October, 2005
Final Fantasy I
Oct 11th
Found some ice cavern where I was expecting to find this Hellfire Cavern. Ah well, it’ll do.
SP’s battery close to death, so I’ve had to put it on charge.
Probably a good thing.
Final Fantasy I
Oct 11th
Well, after advice I gave up on the impossible bosses, but didn’t know where else to go.
So I toured the world, fighting of pirates and sharks, until I happened upon a small town I’d never been to before. A nice man there gave me a canoe and told me to go west. But life wasn’t peaceful there. No. There was a bloody great volcano called Mount Gulg. I can only imagined that the person to discover it celebrated with a few drinks and hiccuped at the moment of naming.
Anyway, I ran around inside for a while – Flame Mail get! – and met a boss who looked very nasty, but turned out to be no threat at all.
And now I think I have to go to a cave in the north, but that can happen later.
I’m about ten hours in now. Good stuff.
Final Fantasy I
Oct 11th
Cerberus, bloody Cerberus.
His Thunderbolt attack just does too much damage, even with a Blue Curtain thing active. About 150 points of damage to every character every time he uses it, which is about two-thirds of his turns. Silence and paralyse spells just miss all the time.
I’m level thirty, I should be able to do this.
(And this isn’t even mentioning the instant death attacks for the other boss I’ve found on this floor. They’re called Death and Earthquake and they are evil.)
Trauma Center: Under The Knife
Oct 10th
Oh no, no, no.
I can’t do this.
I’ve just been through the first two training missions and I can’t carry on. It’s too stressful. The music, the medical theme, they put me under too much pressure. I just got a ‘Bad’ rating for some suturing and now I’m feeling horribly guilty about the scar the guy’s going to have.
My mouth is dry and I’m only just beginning to calm down.
I never had this problem with Operation, of which this is a distant cousin.
Most stressful game ever. Even though it’s just a puzzle game in a medical skin, the stylus starts to feel like a scalpel and I don’t know how I’d feel if I failed and the patient died. Probably horrible for the two seconds it would take to reload and start over, at which point all the stress would probably leave and this would become just a normal game with normal levels of pressure.
God, the DS is great.
Final Fantasy I
Oct 10th
Gah.
There’s another boss on the same floor of the dungeon. He’s got lovely “kill outright in one hit” attacks. How charming.
So that’s two bosses on one floor that I can’t kill.
Talk about a difficulty spike. It’d been incredibly easy until now and – bam!
This may even be a game-killing spike. We’ll see.
Final Fantasy I
Oct 10th
First death! I got to a boss in the Earth Shrine and he fucked me. Badly. Stupid Thunderbolt attack does more damage than I can keep up with, even with Floss on full time mana-no-object healing duties. It was a long, long battle and I thought I was going to make it, but I lost Arnold. I risked taking a turn away from healing everyone else to revive him, which was a mistake. Two Thunderbolt attacks came quickly and they just destroyed me.
I never normally play games on the bus or at work, but I’ve done both today. Will this be the first Final Fantasy game I ever actually complete?
Final Fantasy I
Oct 9th
I didn’t think when I started this diary that one of the benefits would be having a nice place to keep notes about what I’ve done and what I should be doing next. Useful.
Not that I need to do it now. I killed a piss easy dungeon boss, which led to me being shown a cut scene of a door opening, so I’ve wandered off there. I think I’m meant to do something with an Earth Rod or and Earth Crystal or something. I’m not entirely sure. But, anyway, I’ve been warned that there are lots of monsters behind the door, so I guess it’s a job for me.
I’m just over seven hours in now, which is quite something. Weekend: eaten.
Final Fantasy I
Oct 9th
The vampire’s dead, yet the earth’s still fucked. Could something else be causing it?
Another tense dungeon crawl finished. It’s not as if I’m ever in danger of actually dying, but it feels like I would be if I let my concentration slip for a moment.
When I turn it back on I’m going to have to see if I can work out why killing the vampire didn’t help heal the earth. Someone way down south might be able to help, according to someone in the shit town – the FF equivalent of Maidstone – that I’ve found myself in. There’s not even a bloody item shop where I am, so I’m going to have sail back home for a while to stock up, before searching for this wise man.
Final Fantasy I
Oct 9th
It has not yet been completed.
However, I have killed an evil elf and woken up a good one and given someone their eye back and given a dwarf some explosives and been in many, many fights.
Everyone’s level twenty now and I’ve just found another dungeon area, so I’ve decided to take a break before tackling it.
Final Fantasy I
Oct 9th
Well, I found the Marsh Cave. After an accidental side trip to see some dwarves. Got a bit lost there.
A long, hard slog in and out of the save. Took a good hour or so and I’m not sure I explored it completely. Got what I needed, though. Must remember to stock up on more Ethers. I was really stretching out the magic by the end of that.
Cor, I’m completely worn out now.
Great game. I can see how it spawned a series, even allowing for this being an ehanced version.
Pity they didn’t enhance it a bit more by having some sort of automap feature.
