I haven’t been doing much gaming lately, as I’ve been feeling under the weather. Because of that, I’ve put off beating Digital Devil Saga 2 (though I started playing again this weekend and hope to wrap it all up shortly); I like being fully awake and non-headachey for RPGs, especially those I’ve never beaten before. I did start Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament, but am currently stuck on a part that, again, I want to be in a clearheaded state to play, otherwise I just know that I’ll never get through it. Oh, and I gave up on Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, convinced that Sonic Team hates me.

Not wanting to put any more time into DDS2 yesterday, and not wanting to touch Klonoa, last night I dug out the GBA I bought awhile back and the cart of Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 that had arrived not too long ago. Back in the day, when my sister and I were kids, the only way we could play many games was through our friends and cousins. However, my sister did get a Game Boy as a gift at some point, and her small library of games included Kirby’s Dream Land, The Lion King (which stank), and Wario Land. Kirby is good, but I’ve no desire to play it again, as the games which followed in the series give me my nostalgia fix well enough, even though I’ve no particular attachment to said games.

On the other hand, I have never derived such satisfaction from later Wario platformers, so instead of giving more of those a chance, I went right back to the source, which I hadn’t played in at least fourteen years. Playing through a handful of levels last night, what I was most amazed by was how much I’d remembered. This wasn’t a case where I could get through every single level easily, knowing where every single enemy and hazard was. Rather, familiarity was at work. It’s like going back to a place which hasn’t changed much over the years and being able to pick out even the most insignificant landmarks. Only thing is, here, the landmarks are things like Wario’s pith helmet, the Sugar Pirates, the item blocks with the eyes on them, the skull doors, the 10 coins, the bottles which give Wario special abilities, and the ways in which they and many other elements all come together.

So yeah, it’s a real nostalgia trip, unlike any other I’ve ever had, probably due to the length of time since I last beat it and now. The one thing that’s bugging me at the moment is a small crumb caught between the GBA’s screen and the glass layer on top of it, which I won’t be able to get rid of without a special type of screwdriver (I’m looking into borrowing one). Funny thing is, even though I can be picky about things like that, so far it hasn’t lessened my enjoyment of Wario Land.

Last week was a quiet one, gaming-wise. I beat Digital Devil Saga, as I’d intended, and though the final boss was a bitch to beat, the ending has me very much looking forward to its sequel. I intend to start that sometime this week. The only other game I played to any extent was Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. It was the only non-RPG left in my console/handheld backlog and I needed to break things up a bit, so I popped it in the Wii yesterday.

Right now, there isn’t much to say except that it’s most certainly a Sonic Team game, and not in a good way. While the Sonic Team-developed 3D Sonic games since the Dreamcast era have been rightfully derided for their sometimes imprecise controls and cameras from hell, the non-Sonics that the team has made have generally ranged from pretty good to really good, and have included the likes of Chu Chu Rocket, Samba de Amigo, and Phantasy Star Online. Thus, I went in giving Giant Egg the benefit of the doubt. That, and the game has a kickass soundtrack, which I’d purchased and started listening to a long time ago after hearing some tracks on the now-defunct Gaming FM.

Giant Egg turns out to have many of the same problems that have plagued the Sonics, and some unique to the game. The camera can be player controlled, and is fine most of the time, but is frequently too close to the action during fights against larger enemies. The platforming is a little flaky when trying to be precise, and double jumping while holding eggs is especially annoying when the platform is a narrow one on top of a crate.

Speaking of the egg holding: the main mechanic of the game involves rolling, growing, and generally manipulating eggs. To start rolling an egg, one need only approach it. However, this simple approach backfires whenever Billy loses control of an egg by falling off a short ledge or doing a quick turn. There’s also been a few times when I bound up to a high place using a device that requires a held egg and said egg reaches the top safely without Billy, which means I have to run around to find another egg and try it again. This annoyance over the egg control isn’t restricted to wanting to roll, as not wanting to can be just frustrating. For instance, one level required me to stand on top of an egg by jumping on it, which ended up being harder than it sounds. The game also grades you, using the total time elapsed per level as one of the metrics. With the fidgety controls and sometimes hard-to-reach collectables, my average score so far has been a low one.

What’s most annoying is the part I’m stuck on now, in one of the mandatory levels. It’s a pirate-themed one, and my task here is to aim a cannon and shoot myself out of it to reach the next round of platforming. One of the locals even gives me a tip when I talk to them (which reminds me; it seems that Billy can’t talk to characters without letting go of the egg), telling me to aim just slightly above a certain flag. I try doing this many times, and always end up drowning in the water over and beyond my target. Talk about your cheap deaths. I eventually gave up for the evening and started plowing through one of the postgame challenges in Chocobo’s Dungeon instead.

So in general, it’s okay (and the soundtrack is still great), but I’m not too crazy about the aspects which have carried over from Sonic Team’s more annoying works. That’s pretty much all for now; this week, I’ll start Digital Devil Saga 2, and maybe Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles with my husband. I’m also looking into getting more cheap non-RPGs for my console backlog; Klonoa: Dream Champ Tournament and the original Ratchet & Clank are two that I’m looking at. Anyone have other recommendations? WiiWare/Virtual Console recs are fair game as well, since I got a 2000 Nintendo Points card for my birthday and have 200 spare points sitting on the Wii itself. I’m setting aside most of the points for World of Goo, but have no idea what to do with the rest right now.

I beat Pokemon Ruby last night, after some dinnertime frustration forced me to abandon a Startopia session. I hadn’t intended to beat it, but that’s how things ended up. Pokemon Ruby has one of the toughest endgames I had ever encountered, and I’d lost track of how many times I’d attempted it, only to fail. With my trainer battle options dwindling, I used up some good-looking TMs (items that teach Pokemon specific moves), stocked up on healables, and took another crack at the challenge. Failure again. I dove back in, more mindful of certain elemental factors, and got further than I had ever been before, and I went even further than that. Thanks to some fantastic and hard-working pokemon (pictured at right with my trainer), I ended the game as the Best Trainer in Hoenn, and I watched, satisfied, as the credits rolled. My total time was 98:57, putting Pokemon Ruby in that tiny club of RPGs that I’ve spent over ninety hours on, sharing space with Dragon Quest VIII, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Disgaea, aka the only RPG I’ve ever cracked the 100-hour mark on.

Pokemon Ruby isn’t the only game I’ve beaten recently. This past Saturday, I wrapped up Samurai Legend Musashi, sending the titular hero on his final quest for the Mystics. The last dungeon was long, and although there were enough checkpoints so as to ensure as little frustration as possible, the only savepoint in the entire game is in Musashi’s living quarters, and this was a no-going-back type of mission. Anyway, after one botched, and prematurely aborted, attempt, I managed to get through it with plenty of healing items left over. A certain final boss scene notwithstanding, there wasn’t much to the ending. Actually, it’s probably the shortest, most succinct RPG ending I’ve ever seen. All in all, despite some minor fiddly imperfections, I liked this game. Sure, it was short and there wasn’t much to the story, and the battle system lacked the depth of that of, say, Kingdom Hearts, but it was decent enough. I understand that there’s some Brave Fencer Musashi fans who didn’t really like this sequel, but I never played that game, so I’ve no immediate frame of reference to draw from.

After Musashi, I took a break for a little while before starting up Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga on Tuesday. It’s one of several Megaten games in my already JRPG-bloated backlog, and was the one namatamiku recommended I start first. I’m not more than two hours into it, and am already seeing where the series gets its reputation. Set in a post-apocalyptic world more than a little reminiscent of Battle Angel Alita and heavy on Hindu iconography, it centers on a group of fighters who discover a Mysterious Girl™ and also gain the power to turn into freaky-looking, people-eating demons. As one can imagine, it’s pretty grim. So far, the battle system is very traditional, but not in an engaging way; it certainly has none of the rousing music and little of the visual panache of Pokemon Ruby, and it’s not Dragon Quest or Skies of Arcadia, either (to name a couple). It could ultimately be the lack of difficulty (the game’s been easy so far), but in general battles feel like they’re missing a little extra something. Unrelated, but I found it odd that the characters start battle in their demon form; one would think they would begin as humans and turn into demons. Either way, the human forms are pretty useless, so there’s no point in changing them back once a fight’s underway.

With the grim, disturbing nature of DDS, I thought about starting another game to counterbalance it, and will probably most likely do so now that Ruby has been beaten. I tried to start Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter that same afternoon, but whether due to my exhaustion or something about the game itself, I wasn’t feeling it and turned it off. Before that, I briefly considered Etrian Odyssey, as this would give me both a simpler and a more difficult game; however, I’d rather save it for the next time I’m on a trip. As of now, I’m leaning toward Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon. It’s supposed to have some depth and challenge to it, and besides, those cute yellow birds make everything better.

Source sprites from The Shyguy Kingdom (tsgk.captainn.net).

Last night I beat Klonoa (or rather, the Wii remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile if you want to be pedantic). As is the case with other games in the series I’ve played, I managed to get a lot of the extra level goals, but not everything, especially since the last three Visions cranked up the difficulty a good deal. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game with such narrow platforms as Klonoa, and the later Visions, and the next-to-last one in particular, had them in spades. Despite being spoiled for a mid-game plot point before I’d even bought the damn thing, I enjoyed it, though I think I prefer Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil, just a little bit more. It was my first Klonoa, which I think might explain my preference. Now I just have to get a cheap copy of Dream Champ Tournament…

Still plugging away at Okami as well. The story took a very odd turn about twenty hours in, and the pacing and gameplay structure since then makes it feel like I’m playing a different game altogether. I’m not sure if the changes made in this arc are an improvement—the chase bits are a little off-putting, actually—but considering that I’m now one brush short of the full set and have most of the world map explored, I think it’s safe to say I’m pretty close to wrapping this up. My overall opinion of Okami hasn’t changed much since I last wrote about it, and I don’t think it will. It’s very pretty and occasionally charming, but it’s also quite dull in bits and can’t settle on an overall tone.

Pokemon Ruby continues to be awesome. Right now I’m coming off another round of battles against Team Magma, and something very bad has happened. There’s still some stuff I have to take care of before challenging the trainers at the eighth gym, but hopefully my team can handle it. My regulars and alternates include Marshtomp, Mightyena, Absol, Tropius, Zangoose, Tentacruel, Swellow, and others.

Right now, I’m hoping to wrap up Okami sometime next week, and maybe beat Ruby as well. As for what I plan to play next, Secret of Mana definitely, and I’ll probably also delve into Rogue Galaxy, which is the game which has sat in my backlog the longest, IIRC.

Source image from Bits, Bytes, Pixels and Sprites.