RULES:

• 1 point for every beaten game
• 1 more point if it’s generally agreed that the game is lengthy (~50+ hours to credits)
• Additional point for 100% completion.
• Games where beat = complete do not get an additional point.
• -1 point for every 5 new games, not counting gifts or games that are added as null.
• Games that can be beaten quickly and easily (such as fighting games) will not get a point until 100% completion status. (Less than ~10 hours)
• Competitors will get an extra point (up to 15) for beating a game on their Recommendation Station. Rarutos’ List | Noxie’s List (in her page note)

The points will be tallied at the end of the competition, so there will be no scoreboard unless we decide otherwise down the line. Rules are not quite set in stone just yet, they will be refined if we run into problems throughout the year. Let’s look forward to another year of beating games!

The competition’s end date is January 1, 2013. The competition is mainly used to encourage playing and actually finishing games, rather than just buying them to let them rot in the shelves. It also encourages completion this time, unlike the first competition we had, and discourages the addition of new games to our backlogs to a certain extent. Unfortunately there’s no way to encourage replays of games one has already beaten just yet. Maybe we’ll add it in later.

It has been decided to keep a log of the new games that are added so that the duelists can distinguish which ones were gifts throughout the year! If our competitors do not keep such a log, it’d be a lot harder to remember which new games don’t count towards the negative total at the end of the year! Green will be new games that do count towards the total, and Purple will be gifts. At the moment, 5 Green new games will mean a negative point for either of the contestants. Red is for free games. Which we have not really made a distinction for whether or not it affects score yet, kupo.

Rarutos: (-1)
01) Grandia (PS1C)
02) Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone (Steam)
03) Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3)
04) Atelier Lilie ~Alchemist of Salburg 3~ (PS2)
05) Nora and the Time Studio (DS)
06) Get & Battle! Pokémon Typing DS (DS)
07) The Simpsons Arcade Game (PSN)
08) Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (Steam)
09) Wild ARMs XF (PSP)
10) Final Fantasy VII (PS1C)
11) ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection (PS3)
12) The Legendary Starfy (NDS) 
13) Rhythm Heaven Fever (Wii)
14) Tales of the Abyss (3DS)
15) BlazBlue: Continuum Shift EXTEND (PS3) 
16) Alien Swarm (Steam)

Noxie: (0)
1) Final Fantasy XIII-2 (PS3)

Final Fantasy XIII’s average main story completion time is about 47 hours, so it’d be 3 points! So games less than 40 hours would be 2, and games under 20 hours would be 1.

However, even if one takes over 80 hours to beat Final Fantasy XIII, they will still only get the 3 points, just to be fair. Games that are completed after being beaten during the time frame from the start date to the end date will automatically double the points that was received with beation the game!

Start date is August 27, 2011. The deadline will be December 31, 2011!

Non-RPGs are allowed, as long as they are average over 10 hours to beat, but regardless of how long they take to get to the credits, they will always be worth 1 point!! Lengthy adventure games such as Okami and Zelda may be counted like the RPGs.

Rules are possibly still being worked out (since we kind of just made them up on the fly), but in the end, this competition is purely for motivation and enjoyment’s sake! Pictures will probably be taken and placed under the listed beaten game!

SCOREBOARD:
Currently Leading: RARUTOS

RARUTOS:
Score: 16 Points
Beaten Game List:

1) Final Fantasy V (GBA) – 2 Points ~ Picture
2) Catherine (PS3) – 1 Point
3) Atelier Rorona (PS3) – 2 Points ~ Complete
4) Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA) – 1 Point ~ Picture
5) Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS) – 1 Point
6) Atelier Totori (PS3) –  4 Points ~ Complete
7) Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii) – 5 Points

NOXIE:
Score: 11 Points
Beaten Game List:

1) Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice (PS3) – 2 Points ~ Picture
2) Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland (PS3) – 2 Points
3) Parasite Eve (PSN) – 1 Point ~ Picture
4) Final Fantasy XIII (PS3) – 3 Points ~ Complete
5) Fate/EXTRA (PSP) – 2 Points
6) Kingdom Hearts Re:coded (DS) – 1 Point

This is the end of the scoreboard. The rules are laid out. Let’s fight to save worlds after long quests (and many unneeded sidequests)! THE BETS ARE ON!

However, it’s also by far my least favorite of the ones I’ve played. Part of the reason I kept going with it is because I had nothing else to play. Another part is that a friend suggested I write a blog about it when finishing. And plus, it actually doesn’t have random encounters, which is a huge bonus for me.

*Note: Please don’t take this review too seriously. I did enjoy the game enough to play it for what it is, but it has a ton of faults that I, as a writer, cannot simply overlook. …That and I’ve been having fun exploiting/laughing at the faults of this game.

First off, I’m going to start off with what I love. I love the graphics—they were stunning, especially in a high-def scenes. The hair for Lightning and Vanille in normal cutscenes sometimes annoyed me, but that’s more trouble to explain why than it’s worth. Overall, the graphics were amazing.

Subtracting from that, I must talk about some design stuff. The characters are great. Lightning’s hairstyle isn’t my favorite, but whatever. I like the characters, and for the most part, they have nice outfits. However, the position of Lightning’s sword is a huge problem. In real life, the way it hangs down over her legs would cause it to beat on them every time she walks, even more so when she runs. It’d just cause problems, and is not a good place for a sword.

Continuing on with the weapons, most of them are collapsible. I have a few collapsible weapons in my story, but those are very simple weapons. However, the ease it shows with the ones in this game, just by flinging them in the right direction, is way too easy—that would cause problems in battle, as fling it the wrong way and the weapon would collapse instead of strike. This shows the biggest error again, with Lighting, whose sword like… I don’t even know. I tried watching it after battle to see how it shrinks, but it’s just weird the way it moves. You’d think a sword like that would cause a lot of problems, especially when covered with dirt and blood. Vanille’s… fishing rod, I think, is a bit like Lightning’s sword, where it just folds weird and unrealistically.

Another thing—her sword apparently turns into a gun once she gets enough attacks. A callback to Squall’s gunblade, perhaps, though I see no mechanics to make that possible. And then Sazh’s two guns… turn into a rifle or something? I stopped using him after a while, but there’s no mechanics that would make that possible. And Hope’s huge boomerang folds once (which makes me wonder why it doesn’t fold when hitting enemies) and fits in the back of his pocket. Somehow. Also, he can somehow control where it goes—when he gets a preemptive strike, it’ll hit every enemy without returning to him once, no matter how they’re positioned. Finally, there’s Snow. In the battle animation, he uses his fists. However, his weapon is like… the threads on the back of his jacket or something? It’s weird, and I don’t get it at all.

Leaving that, though, and getting back to the good things.

I also loved that there were no surprises with encounters. They’re not random, and you can see exactly how many enemies you’re going to fight on the screen. Plus, you can sneak up on them to get a bonus in battles. Also, having the party characters running around on the screen with me was a nice little touch (though sometimes they got in my way on a narrow pathway).

However, the battle system itself was bad programming, in my opinion. Let me explain.

There are six battle styles: Commando (attack), Ravager (magic), Sentinel (guard), Synergist (buff), Saboteur (debuff), and Medic (heal). Each character naturally gets three styles as follows:
Lightning: Commando, Ravager, Medic
Sazh: Commando, Ravager, Synergist
Snow: Commando, Ravager, Sentinel
Hope: Ravager, Medic, Synergist
Vanille: Ravager, Medic, Saboteur
Fang: Commando, Sentinel, Saboteur

As you can see from the start, the first three share two styles. While Commando and Ravager are each good for different things, I’d prefer the characters to have a little more variety. That’s just personal preference, really. Hope and Fang are the only perfect foils—that is, the only two that have a completely opposing moveset. On top of that, from what I’ve read, Hope is the best spellcaster (with Vanille getting moves quicker) while Fang is the best offensive fighter. Add whoever you want for back-up (for me, Lightning), and you have your party set no matter what the situation.

Expanding the styles is actually quite fun, but the way it’s used during the battles annoyed me from the beginning.

First off, they tried to combine turn-based and real-time battle system. I’ve heard that it has been done well, but not here. It was so slow that I could easily type to people while playing. You play one character, and only you can use items. If your character dies, then your party loses. End of story. Doesn’t matter if your teammates have a resurrection spell by then.

You get four options during battle:
Auto-battle (wherein they’ll use the known strengths and weaknesses of the enemy to use the best attacks)
Skills (wherein you get to choose the skills you want—but this soon gets so huge that it’s a waste of time to bother with it)
Techniques (wherein you can use skills that cost TP—Summon, Libra (to see enemy stats), Quake (earth spell), Raise (to revive someone with full HP), Dispelga (to dispel both your party and the enemies), Stopga (to… I honestly forgot), and no doubt others)
Items (wherein you can choose potions, phoenix downs, or a few other items)

As mentioned above, I rarely ever used ‘Skills’. Most of what you need can be done with auto-battle. Then you choose an enemy, and most times you won’t be switching that… So you just get to pressing ‘X’ a ton with almost nothing else.

There’s also no way to move your character in battle, so you can’t block or dodge. And your character won’t do that most of the time—I have seen it happen, but very scarcely—no matter how obvious the attack. But, there’s no real stat for defense—your only stats are strength, magic, and HP. For one that’s used to the side-stepping action to dodge enemies in Graces, not being able to move at all was a huge disappointment.

Techniques… Most of these are honestly useless. Summon and Libra are the only ones I ever really used. You get five TP max (which is only regained from winning battles with a good ranking), with Libra costing one and Summon costing three. Summon is great if you find yourself in a pinch—your summon will heal you to keep you alive while fighting with you for the first half, and for the second half, you get to ride on your summon to deal stronger damage. However, with further bosses, this became more and more useless, as the total damage done didn’t seem to really put a dent in it.

Libra, on the other hand, I used a ton. I could use it to see stats, and if the enemy was weak to fire, my fighters would all use fire. If it was weak to spells, they’d all use spells. However, I found that even this became pointless against most enemies, since the party will experiment to figure out what the enemy’s weak to. For example, Lightning will start out using all the main elements, but as soon as it blocks one, the monster data records it as being immune and neither Lightning nor Hope will use that element on it again.

I only used Quake once, and it didn’t look to hit most of the enemies. Plus, there’s nothing weak to earth. Which isn’t surprising, given that Quake is the only earth spell in the game. I never used Dispelga or Stopga because both seemed useless under normal circumstances. I’m sure Dispelga could be useful if the enemy has full buffs and you have few, but most of the time when I was against a boss, I had fully buffed myself first.

Items also became rarely used for me. You get nothing higher than potions, which heal by a number, not a percentage. There is an item to increase the effects of potions, but I traded that out for more useful accessories (speaking of, you start only being able to equip one weapon and one accessory and get more accessories as you advance through your styles—I ended with everyone having three).

Now then, there is one more option in battle. By pressing one of the L buttons, you can switch battle tactics. But let me back up before talking about those.

I mentioned the styles before. Once you have a party set, you can set up to six battle tactics—called paradigms or something like that. Each one of these are a combination of the styles your party uses. My favorites (in the order of Lightning, Hope, Fang):
Relentless Assault: Ravager, Ravager, Commando
Diversity: Ravager, Medic, Commando
Hero’s Charge: Medic, Synergist, Commando
Ruthless: Commando, Ravager, Saboteur
Decimation: Ravager, Synergist, Commando
Solidarity: Commando, Medic, Sentinel

I liked having Synergist and Saboteur separate since they had a different number of spells in each. This way, they would always be doing something useful and not just standing there, trying a debuff that would never work on the enemy.

I usually started off my battles in Relentless Assault. If it wasn’t a boss, I’d just go with that until my HP got too low. Then I’d switch to either Diversity or Solidarity (if there were a lot of enemies—this would make them all focus on Fang, who could guard to keep herself safe). However, once they’re all healed up, you have to switch back to Relentless to continue fighting.

You get used to the battle system, and I made the most of it. However, the thing that annoyed me most is that you can tell exactly what your teammates are programmed to do. There’s no good AI program. They work off the exact weaknesses of the enemy. I know it’s good to be able to predict what your teammates will do, since that makes it more stable, but to me, it’s boring and far too simple programming for games nowadays. It thus made the battles the same thing over and over again with set patterns for what to do.

Also, another thing that bothers me. Whenever the party’s switched out, you lose all the tactics you set. I know everyone has different moves, but it’d be nice if they at least saved what I last had with those three instead of defaulting back to the basic. Sometimes I had a hard time remembering my tactics… Because of that, I didn’t change out my party unless I had to. …And considering how forceful this game is with battle parties, my party got changed out a lot.

One thing I did like during battle was staggering. By hitting the enemy with a combination of spells and regular attacks, you could send their stagger bar up. When they’re staggered, everything does a ton more damage to them. Eventually, the physical fighters can launch them way up in the air (quite unrealistically, but it saved me a number of times). However, enemies with high defense can be extremely annoying to battle when they’re not staggered, especially if they take forever to get to stagger mode. And there was one boss that gained a barrier if you didn’t kill it with a summon, making it immune to everything until you put it in stagger mode. Which took a while.

I’m still working on the story post, but for some non-spoilery notes about things you’ll see in that post:
- There are tons of weird terms that it doesn’t stop to explain at all.
- Everyone has sensors for you. And I mean everyone.
- Having a summon is like having a baby.
- There’s lots of emo-ing. And melodrama.
- The party is good at making stupid decisions.
- Even the script writers must’ve gotten confused by everything.
- Fang is obsessed with protecting Vanille.
- The writers didn’t do the research.
- There are a few places that are just a complete mess in how they’re written.

Please look forward to the story review! I hope to finish that one soon, and for those waiting, trust me, it won’t disappoint you. ’

Okay, so you’re still here? Good, good. Here’s my long and rambling opinion.

What needs to be fixed:
1 ) Support conversations. Just… my God, SUPPORT CONVERSATIONS. They were once a fantastic way to add depth to the entire cast of characters and develop the relationships between them. Then Radiant Dawn took these and gutted them, reducing them to mere one-line drivel. 13 needs to take these back to where they were in Path of Radiance. Path of Radiance had the best support system, in my opinion. It had the character and relationship development from the GBA games, and at the same time made it smoother to get them by only deploying characters in the same map, not standing next to each other for a certain number of turns (which, for me, invariably resulted in ignoring a boss for 30 turns while I got support convos between everyone I had deployed). Now, Shadow Dragon did away with support conversations all together (though it still had the bonuses). While Radiant Dawn’s gutting of the system is, in my opinion, pretty much indefensible and inexcusable, I can’t really say the same for Shadow Dragon. Cause see, here’s the thing; the original Fire Emblem didn’t have a lot of character development in and of itself. A side effect of this, in a series of Fire Emblem’s popularity, means that there is a lot of fanon out there for the Akaneia characters. Most of it probably developed independently (a lot of this was pre-internet days, remember) and no doubt varies wildly. Aside from the fact that adding loads of new characterization may have been too much work for a remake like this (though to be honest, given how polished the rest of the game was, I’m very reluctant to invoke that reason), any new characterization would inevitably run afoul of a large portion of the Japanese fanbase whose Akaneia fanon was firmly mentally established. It seems to me a far safer course to avoid any new characterization that could upset already dedicated fans. Of course, this is mostly speculation on my part, and could be way off base, but it seems reasonable enough.

2 ) Art style. To be quite frank, I did not like Shadow Dragon’s art style. Specifically the in-game portraits. At all. For comparison:

Screenshot from Shadow Dragon featuring Marth and Caeda/Shiida/whatever-translation-you-prefer

Screenshot from Radiant Dawn with Micaiah, Sothe, and Rafiel

Now, this is admittedly purely a matter of personal taste, but I vastly prefer Radiant Dawn’s brighter style. It’s hard to describe, but it just feels like a better fit. I don’t want to say that Shadow Dragon’s sucks so much as… it’s bad. In fact, the difference is so clear to me that I don’t even have to think about it. I will point out that Shadow Dragon’s official character art is actually totally fine (though it does sylistically defer from previous games in a way I don’t prefer).

3 ) The battle animations. Personally, I would prefer a return to the GBA style of sprites with plenty of badass flashy critical hits. Now, I’ve heard that the GBA style sprites were not very popular in Japan, but I don’t remember when, where, or why. IF that’s true, then we don’t necessarily HAVE to go that route, but I think Intelligent Systems is currently so much better at doing sprites than 3D models that to go with the models is intentionally sub-par for little actual return. If they feel the need to go with models, they need to devote more resources to it than they have in the past. They clearly learned a lot moving into Radiant Dawn from Path of Radiance, so I certainly think it’s possible for them to give us some badass models and animations, but sub-par isn’t something that I think is going to be acceptable here in a new Fire Emblem. The battle sprites/models and animations NEED to be highly polished, whichever route they go.

4 ) Gaiden chapters. They were missing from Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. This was bad. In Shadow Dragon they required you to lose your own soldiers. You know, permanently. THIS IS A BAD IDEA. I really, really, quite literally cannot stress that enough. It is a physical impossibility to do so. I should not have to play below my ability to get the gaiden chapters. If you want them to be hard to reach, that’s entirely acceptable, and even laudable, but make them hard by forcing us to play BETTER, not worse. I think FE6 handled the gaiden chapters the best, personally. They were difficult to reach, some more than others, but you got something important out of them, as well as plot advancement. Honestly, they were just well handled in general.

5 ) Dark magic. If you’re going to include it (which I think they should – the Light -> Dark -> Anima magic triangle is a good counterpart to the weapon triangle), it needs to be available in the first playthrough. I’m looking at you on this one, Radiant Dawn. The hoops you made me jump through to get one dark magic user in the game’s last chapter is utter bullshit. Imagine going through the game without access to any lances, when the enemy has all three weapon types available to them. Yeah, sounds blatantly unfair right? So why is it okay to do that with magic? My answer: it isn’t. So fix it.

6 ) Character archetypes. Those that are knowledgeable about the Fire Emblem series are aware of the existence of character archetypes that are used throughout the series (such as the Jeigan, the Est, and the Nabarl). These should be shaken up. Throw me for a loop. Don’t make it so obvious who’s likely to end up really powerful (the Est) or really weak (the Jeigan, unless they’re an Oifey). This isn’t quite required, in my opinion, but I think it would be a nice change of pace, and would give long term Fire Emblem fans something more to think about.

7 ) Legendary weapons. These should not break. Ever. The biggest offender here (to my mind) is Roy’s Sword of Seals, though all the GBA legendary weapons are guilty of this. For the number of chapters you can potentially utilize it, it will break if you use it on pretty much anything other than bosses. This is, quite frankly, absolutely insanely stupid. If a sword is going to break after I stab some guy with it, the only thing about it that’s legendary is its poor craftsmanship. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn did better, with unbreakable Ragnell and Alondite. And, though my memory is a little fuzzy (someone can correct me if this is wrong), I believe Falchion also didn’t break in Shadow Dragon. IS just needs to make sure that they keep this trend up instead of reverting to the GBA style.

8 ) Difficulty. Path of Radiance was really really easy. Radiant Dawn was punishingly difficult. Shadow Dragon was in between. These should all be options in the same game. I personally loved Radiant Dawn’s difficulty; it made me feel like I actually had to manage my resources and use every one of my characters intelligently and to their full potential. That is exactly what I want from an SRPG. However, other people may not enjoy the high difficulty as much as I do, and I am well aware and accepting of that. So include a wide range of difficulties in the game. It shouldn’t be that hard to have an Easy mode, a Normal mode, and a Hard mode. Most games do. And hell, let’s include a truly punishingly hard Mania mode while we’re at it, just for the masochists in the crowd (of which I’m sure there are several, including myself).

That’s all the things I can think of at the moment that require fixing. There are, however, other things that I’d like to point out need to be done. Those are:

Skills. I really liked Radiant Dawn’s skill system. It provided a nice amount of optional customization. In addition to skills, the forging system used in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. That was a nice (again, optional) way to let me show some favoritism to my favorite units (namely Mia, but my bias isn’t the point right now).

This is Mia, one of my personal favorite units in all of Fire Emblem. She is awesome.

That’s it for this post, but I’ll probably have more in the future. Agree? Disagree? Other thoughts? Please, leave a comment.

I first discovered something was wrong when I tried playing Innocence. The top screen of my DS had lines over it through the whole gameplay. While it was a bit annoying, I didn’t care much–I could still tell what was going on easily. It was the same for Pokemon HeartGold.

Now, I’m playing Pokemon White. There are still a ton of lines, which made it a bit hard to read at first, but a day or two later, the lines seemed to be gone, and it’s actually easy to look at now. Everything was going well, I was actually grinding before challenging the second gym… I must thank Audino for that. For those who don’t know, it’s this healing-type-Pokemon that’s… well, I thought was white and light green.

But, I looked on Serebii.net for information on Audino… only to find that it’s dark pink. That’s when it occurred to me that there’s something terribly wrong with the top screen of my DS.

Then, I went to the gym… and this conversation happened:

Ayame says:
o.o’ Hi N
Valour says:
xD
Ayame says:
…Your hair looks purple today. Probably because of my screen.
Valour says:
;__; Oh my god
Valour says:
That is really bad
Ayame says:
‘ What hair color should he have?
Valour says:
…XD
Valour says:
Take a guess
Ayame says:
‘ Red?
Valour says:
…XD Not even close…
Ayame says:
XD Ummm…
Ayame says:
(It looked reddish the other day >.>’)
Valour says:
Okay, my hints: it’s not red or purple
Valour says:
8D
Ayame says:
XD’ Thanks
Ayame says:
Green? ‘
Valour says:
BINGO!
Ayame says:
XDDD

Yes. My screen is that bad.

So, for the lols, I decided to boot up Innocence again and see how the colors look on that now.

Here are some pictures I took with my phone. I apologize for the blurriness:

…Yeah. My DS is that bad.

This one is a high school love story, based off an anime/manga by the same name. The drama is two seasons long, with the seasons set about a year apart from each other. There’s also a movie that I have yet to watch, so this review is purely on the drama.

The summary:

Makino Tsukushi is a normal Japanese girl. However, she’s made it into a prestigious high school, full of rich kids that usually come to school in limos. Leading the school are the four richest of them all–four boys known as the Flower 4, or F4: Domyouji Tsukasa, Hanazawa Rui, Nishikado Sojirou, and Mimasaka Akira. If anyone does something to upset them, then they get a red notice placed in their locker. The red notice basically tells everyone to bully the victim until they leave.

Tsukushi wants to have a normal high school life… to get by without any problems. But when her new friend, Sakurako, gets in trouble with the F4, Tsukushi stands up for her… and finds the red notice in her locker. Whether she likes it or not, she finds herself wrapped up in their world–which only expands when she starts to form a crush on Rui.

Important Characters:

Makino Tsukushi. She’s the main character, and she comes from a very poor family. She’s a hard worker and prefers things that are practical. She can’t stand watching people get hurt, and she’ll stand up for her friends. She’s a pretty strong heroine and isn’t afraid to punch idiots in the face.

Domyouji Tsukasa. He’s the leader of the F4, and the biggest jerk of them all. He’s not very bright, and he absolutely sucks at Japanese–it’s a running joke that he messes up on words or kanji. He’s not very good with people, especially not girls, and he tends to be a little forceful.

The next have quotes from the last episode on what someone said about each of them.

Hanazawa Rui. “You were always there for me, and you understood me the best. I truly, truly can’t say ‘thank you’ enough times.” He’s the cool, mysterious member of F4. He enjoys reading, and even in the group, he’ll usually be seen sitting off to the side (or blowing bubbles). Rui is made of epic win, and he always knows just how to help. Sometimes, I wonder if some things he does are just part of some plan.

Nishikado Sojirou. “You’re the biggest playboy among the F4, but you’re actually a very genuine person. You always gave me that push in the back and encouraged me to live my own life.” As the quote says, he’s a playboy. He loves tea, and interested in the tea ceremony. He’s usually quiet and off to the side, but he’s surprised me when he takes a leading role, usually supporting the characters with wise words.

Mimasaka Akira. “You’re perhaps the kindest and most mature member of F4.” He’s also a playboy, but he prefers woman that are older and more mature. He hates conflict and is usually the first to try and calm the other guys down. Ironically, his family’s powerful in the Japanese underground–because of that, he tends to use cash.

Matsuoka Yuki. She’s Tsukushi’s best friend, and they’ve been together since they were kids. She’s very supportive of Tsukushi’s true feelings, and is always there to help. She and Tsukushi work at a dango shop.

There are many other important characters, but… I’ll spend this whole space talking about characters if I go on. So, time for the review!

I really enjoyed Hana Yori Dango. It’s probably my second favorite out of the three JDramas I’ve watched thus far, as it stays light hearted and shows an interesting love story. It doesn’t have anything particularly meaningful like the other two, but the characters are interesting and engaging, each with their own complex past.

It’s interesting to see how situations develop, and it deals with the confusing truths of love. It does an amazing job portraying an evolving love between two very different people, along with showing the complications of feelings surrounding them and the people around them. When I first started watching, I didn’t think anything would make me cheer for the canon couple–it’s a bit cliche, and plus, the original guy I was rooting for is far cooler. Yet, before long, they made me absolutely love the canon couple. The balance between love and hate is absolutely perfect, as is the painful confusion of love.

It is a bit cliche, but it’s well worth it, as the story stays interesting and engaging. Sometimes, you want to hit the characters for how stupid they’re being, but those same mistakes and misunderstandings happen all the time in real life. I’d much prefer that it stay true to the characters, like it does, than for everything to work out perfectly the first time around–it’s far more interesting that way.

The acting was amazing. Usually I don’t think much about acting, but all I could think of for this one was how perfect they always are at the roles (and how fun it must’ve been to film it!).

The soundtrack is also lovely. Anyone who knows me also knows that I’m usually not good at paying attention to the background music. However, I absolutely loved the background tracks they used for sweet parts in both the first and second seasons. It was always perfectly timed, and sometimes I like setting it as a background to what I’m doing. XD

(Slight spoilers in that second video–I could only find a music video.)

For anyone interested, you can find Hana Yori Dango here.

And, to end, a quote from Sojirou, which I believe sums up one of the points about love that the show makes quite nicely:

“There is no logic in love. Falling in love is an irrational thing. Even just by falling in love with someone, you’ll hurt people, and you’ll get hurt yourself. To be truly in love with someone, you have to be ready to put your life at risk.”

Raru’s Recommendation Station
Following Blink’s successful example, and mimicking Noxie, I’ll take a recommendation from anyone willing! Hopefully it’ll give me more motivation to play certain games I wouldn’t otherwise. Only one :U: game recommendation per person please!

:U:s only please! My Backlog is much too big to be focusing on :C:s right now.

01) :U: Baten Kaitos – Noxie
02) :U: Dead Rising – Seijika
03) :U: Ys: Oath in Felghana – Brojira
04) :U: Ōkami – Yami
05) :U: DeathSmiles – Cephi
06) :U: Zelda: Ocarina of Time – Yokkybear
07) :U: Digital Devil Saga – Norbi
08) :B: Chrono Trigger – Blink
09) :U: Vanquish – Sakurazaki
10) :U: Resident Evil 4 – Endaso
11) :U: Shadow Hearts – Wan-chan
12) :U: Super Mario Bros. – Sobou
13) :U: Digimon World 2 – Kari
14) :U: Alan Wake – Riss
15) :U: La Pucelle – Thunder
16 ):B: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin – Digiki
17) :U: Half-Minute Hero – EeveeFanBoy
18) :U: Mass Effect – MartMart
19) :U: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne – Ninten
20) :B: Street Fighter III: The 3rd Strike – Hojo
21) :U: Devil May Cry – Destrono
22) :U: Lost Odyssey – Nodaichi
23) :U: Unlimited Saga – Moffie
24) :U: inFamous – Ivy
25) :U: Final Fantasy VI – Linkmaster
26) :U: Pikmin – Cyfenwadau
27) :U: Lugaru HD – Truner
28) :U: Sengoku Basara – Tweeter
29) :U: Radiant Historia – Valor
30) :U: No More Heroes – Paper
31) :U: .hack//INFECTION – Wude
32) :U: Resonance of Fate – Orpheon
33) :U: Devil Survivor Overclocked – Wool
34) :U: Sin & Punishment – Naikou
35) :U: Tales of Graces ƒ – AyaAya
36) :U: Costume Quest – Inkontrol
37) :U: Xenosaga – Ayai
38) :U: Super Mario Advance 4 – Nionel
39) :U: Professor Layton and the Curious Village – Corvak
40) :U: Tales of Rebirth – Illu
41) :U: Skies of Arcadia – Arcadia
42) :U: Spyro the Dragon – Kohaku
43) :U: Zelda: Majora’s Mask – Celab
44) :U: Blue Dragon – Boyce
45) :B: Final Fantasy V – DuskShark
46) :U: Mass Effect 2 – David
47) :U: Trine – Yoomi
48) :U: Planescape Torment – Sadrack
49) :U: Super Mario Galaxy 2 – Brain_cleanser
50) :U: Dragon Quest VIII – Kamiwoo

Those who read my post on Densha Otoko will know that I really loved that one. The Queen’s Classroom is even better.

So to start, the summary:

Kanda Kazumi is a 12-year-old girl entering 6th grade (which, in Japan, is the last year of elementary school). She and her long-time friend Erika happen to be in the same class, with a teacher that’s been away from teaching for two years. When the teacher, Akutsu Maya, enters, she tells the students that things will be different in her class. Every Monday, she’ll pass out a test. The two students with the highest scores will be given special privileges, including free use of the two lockers in the classroom. The two students with the lowest scores will become class representatives, who have to do everything from cleaning the bathrooms to serving lunch. She then gives them a lecture on how only 6% of all people can achieve happiness. That they’d be glad to make everyone else work below them work so they can get things for free. On top of that, she’s extremely strict, not allowing the children to go to the restroom during lunch and giving out harsh punishments for disobeying her.

When her last pencil breaks on the first day, Kazumi isn’t able to complete the test, and becomes a class representative along with the class clown, Yusuke. She suffers through the first week, deciding that she’s not going to let herself fail the next test.

Over the course of the year, the students experience many hardships. When Maya talks to each parent in turn, she easily plays up to their interests, leaving the children alone in their struggle against her.

Important characters that I feel need to be mentioned:

Kazumi, the main character. She’s an idealistic young girl who believes that everyone ended up in the class together for a reason. Because of that, she wants to create happy memories with them. However, that becomes much harder than she ever thought, especially after she becomes the representative.

Maya, the teacher. Akutsu Maya, really, but I’m used to calling her Maya. She’s extremely strict and always has a hard look on her face. She has a tendency to know things she shouldn’t know and show up when not expected. She’s extremely intimidating, and everything she says is correct, even if harsh and pessimistic. Not even the teachers can argue with her, as she’s good at pointing out the flaws in their ways.

Yusuke, the class clown. He’s laid back and doesn’t take class seriously. Despite all his joking, he has a good heart and often helps Kazumi out.

Hikaru, the smartest girl in class. She’s kind, but indifferent about everything regarding herself. She doesn’t mind being punished. She’s also very insightful and is the first to understand the reasons people do things.

Baba, a girl with low grades. The only thing keeping her from being a class representative is the fact that Kazumi and Yusuke are. She’s not good in school or sports, but she enjoys drawing and hopes to be a manga-ka one day.

Yu, Kazumi’s older sister. She’s a really kind and supportive older sister. She’s always there for Kazumi and listens to the troubles Kazumi has in class.

The review:

As I said already, I enjoyed The Queen’s Classroom even more than Densha Otoko. It was so much more meaningful, delving into many questions about the importance of life, learning, and the future. It managed to be both pessimistic and optimistic at the same time, both realistic and idealistic. It showed many difficulties of life, flawlessly relating the troubles the children experienced to the real, adult world.

The students also each had their own problems to overcome. There were 24 students, each with their own personality and dreams. Naturally, there wasn’t enough room to delve into most of them, and some blended into the background easier than others. But the more time went on and the more you learned, the more important everyone became, whether as part of the class or for something a bit more complicated.

This drama, especially the special, has also been highly useful in studying some information I’ll need for my story. It shows many of the troubles that many children in a public school system have to deal with, troubles that I didn’t have in my own experience.

The actors were also amazing. The actress who plays Maya is both lovely and really talented (which is easier to tell in the specials). Each of the important children are also played well, with Kazumi and Yusuke being my two favorites. The casting for both of them was perfect, and they played off each other really well to show a special friendship (and blooming love).

The last few episodes were extremely touching, and watching a recap of them in the second special almost made me cry again (I only didn’t because my parents were in the room). I highly recommend The Queen’s Classroom to anyone that enjoys dramas. It’s one of the most meaningful stories I’ve ever seen and really makes you think about teaching, learning, and life.

For anyone interested, you can find The Queen’s Classroom here.

(The ending is also extremely catchy)

Again, I’ll leave off with a quote. This speech was absolutely lovely and extremely well-written. The whole scene was beautifully executed.

“Open your eyes. Of course there are going to be worries in life. The important things are not losing confidence, not paying attention to rumors, and not hurting others. For example, nobody knows what happens when people die. There are people who say that you will go to heaven if you listen to what they say and go to hell if you don’t. That’s just nonsense. Nobody has been there, so how do they know? There’s no point in pretending you know something and then trying to persuade other people. Instead… think more about the present. Can you picture it? We’re surrounded by many beautiful things. Millions of stars shine in the night sky. A small butterfly might eagerly fly by your side. If you go into the street, your ears might become filled with the sound of a new song… You might meet a wonderful person… As you gaze at ordinary scenery, there will be many sudden surprises as time flows. Open your eyes and gaze at these important things. Clear your ears and listen. Feel it with your entire body. That’s what it means to be alive.

“If you don’t have a solid goal in mind yet, then just study. Do things you can only do when you’re twelve. And, go to junior high school. Even if you go to junior high school… Even if you go to high school… There still remains tons of things in the present. Stop doting on the future and neglecting those things. If you don’t, then you will never realize anything, no matter how much time passes.”

It’s about a Japanese anime otaku by the name of Yamada (name in the TV series only–just called Densha in other places). He’s often bullied around by his boss and coworker and can never seem to get anything right. People see him as disgusting because he’s an otaku. But when riding home on the train one day, he notices a beautiful young woman. When a pervert starts harassing her, Yamada stands up for the first time in his life, soon finding himself in a fight with the man. The young woman, grateful for his bravery, asks for his address so she can send him a thank you present.

When he gets home, he gets online and goes straight to a Single Men Rant Thread, where he tells everyone on about what happened. And from that point on, he becomes the star of the thread, a (somewhat whiny, but honest) young man trying to win the heart of a lovely, rich young woman. The others help him out, giving him suggestions even though they have no idea where he is or how he looks. Thanks to the awesome artist guy on the thread, he gets the nickname Densha Otoko. On the thread, the girl becomes known as Hermes due to the gift she sent him.

Enough of the summary, though. It has moments of pure sweetness that can make you cry, and then moments of over-dramatized reactions that’ll make you laugh. And, a complete jerk gets hilariously trolled by a chicken (it makes sense in context!). All in all, it’s a good balance. One thing I enjoyed was that it really puts the average life of a Japanese person in perspective, showing the customs that I’ve only learned about before. (Also, the main character has the same birthday as me )

It’s only eleven episodes long, with two specials. It has a habit of ending episodes with huge cliffhangers, but I was so drawn in yesterday that I was watching it non-stop anyway.

Densha Otoko is absolutely adorable, and I highly recommend it to anyone who hangs out online (meaning all of you Midnight Heartians!). The members of the thread become nakama, which I can really relate to with Midnight Hearts. And the things they do for each other, the ways they help each other… it’s really inspiring. The people on the forum begins changing, with the strength of their online nakama backing them. Just the way Yamada changes is inspiring for them, but the bond they make becomes strong. My absolute favorite moment is when they really come together to help Yamada (though I can’t say much more without spoiling it).

I’m going to leave it off with one of my favorite quotes, which I completely agree with:

“I can say this about the people on the Net. Though I don’t know their names or faces, to me, they are true friends…
If I had to chose one thing to be proud of, I would hold my chest high and say that meeting them was it.”

For some time now, the entries in the Tales series in Japan have been showing relatively lackluster sales. The last truly good-selling title in Japan was Abyss, which sold approximately 600,000 copies. After that, sales started tanking hard with Tempest at 200,000; they’ve hovered around that level ever since (these numbers taken from this Tales Union article). Now, you could spend some time debating why this happened, but that isn’t the purpose of this post. I am going to simply assume for the purposes of this post that at least a part of the reason (if not most or all of it) is that the Japanese market is currently flooded with Tales games in a way that it wasn’t when the titles still sold well.     

Since 2007, there have been 4 mothership Tales titles released, with another one to be released this year. 2 of those 4 received an enhanced port within a 1 year timeframe of their initial release. There have also been other remakes and escort titles released in that same period (e.g., Tales of Phantasia X, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, and Tales of Vs.). The individual sales numbers for each product are thus quite low because let’s face it, gaming is expensive, the global economy is still trying to come out of a recession, and not everyone, even hardcore Tales fans, can afford to get every Tales title that’s released.

As you probably know, Tales of Graces F has been confirmed to be receiving a North American release at some point in the near future. This gives us North American Tales fans an opportunity because, unlike the Japanese market, we have, thanks to Namco’s very deliberate efforts, not experienced a flood of Tales products. In fact we haven’t gotten anything since the original Xbox 360 version of Tales of Vesperia and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World two and a half years ago (note that this means the North American Tales fanbase’s cash was split between 2 games that came out within a few months of each other; as Japan shows, this is not an optimal condition for maximizing sales). This means that North American Tales fans have only one outlet coming up for spending their hard-earned cash on their beloved series: Tales of Graces F. By funneling all the Tales fandom into that one entry, it may allow us to push the North American sales numbers of ToGF to a point where they meet or, if we are extremely, extremely, extremely lucky, even exceed the Japanese sales. I don’t know Graces F’s Japanese sales numbers, but according to Tales Union (see earlier link), the Wii version of Graces sold only 190,000 copies. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable number for us North American fans to hit, especially given how Tales-starved we’ve been the past couple years. If we do manage to meet or exceed Japan’s sales numbers, then that would show Namco a strong incentive to localize future Tales games as well, hopefully starting with Xillia. There’s a caveat here, though; if Namco localizes too much, we’ll face the same problem that they’re having in Japan with market saturation and we’ll probably lose any localization for a long time. In fact I would argue that it’s critical to the Tales Studio’s survival in general that they stop making so damn many Tales games and stagger their releases better. They’re killing themselves and spending money on game development to do it. It’s a giant double whammy of self-knockout.

Naturally, this is in no way guaranteed, and I can think of a couple things that could negatively impact our ability as a fanbase to push those numbers up to where we should want them to be. First, there are the Tales fans who are raging over the release being for Graces F instead of the PS3 port of Vesperia and are thus threatening to boycott Graces F. Aside from the fact that those people need to grow up, if they actually follow through on that threat (which I must admit I doubt would happen; they may be pissed now, but several months from now when Graces F is actually available they’ll probably pick it up anyway), that’ll lower sales numbers. How much? Hell if I know. I doubt it would be a game-breaker, but I would guess that if the raging Vesperia crowd as a unit pulled it off, the effect would be somewhere between noticeable and of only minor significance. The other is more about the American market in general. There are several big name franchises releasing new entries this year, and several of them are RPGs. Among them are Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, and Elder Scrolls 5. Tales fans can take heart in the fact that the big names are Western RPGs, so there is less overlap than if the new release was, say, Final Fantasy, but they are still RPGs and there is still at least some overlap. How much? Again, hell if I know. I know it exists, but I can’t put any numbers on it. It’s something Namco would need to be aware of in setting a release date though.

I think I’ll close with an obligatory disclaimer. I am not an economist. I am not an expert in market analysis. I am not a businessman. I am simply an intelligent Tales fan who thinks he’s noticed a situation that we can work to our benefit. While I think everything I’ve said is reasonable and legitimate, it remains speculative and should in no way be counted upon by anyone.