After 146:32 of playtime (well, not entirely 146 hours, I’m sure it sat for a dozen or so hours while I got up to do other things) I’ve wrapped up all I’m going to do in Dragon Quest VIII.
Not a bad game, obviously I’m going to say that if I played that much, and got the two big endings in it. I didn’t do absolutely everything there is to do though, because after four of the Trials (none of this is really a spoiler because it’s far too vague) the necessary amount of levelling just became too much to bear. At over 100k experience a pop, and only 800-1500 experience available in a battle (outside of those pesky, unreliable metal slimes of all breeds), it’s just not worth it.
I will say, though, that I wouldn’t play it again. Certain mechanics, like the Ice attacks that wipe out all party bonuses (including tension levels), are just too annoying.
So, at my brother’s suggestion, I gave Final Fantasy X a try. The theory was that the levelling system was close enough to V to make it worth a try (I and V being the only Final Fantasy games I respect). but when it took an hour for me to past the tiresome opening movies, I got bored and quit.
Not sure what to play now. I’d like a good RPG with flexible character progression along the lines of La Pucelle or Final Fantasy V. Maybe I’ll just work on ToME 3 some more.
But it’s all fixed now.
Rob wonders why I speculate whether we blew up the North Korean ICBM. The answer is that I find it suspicious. They’ve had so many successful tests, and to have the one failure be the one that can reach us, and to have it fail so quickly, raises questions with me.
Sure, I know a long-range missile takes much more engineering than the short-range ones they’ve been lobbing over the Sea of Japan, but it’s still a question worth asking, I think. Especially in this one case, where we knew about the missile, we knew where it was, we knew it was fueled, and we could be ready for a launch at any time.