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The creepiest thing about Silent Hill is how much handgun ammo I found lying around an elementary school. I mean, it was helpful considering the circumstances, but what the hell was it doing there in the first place?!

This weekend I pushed through another chapter of Fire Emblem 4 - only 3 chapters left now. Chapter 8 was refreshingly brisk after the very tedious and backtrack-y chapter 7. Chapter 8 looks intimidating, but it's also pretty much a straight line so I'm hoping it'll be reasonably quick at least.

My goal for this month is to finish Fire Emblem and Turok, which will be half way through the list. July probably looks something like Command & Conquer Red Alert, Probotector and Metal Gear Solid 4.

After a bit of a break I finished up Final Fantasy XII this afternoon. I am very mixed on this game still.

Firstly though the ending felt quite rushed. There was a gigantic dungeon proceeding the final confrontation which actually felt like it should have been the end but the actual final dungeon is about two corridors long followed by four boss fights of negligible difficulty. I had armed myself with the bubble/haste/bravery combo which helped a lot but they were still fairly simple affairs even given that they are one after the other with no time to recuperate. Then there's a nice ending cinematic but a lot of the story gets rushed to a close and some stuff is left hanging. It's not Knights of the Old Republic 2 level where you feel you've accidentally skipped a cutscene or three but even FFIII and V on limited hardware had more meaningful ends. I'm a simple man, just show me all the main characters happy and at home and I'm good.

On the whole after beating the game and getting to a point where it opens up a lot more I am more positive on FFXII than I was. However, I'm not sure I'd give it an unqualified recommendation like I would with III and V as there is still stuff there I do not think works very well. After the first 15 hours it really starts to feel like what it is which is a game whose lead director quit halfway through and someone else took over. Quickenings are for FFXII what Henry Cavill's fake upper lip is to Justice League.

In the great pantheon of the Final Fantasy games, I would place XII in that bracket along with II and VIII in that they are admirable attempts to mix things up that ultimately don't quite work. Far from making it an outright bad game it just makes it an interesting one and one I'm sure a lot of people would absolutely love.

I'm going to take another break from the challenge to beat a couple of PS4 exclusives I've had knocking about for a while. I think next up will be Star Ocean when I do return.

Haven't even touched the games since, barely played at all actually. And didn't have time to do my Doom review yet. Work hours doubled, but my personal issue hell is over. I'll come back to this mid July when I'm done moving in with my partner in the new place. Is it cool if I still continue this challenge in the fall?

I have decided to have 2 Summer Games Challenge games.

Grandia (Switch)
Katamari Damacy REROLL (Switch)

Both of these titles are slightly enhanced ports of some very important and classic titles. I've already started in on Grandia and I LOVE it. I played my Saturn copy some when I was in Japan and made an effort to translate my way along, but I derailed about where I am in the game now, which is the Forest of Mist. I love the anime characters. They have such interesting personalities and aren't little emo bitches. The whole game has such an adventurous, optimistic tone. Yeah, it's a bit young in places, but it feels like one of those great coming of age stories, only the characters coming of age are loaded up with positivity and self-confidence. Sort of an all-ages RPG rather than an RPG for kids. I hope the game doesn't decide to break these characters later on. What I've read suggests the game does not. I'm playing in English but with Japanese voices. The old Playstation US translation actually isn't that bad aside from some odd censorship choices (all references to alcohol are now coffee?). I've heard the English voice work is just awful, but fortunately the Japanese voices are fantastic.

Mechanically, this game feels like an expansion of Chrono Trigger's 2D planar combat combined with a skill-based system. Like CT, some attacks have different ranges and "shapes" for hitting multiple enemies. Unlike Chrono Trigger, however, you can change your own placement on the field, and characters have different movement and action stats to govern how quickly they move up the always-visible initiative bar and move around the battlefield. And when you choose defend, you can either block (Endure) or move to a new location (Evade). Every hit stalls advancement on the initiative bar a little, and a well-timed critical hit can actually cancel an action and reset the character or monster on the initiative bar. Each weapon type you can use or elemental spell category (the classic 4 elements) can gain experience and be leveled up through use. Gaining levels in an element or a weapon type grants you new spells and special weapon attacks (only usable if you have the appropriate weapon type equipped). And elements can combine with each other and weapon types to grant elemental special attacks and hybrid elemental spells (eg. level up fire and earth to unlock magma/lava spells). You can also level up individual spells though use to make them more effective. This allows you to customize your characters through use, but characters are different enough they never end up same-y. If you like grinding you can make combat pretty easy (press A a bunch to win), but if you're not wasting time grinding some battles do have the potential to quickly take a bad turn. Bosses can be a real challenge, though through careful play you can also stun lock some bosses for extended periods of time.

Just loving digging back into this game. It's a classic the West never really got to fully appreciate.

My big problem with metroidvania's is how easy it is to get lost and if you dont play for a few days it becomes very easy to get to a point where you are completely unable to progress.

I was really enjoying castlevania Harmony of dissonance, this week was nuts, and I did not play a single game for a little over a week. When I got back to harmony I had absolutely no idea where I was going, I explored for a little over an hour, every path I explored that looked open on the map lead to a dead end, and then I just got frustrated and called it quits.

I think the game is good, but I do not feel like wandering around aimlessly for another x amount of hours figuring out where I left off, so this is another summer game that I am going to give up on.

So far this years summer challenge is not working out great for me.

marurun wrote:I've already started in on Grandia and I LOVE it.

Grandia is SO good. That battle system is a stuff of legends and it is one of those games that I can play and not realize how much time I've wasted on it.

I love the innocence and glee that the characters have in the first game. In Grandia II, it retains the same amazing battle system, but the tone is more darker.

If you can handle the tonal switch, I'd also recommend Grandia II. If you can, play the DreamCast version too.

I have the JPN Saturn Grandia, Grandia Digital Museum, and two JPN guides. I made it close to the end of disc 1 before I got distracted BITD. Grandia II I do have on Dreamcast and got to about the 85-90% mark before I got distracted by other things. Yeah, very different tone, but still quite good. And the English voice acting was really good for the time.

Non wii:
1. Shining Force 2 -----gave up on
2. Castlevania: harmony of dissonance -------gave up on
3. Perfect Dark

Wii:

1. Epic Mickey ------finished
2. Muramasa the demon Blade -------finished
3. Super Smash Bros Brawl
4. One of the Zeldas (I'll decide when its time)
5. House of the Dead 3 ----finished
6. Last Story
7. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom
8. Metroid Prime 3
9. Super Mario 3d world
10. wii sports resort
11. Prince of Persia: forgotten sands

I may jump into one of these tomorrow, I think I will mess around a bit with tatsunoko vs capcom and run through the (presumably short) story mode a few times and then go into something deeper.

My gut tells me either last story or zelda skywayrd sword but I'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow.

1. Phantasy Star - SMS
2. Shante - Risky's Revenge - DSI on 3DS
3. Capcom's Willow - MAME
4. Magic Knight Rayearth - SAT
5. X-Men 2: Clone Wars - GEN

I finished Risky's Revenge Fathers Day morning. I liked it. I played it before on my DSI and quit right after I got the Elephant dance. I stuck with it and had a great time. Unfortunately, I had so much fun playing it that I immediately started playing Shante and the Pirate's Curse Monday morning... which is not on my list.

I hate deviating from my list, but I don't want to mess with my motivation momentum. I will play Willow next... but it looks like Phantasy Star and Magic Knight Rayearth (6 hours in and other than the sprite work it is not wowing me or anything) may be put on the backburner for the Pirate's Curse.