Sakura Con 2008 Report

I was going through my old pictures and I was like... what the, I didn't post about Sakura Con! Sadly, I'm not one with good memory so recalling it will be a biotch.

Point form time!

- We (Shi2, Dave and me) left Vancouver early Thursday morning of March 27 via Greyhound and got there sometime early afternoon.

- We did a lot of shopping in the area rather than actually hanging around the con (uh, it was kinda boring <_<;)

- I went to Kikuta Hiroki's panel, guy who composed Secret of Mana. He mentioned Concerto Gate as his latest. I wanted to get into beta real bad just for his music.. speaking of which, what happened to that game?

- For the second half of his panel, he remixed a bunch of Secret of Mana tracks on a fast bpm. He requested people to feel free to dance, but it was way too awkward for the audience so most people did stand up... and... stand there. AWKWARD AS HELL but I felt so bad for him, yet I couldn't do anything to help.

- Went to his signing as well... sadly I brought nothing for him to sign (I wouldn't know where my SoM game is anyways) and he requested every attendee for their favourite track. I told him the forest one (humed the song to him) but when I got home to listen again.. MY FAVOURITE IS NOT THAT ONE but it sure was the most memorable one. He signed my badge instead.

- Met up with Nekura briefly there. Had him bring us to some places... though I only remember going to the very first Starbucks location ever built.

- Did shopping... was deciding whether to get Ignis in her wedding gown or Kaleido Ruby (Rin) or this unexpectedly hot Rei with the lance of Longinus. I'm actually not a fan of Rei (I prefer Asuka) but I really liked the figure so I went with that one. Kaleido Ruby disappeared on the last day when I was deciding on one of the three.

- I remember we spent a lot of time at the dealer's room but that's not really news.

- When I was lining up for Kawamoto Toshihiro's signature, I played a few rounds of Tetris DS whoop-ass against Nekura. I haven't lost my touch ;D

- Kawamoto Toshihiro (Wolf's Rain, Cowboy Bebop illustrator) was a nice guy.

- I don't think I went to any concerts. Not even ALI PROJECT.

- Speaking of ALI PROJECT, we've decided to boycott Sakura Con after this particular incident: After being to so many conventions, if one wants a popular guests' autograph, one must be prompt because I realize that guests have a tight schedule. I lined up for ALI PROJECT's scheduled autograph block.. however their line was actually kind of missing. I went to ask a staff member what was going on and they informed me that they pushed it to two hours later. I thought oh okay, so we decided to head off to do something else in the meanwhile. When we got back, I find out that the lineup for ALI PROJECT JUST finished, and I JUST MISSED IT. I ended up getting extremely pissed and find some staff to spazz at. They didn't have much to say about it except apologize rather insincerely. It was extremely unfair and just completely retarded. Just thinking about it now makes my blood boil.

I realize I probably shouldn't stop going because of this but, they weren't so great to begin with so screw them. I'll go to PAX instead - done.

An Almost Car Accident....

So I almost got into a car accident this morning driving to school.

I was driving down the Knight St bridge as usual (ahem late for class), turning out of the highway, down Alderbridge Rd and then this is what happened: morning drawings lawl

She was obediently in her own lane the whole time up until the break off point and then she SUDDENLY (but SLOWLY) starts TURNING MY WAY. I went WTF, swurved out of the way so she barely misses me and honked the shit out of her.

FUCKER WOMAN.

I DIDN'T NEED THE 8AM HEART ATTACK PLZKTHX.

Fable II: and so my story's done

I haven't played a Western RPG in a while, so Fable II was a nice treat.

Story - 3.5/5
If you played through just the story part of it, the game would feel really short. I went through a lot of quests and quest repeats, so it balanced out at the end. I haven't played the first Fable, but I imagine the story was similar in some fashion. However, this story by itself was neat. All the heroes were just "anybodies" chosen to be heroes for this particular scenario because they were particularly strong in one ability (strength/physical, will/magic and skill/dex) and you, the player, excelled in all of it and brought it all together to fight mr. bad guy who wants to use that power to control and remake the world. When you think about it... I guess it's a bit cliche.

The main story aside however, some of the side quests stories stood out to me. Particularly, the quest about the demon door and his audience. How he had his army of knights be with him always, up until death. Very cool.

Characters - 3/5
Because the story's so short, you don't get to do much with the other important characters. Gather them, fight boss man, the end. Though I must say I like Garth the most. The demon doors were interesting... I almost feel sorry for them. How they ended up there, where they will go after being opened..?

Gameplay - 3.5/5
Western RPG style always feels very MMO. Moreso when you have gold membership and have random other players wanting to sell you something or making a lot of noise in general. The online co-op was alrightly done. It isn't something fun to the point that you'd want to keep co-oping with someone. Being able to use your current character's abilities over someone elses game was nice. It still feels as though they could've done so much more with it though.

Enough about the online, the offline was good. The load times were a bit tedious and lag would sometimes get pretty bad when you were bombarded with enemies while executing crazy moves.

There were also a few annoying bugs, specifically quest bugs. I have this one Civilian Displacement quest that I can never finish. Now it's forever stuck at -0.1 days.

Sound - 2.5/5
Western RPGs don't have much music as usual. The music I did notice weren't too particularly memorable. At least I didn't listen to something else while I was playing, unlike Fallout 3 - was playing Legendia while watching Fallout being played right beside me. Now it's Legendia music = Fallout3.

Graphics - 4/5
The graphics were pretty, my character was not. I expected some more clothing options at least. There were quite a number of graphical glitches here and there. The 'animation' for the mini floating spire's electricity was probably the most poorly done.

Overall - 3/5
The game was fun but because the play style's so different, I'm not too sure how to feel about it. I don't think it's leaving a strong impression, but the journey itself was enjoyable.

February

So it's February. Nothing special, but here's some random.

- Brought Fable II LE to school just as an example to the teacher to show gaming DVD-style packaging. Teacher suddenly got excited that the booklet might be a golden rectangle and ended up penciling on the booklet. My mouth hung open as soon as he did it. Who in their right minds makes ANY sort of markings on ANY booklet that is not ones own??! What if I wrote on your VINYL DISCS huh MR TEACHER? He even questioned me and asked me if he shouldn't if done that or not. TOO LATE! It hurt a lot, but I was able to erase it out a bit... though the mark is still there and the eraser faded a part of the colours. UGH.

- Went to Foggs'n'Suds for the second time ever to have cheap chicken Wednesdays. First time was during, wut, RIP Akacon?

- I need to keep remembering not to sleep in so damn much on the day that I can. I woke up with yet another headache for oversleeping.

- Had one more last dinner with my visiting Aunt with all of my dad's side of the family together. We had to see that least liked Uncle with his bratty kid. Ugh, bratty. That little bugger ruined all the group photos.

- Speaking of bratty children, his other bratty slut child added me on facebook out of the blue. K so I shouldn't be surprised she knows how to spell my name even though she's 8, even though I never see her. A child on facebook at 8 is still a bit early, one would think but that's like what one would think maybe 5-10 years ago. But sigh, in this day in age, they're never too young I suppose. She seems to love twilight too. PG-13 doesn't seem to be much of a concern to an 8-year-old huh.

- Parents went to Las Vegas Tuesday though they're coming back later tonight. Time kinda flew by...

- I am done Fable II, I'll write something on it a bit later.

- I'm debating on starting another RPG on 360 (probably Vesperia or maybe even Star Ocean 4) or finish up (start even?) Odin Sphere while playing Wild ARMs XF.

- I can't believe I sat through two b2b episodes of Paris Hilton's New BFF on TV. I have to admit, it was actually rather entertaining and I'm curious for more.

- The SFIV theme song is so boyband nasty. I hate you EXILE, even more than before.

- PAX registration is up before AX. wtf.

- punBB code is actually more annoying to customize via code than xmb. However, I do like how they have this extension (mod/hack) auto-installation package thing. Still wondering if I should have just went back to xmb.

- I am really hungry. I haven't eaten today... and I'm not going to until I pick up my parents from the airport later tonight.

Early King Crabbage

Since my aunt from HK has yet to eat the Alaskan King Crab "Vancouver style", we decided to go have ourselves an 11 pound one for 10 of us at Northern Dynasty on Monday. The dinner was a nice intro to the awesome Alaskan King Crab season that is to come in March/April. After not eating in that area for a while, I was reminded why that eventually came to happen. Parking still sucks serious balls there.

There was also Cheese Party part 2 last Friday where I completely raided the ikura, just like last time. Salty goodness. Food overload, as usual.

Kouhaku 59

Alright, it's that time of year again for Kouhaku!

This year it starts off with out of tune Hamasaki Ayumi who sings one of her new songs that... er, doesn't sound very good. Could be because that it's live... could be because the song really just does suck. Then to add on top of that awesome song, she does this awesomely ridiculous dancing.

Okay, luckily the show's saved by this truly awesome Ghibli tribute that constantly gave me serious goosebumps. Then I found out that SMAP's Kimura does the voice for the prince in Howl's Moving Castle, which is rather interesting information. I've taken a liking in Ikimonogakari, so I might try them out for a bit. Perfume's performance was nice, maybe I'll give their music another try again maybe. There was this Japanese black guy called JERO who sang ENKA and holy crap he was good. If I were an enka fan, I'd be listening to both him and Kiyoshi (cuz Hikawa Kiyoshi rocks too). Apparently SPEED is back for more, even though they're all old now. Koda Kumi had the most prettiest dress and she strut her stuff in it too, singing TABOO - hot. Angela Aki's overrated (yeah I just said that). SMAP was out of tune, as usual. No one else too special in the 2nd half of the show. The guys won again this year. I would've voted white too if I were in Japan.

Tales of Legendia - Aftermath [Music Talk]

It's been a week (well.. no, fine, almost.. at least end of my school week) since I beat the game. I haven't stopped listening to the soundtrack. I think I'm having trouble getting sick of it. Soundtracks usually don't last that many repeats right after you -just- finish the game... well, for me usually anyways (excluding, say, Mitsuda's stuff :b).

GO SHIINA-SENSEI, YOU ARE MY NEW IDOL AND I AM YOUR LATEST FAN YES
but I apologize, you can't beat the greatest Mitsuda Yasunori for the top spot however you're UP THERE! On top of the other underappreciated amazing, Mizuta Naoshi.

While we're on the topic, I thought I'd take the moment to think of my top composer list... (also because I'm itching to type something)

1. Mitsuda Yasunori
2. Shimomura Yoko
3. Uematsu Nobuo (of course he's gotta be up there somewhere)
4. ?
5. Sakuraba Motoi
6. Mizuta Naoshi
7. Go Shiina
#. Itou Kenji (I've lost track of him D:)
#. Sakimoto Hitoshi
#. Mitose Noriko
#. ZUN (Team Shanghai Alice! - k, trying not to limit myself to only RPGs)
#. I've Sound
#. Maeda Jun (key for life! D:)
#. The team that composed Wild Arms XF - I'm LOVING THE OST TO BITS SO FAR

Alright, I ended up failing to list them all in numbered order. There's even a gap! Sakuraba doesn't deserve 4th spot. I don't know who does though.

This post has failed entirely. This calls for sleep.

Tales of Legendia - 100% in 94hrs

I'm not usually one to want to complete any game 100% as it gets tedious and whatnot, but Tales of Legendia's 100% completion was rather easy and simple compared to others (say, FFX or more recently WA5). I'll get a bit more into that...

Story - 3/5
The whole two parter thing was rather strange. The first half of the game (first ending) about the Merines and Orerines had potential but I felt that it fell a bit short, which is perhaps why they decided to make a continuation. From the way I see it though, they could've easily merged the two stories together, or even just not specify the section's as "Main Story" and "Character Quests". Instead they made you go through two rather weak stories that are separate and yet not. It always felt like there was "more" to the story (another hidden layer) but, alas, there was none. The look into each individual character was nice, but again, it would've been more effective if it was weaved into the main story as well. Character development would've of been so staggered and strange.

Considering the game revolves around a giant ship of land, I sometimes wondered about how life was on the mainland. Though, I suppose it's rather unimportant if it had no eres, Ferines, monsters = no story.

Characters - 4/5
The characters were overall quite amusing. Senel and Norma (maybe Jay and the Orosoren) are probably my favourites. Shirley was the most annoying. Chloe just had extremely bad AI or something, which made me end up disliking her a lot even though I used her in my main active party. Grune's story was so dead obvious and predictable, it became a boring, even. On a random last note for this part, Senel and Stella's the only pairing I see fit (yeah, screw Shirley and Chloe).

Gameplay - 4/5
I don't have any particular complaints about this game in this category. The linear battle stage was easy to get used to but it got rather cheap when it came to cornering monsters to one of the sides and then follow to beat the crap out of them. The fact that the main character is a fist melee as opposed to the usual swordsman, the new throwing aspect was rather fun. I give this game props for making the last boss not super easy to beat like most other games tend to end up to be like, even after the additional level ups before endgame.

Puzzles were easy as cake. Wished there were more.

This game made you go through the same dungeons TWICE. It would've been so much better if they just put in a bit more effort to make new dungeons for us to crawl instead. Luckily the dungeons were all quite short and rather linear.

Bread, bread, bread. You get to bake bread in this game. The bread basket limit was annoying. I needed to complete the bread collection so I dedicated at least a few hours to baking and eating bread. The 30 bread limit drove me insane.

There's this particular load time that gets on my nerves however. When you're loading in the rest of your playable characters into your active party, it takes it extra long to load. When you do any swaps with your active party, that extra load time kicks in. Minor, so no big deal.

Graphics - 3/5
I wonder what made these guys choose to make all the graphics in this game so kiddy and cartoony. Monsters that were even a bit frightening were the non-cutsy giant dragon guys like Fafnir and Tiamat, but they took up half the screen and you'd be punching at their legs all day.

The landscape graphics and colours gave off that kiddy feel too. Dungeons were blue and red... all sorts of strange colours you wouldn't expect in a dungeon.

Is this where I can also mention that character animations expressing emotion (during cutscenes) were so exaggerated? Nods were headbangs and exclamations were arm flails. Just watching them agreeing to something with constant nods made me feel nauseous myself.

Sound - 5/5
Gawd I love this game's soundtrack to DEATH. Go Shiina-sensei, you seriously need to make more RPG music. Someone needs to give him more of this awesome work and less, eh, what is it, Mr. Driller! :B I've been listening to the OST since I finished it and a few tracks are already giving me goosebumps. Though it seems like they decided to shorten the number of CDs for this game's OST. For one, I noticed a quite a few merged tracks and some other missing ones (e.g. the male vocal only version of the chanting track). But that's complaining about the OST, not the game's sound.

I'm a bit disappointed at the variety of battle tracks. I would've wanted a few additional tracks for specific named bosses vs mini boss vs big boss track. Though I'm probably just over comparing it to WA5.

I almost forgot to comment about the voices. They were pretty decently done. They were the most annoying during battles (almost unbearable). No one would shut up. But hey, that's a Tales game for you. The skits were pretty funny though, but they were quite short.

Overall - 4/5
The story was corny and meh. The characters were fun. The game wasn't bad, though I can't say it was really good either. I'm probably just being biased with me loving the music and all, which cancels out all the negatives this game has. Overall, it was pretty easy (k fine Walter was an ass) and so was the 100% completion as well (surprisingly), as there was nothing frighteningly difficult like Ragu (WA) or Ultima (FF). People just need to look past the cartoony graphics and mediocre story *cough* and just appreciate the music dammit! :b

Oh and we know how much we love game-specific vocabulary:
Eres, Nerifes, Merines, Orerines, Telmes, Teriques, Ferines, Terises, Zeriques, Delques, Fennes, Relares, Xelhes, Welzes, MelFes, FelQuesDes